Return to Reeves Art + Design
A couple of days ago, I wrote about an art exhibit at Reeves Art + Design. I mentioned how it had in the past been a cluttered antique store, but had transformed into a white cube art gallery. That’s true, but the gallery side of Reeves is only about half of its footprint. The other half is a storehouse of artwork. Reeves has a vigorous mail-order art business. I visited it a few days after seeing 5 Artists 5 Rooms. I met the owner of Reeves, Matthew Reeves, who inherited the business from his father, Paul Reeves.
This business is an old Montrose neighborhood tradition. Matthew told me that he grew up in one of the buildings on Taft. He told me that Reeves started as a dry cleaning business back in the 1940s. Occasionally, customers would not pick up their clothes, and it started to build up. The Reeves decided to sell the abandoned clothes; this turned out to be a successful sale. So the Reeves decided to continue selling abandoned clothes. They acquired stock from other dry cleaners in town. Eventually they evolved from a cleaner to a shop specializing in used stuff. The stock shifted to furniture and home decor, and now has more-or-less become all art (although Reeves still sells some furniture).
The stock of art Reeves has is quite varied. One specialty of Reeves is early Houston modernism. They have several works each by Herb Mears, David Addickes, Robert Preusser, Frank Freed, and even two by Forrest Bess. It was to see these two Bess paintings that I came to Reeves that second time. They were painted before Bess moved out to Chinquapin and adopted the highly personal style of abstraction for which he is famous.
Reeves told me one reason he was interested in Bess was because of Bess’s background as a fisherman. Reeves is an avid fisherman, and interested in art that has a fishing angle. It gave me an opportunity to tell him about Lucas Johnson, who died of a heart attack while fishing in Galveston with Jack Massing. This was relevant because I saw on the wall a lovely Johnson painting, underneath one by my old painting teacher, Stella Sullivan.
Reeves doesn’t just have early Houston modernism and fish paintings in his collection. He has a staggering inventory. I took a bunch of photos that might give one an idea of the volume and quality of Reeves’ stash.
And this just scratches the surface of Reeves Art + Design. Last, but not least, here is a rather dangerous-looking piece of art by Matthew Reeves.
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