Art & Dialogue: Houston Summary by Anne Ellegood

2/28/18

Art & Dialogue: Houston summary by Anne Ellegood

I always enjoy visiting Houston, so when Artadia invited me to do studio visit and give a public lecture, I jumped at the chance. As is well known, Houston is a city with several great museums, nationally respected galleries, top-notch curatorial talent, and fantastic food and music scenes to boot. What became much more apparent to me during this visit, however, is that Houston is also a city with a very active and impressive community of artists. In addition to visiting artists who had received the Artadia award at some point in the past, I was also able to do a number of studio visits with artists in the CORE Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art. Artadia has been giving grants to artists in Houston since 2003, so there are numerous alumni of the program; indeed far more than I could visit in a short trip. But the combination of Artadia artists and CORE artists, most of whom are recent MFA graduates, meant that I was able to visit with artists at various points in their careers and with very different approaches to their practices. Visiting artists in their studios is a great honor, and the opportunity to see how artists remain committed to making work—amidst other daily responsibilities and sometimes despite very real challenges—is always inspiring and illuminating.

My first visit was with Jamal Cyrus, whose work I have known for several years, since seeing it in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and in subsequent exhibitions. Having just returned from Miami where he had a successful solo presentation in the Positions section of the fair with Kerry Inman Gallery, and for which he was shortlisted for the BMW Art Journey award, we talked about the work on view there. A centerpiece of the presentation was a sculptural installation featuring an imaginary record label he calls “Pride Records,” inspired by his interest in the history of black music and its connections to civil rights struggles. Also included in the booth—with a couple of new works from the series underway in the studio as well—were collages integrating images and text from his archive of Jet Magazine. Densely layered and visually energetic, these modest works perfectly encapsulate Jamal’s ability to call attention to how material culture is saturated with specific histories and how information gets obscured and interpreted in myriad of ways over time, a web of material to be untangled.

I then met with Katrina Moorhead at Inman Gallery to see her work in the group show I Won’t Let You Say Goodbye This Time. I was familiar with Katrina’s work from many years ago, and believe I may have even met her once before in Houston. I liked her work very much when I first saw it and felt she was someone to watch, but it had been several years since I’d seen it, so it was great to reconnect and see the latest pieces. Taking up abstract subjects that are almost unwieldy in their scope (how knowledge is obtained, for example), through her precise choice of materials or images, she distills her ideas into gorgeously elegant and conceptually rich objects. There is a meticulousness to her work that reveals an astute understanding of her subject, yet a refreshing openness that leaves much room for interpretation, as well as the simple pleasures of observing a well-made object.

I also visited with Augusto Di Stefano and got to see his labor-intensive drawings and paintings, many of simple architectural forms that in their austerity suggest nearly surreal spaces full of intrigue. That evening I gave a lecture on the work of Jimmie Durham—whose retrospective I organized for the Hammer was currently on view in New York at the Whitney Museum—to a group at the MFAH, and was happy to see a few familiar faces in the crowd, including a grad school friend, Xandra Eden, the director of DiverseWorks, who I was able to spend some time with over the weekend and hear more about her prorgram. This was followed by a lovely dinner at the home of Kerry Inman where I got to meet a number of other artists, writers, and curators in the community, including two of the critics-in-residence at the CORE program, Kate Green (whom I’d met briefly previously, as fellow Bard alumni) and Laura Wellen. This was a real pleasure, as I greatly admire both of their work. I got to spend more time with Laura the following day, as she graciously took me around town to see some museum and gallery exhibitions.

Over the next two days, I did several more studio visits with Artadia alumni. I was charmed by Rachel Hecker’s shrewdly funny work. Francesca Fuchs and I talked about the power of objects, the entwining and life and work, and the imperative to slow down and observe in a chaotic world. Jeff Shore shared with me the installation he made with Jon Fisher in the enormous silo spaces of Site Gallery. Having seen their work years before in New York, I was reminded of their ability to use technology in ways that are alluring and surprisingly approachable. I was impressed with the sheer pleasure and levity of David Aylsworth’s engrossing paintings, and enjoyed talking to him about the color pink. And lastly, I really appreciated speaking with Katy Heinlein about her sculptures: the interplay of soft and hard forms, the emotional resonances of color, and the ongoing investigations into gravity, tension, and balance in her seductively absorbing works. No trip to Houston would be complete without visiting the city’s incredible museums, and although I didn’t have time to see everything I wanted to, I was able to see the stellar exhibition of Mona Hatoum’s work at the Menil and to visit the Christopher Knowles survey and project by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz at the CAM with my dear colleague Dean Daderko. It was a wonderful visit overall, and I remain impressed with Houston as one of the most vibrant cities for art in the country where artists are able to find support, community, and space to make their work.

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Anne Ellegood is Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum. She was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC from 2005-2009. Previously, she was the New York-based Curator for Peter Norton’s collection, and from 1998-2003, she was the Associate Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Since joining the Hammer in May 2009, Ellegood has organized solo projects with Claude Collins-Stracensky, Rob Fischer, Keren Cytter, Friedrich Kunath, Diana-Al Hadid, Eric Baudelaire, and Tom Marioni.Ellegood has contributed to a number of publications including Artforum, Mousse, and Tate, Etc. Recent writings include the introduction for Phaidon’s Vitamin 3D, a survey of contemporary sculpture; an interview with Haim Steinbach for MATRIX/Berkeley: A Changing Exhibition of Contemporary Art; a catalogue essay for Iván Navarro for the Chilean Pavilion for the 2009 Venice Biennale; a catalogue essay on the work of Sara VanDerBeek for the Tang Museum at Skidmore; a catalogue essay on Bjorn Dahlem for his Quadriennale show in Düsseldorf; and a catalogue essay on Kerry Tribe for her show at the Arnolfini.

Art & Dialogue: Houston Summary by Catherine Morris

12/8/16

This report is intended to offer a brief summary of impressions and thoughts from my visit to Houston as a Visiting Curator as part of the Artadia Art & Dialogue program, October 5 – 7, 2016.

My itinerary included eight studios visits, a public evening talk on my practice at the Museum of Fine Arts, a dinner reception and collection visit hosted by Artadia Trustee Marc Melcher, and some independent time to visit the Menil Collection. The trip was an extraordinary opportunity to spend a significant amount of time with a wide variety of artists living and working in Houston. I am grateful for this chance to build on my knowledge of Houston and its art communities. On previous trips I largely spent my time visiting the city’s vibrant and vital museums. Talking to artists and spending time in their studios offered me unique access to learning about specific personal experiences working in the city as well as significant insight into the larger arts community, which seems to be flourishing in Houston.

The following summary is organized following the chronology of my visit. Within these notes I reflect on some of the topics suggested as subject to address within the guidelines provided by Artadia, including common or particularly interesting techniques employed by the artists I visited, observations on themes seen in the studios, stand out projects, the relationship of projects to the city of Houston, significant locations or cultural happenings that seem noteworthy. My closing observations reflect my thoughts on possible dialogues or links with other cities or other ideas generated by my visit.

After checking in at my hotel late in the afternoon on Wednesday, October 6, I started my itinerary with an evening visit to Zach Moser’s home/studio. This was a standout visit as Moser’s work takes the city of Houston – particularly examples of its histories of labor and local economies – as a starting point. The work is challenging and timely, speaking directly about the city of Houston and Moser’s engagement with it. Our conversation set up several talking points I continued to pursue in the following days. In what is effectively a post-studio practice, Moser described the fascinating and distinctive ways he aligns and presents his interests in the history and current state of a highly specialized local labor economy (shrimping), making art out of participating in, presenting, and documenting the lived experience of a group of unique and interlocked small business owners. For Moser, the city of Houston offers artists an urban working context that is relatively unencumbered by significant historical markers and as such opens up in exceptional ways for artists interested in having their work function in multiple contexts, particularly as locally based practices which can be discussed in global and international terms.

Thursday morning I met new Core Fellow, Shana Hoehn, who acted as my guide for the rest of my trip. Shana offered an perceptive introduction to the Core Program, sharing insight into the services and opportunities it offers. As a young artist who has worked for several years in the art world, Hoehn understood the unique situation she was newly engaged in, giving me an overview of the program and a tour of the Core building on San Jacinto Street, where I had my first studios that day.

Jill Conrad, an artist who has lived and worked in Houston as a teacher and practitioner for a significant period of time, was very interested in the opportunity to present her work to a curator from outside the scene with which she is so closely aligned. As an artist who is able to maintain an active studio practice and national exhibition history while also teaching, Conrad exemplified the benefits of working and living in a city like Houston. Her work reflected a long term commitment and close reading of several formal interests, particularly new ways of utilizing and engaging photography as a sculptural medium.

Working in a small studio in the Core building, Jamal Cyrus is producing work that feels very exciting and current. His engagement with multiple histories of African American experience in Texas and the south were effectively tied to the formal means he used to produce his work – integrating an interest in quilting techniques and the history of modern painterly abstraction, for instance. This was a stand out visit for me as I felt I had been introduced to an artist whose work I now intend to follow into the future.

I was grateful my visit afforded me the chance to get to the Menil to see the Smithers Collection installation curated by colleague and friend Michelle White. One of my curatorial interests is exploring new ways to engage with the obsolete art historical category of outsider art, so I was pleased to have the chance to talk to Michelle about her project, simultaneously gaining insight into a local collection being donated to an important Houston institution.

Visiting Delilah Montoya at her home studio, learning about her career and seeing several bodies of work was a worthwhile experience. Curatorial and educational teams at the Brooklyn Museum have had recent discussions about the politics of acquiring works from the historical genre known as Casata Paintings, so it was a useful and fascinating coincidence to discuss this type of work and see its inspiration in Montoya’s recent practice and within her personal history.

The opportunity to give a talk at the Museum of Fine Arts on my own work was truly rewarding. The audience seemed responsive and engaged, offering interesting follow up questions and comments. Seeing friends from the local community was a great bonus. The reception and dinner which followed at the home of Marc Melcher was generous and welcoming. It is always a pleasure and adds a very personal note to be able to see the homes of local collectors and to meet community members in a causal social environment.

Friday began with a visit to Soody Sharifi, and it was a pleasure to discuss her experience as an artist of the Iranian diaspora living and working and Houston for a significant amount of time. Seeing the formal and thematic interests of her life experience as an Iranian American launched an interesting conversation. It was also instructive to see the studio building Sharifi worked in at 1824 Spring Street, which seemed like another positive opportunity for artists within the local community.

Visiting the studio of Trenton Doyle Hancock added significantly to my thinking on several of the themes begun in my earlier conversations with artists in Houston. Hancock’s deep investment in the local community, his interest in outsider, or as he prefers to call it – visionary – art, and his engagement with the social and political experience of African American communities were some of the subjects we touched upon, and which I very much enjoyed discussing. Visiting an established artist with a complex studio practice that fully reflects a multifaceted career of interwoven interests and pursuits was very rewarding.

My next visit was to Nestor Topchy, another artist with a highly unique practice deeply rooted in his long engagement in local arts communities in Houston. Encompassing ambitious and idiosyncratic intellectual investments with architecture, environmental consciousness, social practice, collective experimentation, portraiture and Pysanky, a Ukranian egg painting tradition, visiting Topchy’s compound was a dynamic and at times heading-spinning experience.

My final visit was to the studio of Rachel Hecker, an artist whose studio practice was in many ways the most traditional, and whose thematic interests and formal skills reflect a thoughtful and humorous engagement with human foibles and lived experience. With a discussing ranging from feminism, to the impact of a commitment to pedagogy on an artist’s career, to aging parents, to the gallery system, and, finally, to Houston humidity, our meeting was informative, inspiring and comfortable.

Some general observations on issues and themes artists seem interested in:

– The heat and humidity and Houstonians’ apparently universal commitment to air conditioning as an extreme sport was a recurring conversation throughout my trip, even though I was there after the close of the summer season. In addition to the artists, Uber drivers were very game to participate in this conversation.

– Houston, as southern city that somehow avoids a lot of the deep historical baggage of the south, was a theme that came up several times and was interesting in relationship to the different communities the artists I visited represented – from African American, to Latina, to Iranian.

– Further to that, the majority of the artists I visited were not born or raised in the city – though many of them have lived there for decades – and that was an interesting point of comparative discussion as well.

– The resources of the city were very important to the artists – the museums of course, but also Artadia and the Core programs in particular. The commitment of both of these organizations to contemporary artists in the city was a very significant thing for all of them.

– Artists seemed very intent on focusing on how to align notions of local and global within their practices and they felt that Houston was a good city in which to do this. As this is a theme I see artists all over the world increasingly invested in, it would suggest to me that Houston’s artists very much see themselves functioning within the international art world.

– The interest in and support for an outside curator visiting studios without an agenda beyond simply meeting the artists and seeing their work was palpable. It was also a welcome relief for me as visiting for the sake of visiting felt like a rare gift.

Thank you for this opportunity to get to know a new city in a unique and rewarding way.

Image: Trenton Doyle Hancock, I Want to Be at the Meeting After the Separation, 2014, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 90 x 108 x 3 1/4 inches

Art & Dialogue: Houston Public Program with Catherine Morris

10/11/16

Catherine Morris is the Sackler Family Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum where, since 2009, she has curated numerous exhibitions including Agitprop! (co-curated with Saisha Grayson, Stephanie Weissberg, and Jess Wilcox) Judith Scott-Bound and Unbound (co-curated with Matthew Higgs, and currently on view at the Aspen Art Museum) Chicago in L.A: Judy Chicago’s Early Work, 1963-1974 (with Saisha Grayson) and Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art (with Vincent Bonin). She has worked on exhibitions and curatorial projects with Marilyn Minter, Zanele Muholi, Suzanne Lacy, Matthew Buckingham, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith and Rachel Kneebone and produced historical exhibitions such as Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letter to The Ladder, Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913-1919, and Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864. Previously an independent curator, Morris organized, among other projects, Decoys, Complexes and Triggers: Women and Land Art in the 1970s at SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York; 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre and Engineering, 1966 for the List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and two exhibitions, Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art of the 1970s and Food at White Columns, New York.

She recently co-curated the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985, with Rujeko Hockley, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum in March 2017 and recently travelled to the California African American Museum.

The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston awards residencies to exceptional, highly motivated visual artists and critical writers who have completed their undergraduate or graduate training and are working to develop a sustainable practice. Established in 1982, the Core artist residencies encourage intensive and innovative studio practice. The Core critical studies residencies, added in 1998, broaden the scope of the critical dialogue that is central to the practices of all Core residents and provide an opportunity for writers to pursue independent curatorial and writing projects. Residents participate in a yearlong seminar and engage with a wide range of leading artists, critics, curators, and art historians who are invited to meet individually with the residents, lead group seminars, and deliver public lectures. The residency term lasts nine months, from September to May; residents receive a stipend and studio or office space. Each spring the program mounts an exhibition of work produced during the current residency term, which is accompanied by a publication whose purpose is to document the work of all the residents.

Art & Dialogue and Artadia’s programs in Houston are made possible thanks to the generosity of The Brown Foundation, Houston Arts Alliance, The Houston Endowment, Artadia’s Board of Directors and Council members, and many individuals throughout the country.