ArtCrawl Notables 2013

Houston’s ArtCrawl Notables

Saturday November 23, 2013

ArtCrawl in Houston was very cold, but well attended. I had a lot of fun making the ArtCrawl walk this year; for the previous three years I have been exhibiting in ArtCrawl from my old studio on Commerce Street.

My main criticism of the artists exhibiting this year was that most of the art studios were too clean. ArtCrawl is about getting to see the artist in their own habitat; it’s about seeing the artist’s work space along with the new works. I also want to see lots of artwork. I don’t want to see five pieces evenly spaced on the wall, I want to see the wall packed floor to ceiling. 

 

I’ve cherry picked a few ArtCrawl notables to focus on this year.  I saw works by hundreds of hard working artists, but I’m only mentioning a few that stood out. This year Mother Dog Studios has a snake theme.  Besides works about snakes, there was also a display of live snakes.

 



John C. Runnels (Mother Dog Studios)

 

John C. Runnels (Mother Dog Studios)

John Runnel's work this year captured my attention with a series of nude women in rows. Most were conventionally framed, but several were framed behind glass oven doors. Each piece felt very unique even though they all shared similar subjects and composition.

 Runnels space was wonderfully messy and full of new work and works in progress.

 

 



Lori Fish (Mother Dog Studios)

 

Lori Fish (Mother Dog Studios)
My favorite studio space belonged to Lori Fish. This is exactly what I'm looking for when I attend ArtCrawl. The real fun of ArtCrawl is getting to peak behind the current and see how artist actually make the peices. To the right you can see the results of Fish's efforts. I like these pieces because they suggest that the painter is after some ineffable mystery. This series is loose and full of experimentation and exploration.

Zanzibar AKA Rudy (Mother Dog Studios)

Airbrush artist, Zanzibar was on site airbrushing a mostly nude woman.  He airbrushed a snake on the body of a young woman.  I know Zanzibar from his fine airbrush work in the photography of Rabid Girlscout. Zanzibar's airbrush painting is very detailed and full of depth.

 






 

Louise Schlachter (Mother Dog Studios)

Louise Schlachter (Mother Dog Studios)

Louise Schlachter was showing a number of beautiful prints on metal or Moths, “Petit Mort Moths.”  The works begin with Schlachter layering iridescent inks on smooth clay boards.  She then Scratch & Dents at the surface with an XACTO knife, pens and pencils to reveal the months enigmatic markings. 


The clay tablets were then photographed and “printed” at greater magnification onto large metal sheets.  Schlachter says she’s exploring the shadow of death and reincarnations; the result are crisp and luminescent. Normally printing an image yeilds a simple copy; however, here Schlachter's printing process enriches image bringing out the luninecence of the moths. While I thought the orignalls were beatuifully etched, the enlarged "copies" yeilded pieces that are simply arresting.

 


Greg Sheperd (Mother Dog Studios)

This large portrait by Greg Shepherd caught my eye while wandering about Mother Dog Studios.In contrast to some of Shepherd’s other paintings, this one seemed especially bright and airy. The painting looked good close up, and the image seemed to tighten and sharpen when viewed from a distance. I especially enjoyed the pointillism technique employed in the piece.

Greg Sheperd (Mother Dog Studios)

 

Brent Hooper (Sterrett Street Studios)

Brent Hooper (Sterrett Street Studios)

Brent Hooper (Sterrett Street Studios)
Brent Hooper works on large canvas with a nice loose style of painting.  Hooper says he's looking to work on bigger paintings.  I liked Hooper's loose style of painting.  His pieces really challenge the veiwer, begging to be decyphered.

To right we have one of Hooper's paintings depicting a stained glass window.

Brent Hooper (Sterrett Street Studios)



Brent Hooper (Sterrett Street Studios)



(Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

(Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

A little off the beaten path you can find Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet which had many artists showing work from floor to ceiling. The proprieter is Franics Henri Jacquinet, also an artist, he's been focusing more on promoting other artists. Jacquinet is a Frenchman with a love for painting. I liked his packed busy gallery spaces showing dozens of artists. My two favorites out of this gallery were Moe Profane and Lululin Art (a two girl painting duo).

 



Moe Profane(Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)



Moe Profane (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

Moe Profane (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

Moe Prfane has got to be my favorite painter for all of ArtCrawl 2013. He describes himself as creating relativist pop art. His paintings are colorful and lively. He is irreverent and clever about his subject matter. I actually found myself laugh at some of his painting, very funny stuff. I especially enjoyed the painting to the left, “Apology Accepted”. The painting shows the bones of a dinosaur. This painting addresses those Creationists who laughably argue that god buried dinosaur bones to test our faith, or whatever crazy rationalizations they come up with.

 



Moe Profane (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)



 

Lululin Art (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

Lululin Art (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

Lululin Art is a painting team made up of two young women.  Their latest works are more sensual and suggestive; however, these two older paintings grabbed my attention. The images harken back to a time long ago.  A Chinese friend told me that the red scarf and hat are reminiscent of olden times; he also noted that some young Chinese today wear some of these retro outfits as a matter of fashion.  Both of these images by one of the Lululin team are charged with meaning and significance.  These portraits suggest a story of some complexity. The also remind me of the paintings of Edward Hopper.

 


Lululin Art (Atelier & Gallery Jacquinet)

 

Meteor Craters of West Texas

Railyard Studio, Houston Texas

Houston, Texas, May  2011:   I decided to stop painting meteors and go out looking for the scars they've left on the earth.  I took some time off around Memorial Day weekend to traverse the great state of Texas with my father. We'd been planning and talking about exploring the meteor craters in West Texas. We were hoping to find meteorites in the dry deserts of the southwest.

I drove across Texas on Interstate-10 to visit the two meteor impact craters near Odessa and Fort Stockton. On the way from Houston to El Paso to pick up my father, I stopped in Fort Stockton to head 15 miles south of I-10 to the very large meteor crater known as Sierra Madera.  The highway goes right through the crater a few miles west of the center, which is marked by uplifted peaks 242 meters above the surrounding basin.

U.S. Route 385, 17-miles south of Fort Stockton, Texas: The Sierra Madera Crater Basin with uplift peaks in the distance.

The crater is so large that it is not immediately apparent.  I studied satellite photos of the crater and measured distances between Fort Stockton and the outer edge of a crater roughly 13 km in diameter. Driving along the highway, I stopped just over the rim of the crater, with the basin gently sloping down toward the peaks in the center.

Uplifted central peaks of Meteor Crater Sierra Madera.

The uplifted peak and rim of the crater are said to have been much higher shortly after the impact, which eventually slid down filling much of the basin. Some geologist have suggested the crater is approximately 100 million years old, putting it in the Cretaceous or older.

Cretaceous geography of North America, image from US Geological Society, pubic domain.

This part of West Texas was a shallow Cretaceous sea at the time a 1.3-kilometer wide meteor struck the Earth from the the east  at an angle of  70 degree. Cretaceous mollusk fossils (simple shells) can be found a couple miles outside the crater. This impact happened roughly 45 million years into the age of dinosaurs. Another 35 million years after the Sierra Madera impact, the 10-km wide Chicxulub Meteor struck the Yucatan ending the age of the dinosaurs and ushering in the age of mammals. These last few years I've been working on a time line of the history of Earth, stretching back four and a half billion years.

Dust Storm over White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

Dry deserts are good places to look for meteorites.

 Houston ArtCrawl 2011 is coming in November and my studio will be open to visitors.