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    Collaborations and Innovation

    Houston gets a new edgy arts festival based on a trendy Austin staple: Ready for CounterCurrent?

    Joel Luks
    Mar 6, 2014 | 6:30 pm

    If you've ever pondered what exactly the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston — not to be confused with the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands — is all about, a newly launched festival promises to decode the mysteries of an organization that lauds the importance of multidisciplinary collaborations.

    The Mitchell Center's inaugural CounterCurrent Festival is set to run from April 9 through 13 at diverse venues around the city. The festival, produced to be the cousin of Austin's Fusebox Festival (April 16-27), convenes the bulk of the Mitchell Center's programs into one, five-day artsy binge, an approach that simplifies how the center goes about its quest.

    The name was derived from a desire to convey the electric energy generated when ideas that collide are presented in a non-mainstream environment. Although CounterCurrent nods to the kind of renegade, forward-thinking personalities that often delve into multidisciplinary genres, festival producer and Mitchell Center executive director Karen Farber is aware that experimental art can be met with reservations from more traditional art consumers — not everyone is a risk taker.

    "Multidisciplinary art is a reflection of what our world is today, a hybrid of technologies, cultures and experiences that are constantly evolving."

    "In Houston, it seems that art is either very polished or very grass roots," Farber explains. "The CounterCurrent Festival acts as a bridge between those two polar opposite approaches to presenting art."

    In partnership with other avant garde presenters such as DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show and Project Row Houses, among others, Farber's intention is to inspire a spirit of adventure in audiences seeking to experience something that's an accurate representation of 21st century living.

    "Multidisciplinary art is a reflection of what our world is today, a hybrid of technologies, cultures and experiences that are constantly evolving," Farber says. "The dialogue that takes place when working across art genres is where innovation happens. The end result is typically something fresh, exciting and exalting."

    Adventurous Art Highlights

    Two installations are slated for the festival headquarters, located in the historic Bermac Arts Building in Midtown. Contrasting natural and unnatural elements, Chicago-based Steve Rowell's Uncanny Sensing (Texas Prototype) follows a series of regional investigations that gathers data from sensors and remote technology. The information is then is reinterpreted visually via time lapse. Composer Byron Au Yong and videographer Susie J. Lee collaborate in Piano Concerto - Houston, a multimedia work that layers sounds and footage of 11 local pianists.

    Choreographer Jonah Bokaer and visual artist Anthony McCall join forces for Eclipse (April 10-11, Quintero Theatre), a piece that incorporates movement, light, visual design and an audiovisual time score to render a play space that includes the audience. Eclipse, as the name fittingly implies, weaves light and movement.

    Think of Lacy Johnson and Josh Okun's [the invisible city] as one of those choose-your-own-adventure books. Using a smartphone or GPS-enabled device, participants will turn into fictional characters via an app that delivers clue after clue in a scavenger game. Players may be asked to run through tunnels, hop aboard buses and kayak down the bayou as they encounter fun trials and challenges, each designed to illustrate the role of community.

    Performance collective Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol's El Rumor del Incendio (April 12, MECA) confronts the rise of armed violence in Mexico during the second half of the 20th century. The company asks: "What motivates these men and women to take arms, abandoning comfort and the everyday inertia in pursuit of a transformation?"

    To the musically refined ear, Suzanne Bocanegra's Rerememberer (April 11, Eldorado Ballroom) sounds like a nightmare. Imagine an orchestra of 50 violinists who've been playing the fiddle for little more than one hour coming together in a performance? This sound experiment, helmed by violinist/conductor Todd Reynolds, was created from textiles. Rerememberer transcribes the process of weaving into musical notation.

    Wu Tsang's Moved by the Motion featuring boychild (April 12, DiverseWorks) is the performance art piece that's part of the artist's exhibition at DiverseWorks. Set in a futuristic backdrop in which digital avatars and online profiles come alive to control an intricate surveillance network, Tsang's performance follows an emerging celebrity performer as the headliner deals with an alternate reality.

    Somewhere in between pseudo scientific ideas and poetic surrealism is Miwa Matreyek'sThis World Made Itself and Myth and Infrastructure (April 9, Aurora Picture Show), a fusion of projected animation and theatrical shadow silhouettes that tells the history of the earth. Organizers describe Matreyek's style as if one were "flipping through a children's encyclopedia."
    ___

    Admission to CounterCurrent Festival events is free with a season's pass. Online reservations are encouraged as many of the performance spaces have limited seating capacity.

    Jonah Bokaer and visual artist Anthony McCall join forces for Eclipse.

    Jonah Bokaer - ECLIPSE
      
    Photo by Benjamin Nicholas
    Jonah Bokaer and visual artist Anthony McCall join forces for Eclipse.
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    news/arts

    a very fine house

    Pioneering Houston Latino folkart gallery will close next year

    Tarra Gaines
    Jun 5, 2025 | 9:30 am
    ​Macario and Chrissie Ramirez.
    Photo by Agapito Sanchez
    Macario and Chrissie Ramirez.

    It’s the end of a cultural era as Chrissie Ramirez, owner of the Heights gallery and cultural space Casa Ramirez Folkart Gallery, announced that after 40 years she will close the 3,000-plus-square-foot space on W. 19th St. at the end of the current lease period in March 2026.

    \u200bMacario and Chrissie Ramirez.
      

    Photo by Agapito Sanchez

    Macario and Chrissie Ramirez.

    Filled with traditional art, especially paintings and sculptures, the space also showcased textiles, home accessories, religious objects, clothing, literature, and antiques. But it was the husband-and-wife owners, Macario and Chrissie Ramirez, who turned this Casa into a real home for the local Latino community, as well as a cultural landmark in Houston’s art landscape. Macario Ramirez founded Casa Ramirez in 1985 to honor his father, a folk artist and part-time jeweler who had his own business in San Antonio selling Mexican crafts. Over 40 years, Macario and Chrissie's longtime support for Latino artists along with the gallery's culturally rich programming and educational outreach helped to popularize Mexican and Latin American folk art and traditions.

    Chrissie Ramirez continued her husband’s mission after his death in 2020, keeping the gallery and his life’s work going. After five years running the business, she wants to travel and lead a less scheduled live. Houstonians won’t have to say goodbye just yet, as Ramirez says they will stay stay open and continue their annual holiday celebrations and programming.

    “Casa Ramirez will continue to operate as a retail establishment and offer the colorful mix of folk art, crafts, work by local artists and focus on the vibrant culture and traditions of Mexico, Latin American and the Southwest that we are so well known for and held in our hearts for so long,” Ramirez said in a statement.

    Throughout her remarks, Ramirez recalled her husband’s pioneering cultural and civil rights work in the community and his continuing legacy in Houston.

    Prominent Texas author, analyst, radio host, and Nuestra Palabra founder Tony Diaz spoke about the cultural reach Case Ramirez had over the years. Diaz especially credits Macario Ramirez and the gallery for helping to make Dia de los Muertos such an important Texas holiday and for helping to spread understanding of its celebrations in the U.S.

    “Today Day of the Dead is socially acceptable —it’s a movie by Disney. That was not always the case,” Diaz said. “There was a moment in our history when people would see the sugar skulls that are now beloved and they would think that it had something to do with ‘other things.’ You could come to Casa Ramirez, and the street would be full with our gente who knew that it was something beautiful to preserve. And before the rest of the nation caught on, Casa Ramirez was the home for that dear celebration of ours. ”

    Though she might be retiring, Ramirez says she will keep the name Casa Ramirez for future projects and activities in other locations. She also plans to continue her cultural work, with a focus on organizing “the collection of writings, documents, and artifacts” that are part of the Casa Ramirez and her family’s history with a goal to “archive them for their educational and historical value.”

    Ramirez emphasized that Casa Ramirez will remain open until March. She will spend this time “clearing, closing, and cleaning out” the gallery, but has plans for holiday and closeout sales before shuttering the space for good. It will still host traditional annual gatherings and programs for the rest of the year, including Hispanic Heritage Month in September, the Day of the Death holiday celebrations in October/November, and Christmas and New Years programming with special guests and music events in the works. Thankfully, that means Houstonians still have plenty of time to visit and share their own memories of this extraordinary Casa.

    casa ramirez folkart galleryclosingsthe-heightsvisual-art
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