March puts a spring in our step as we head out for several art walks both inside and outdoors. We’ve got lots of art festivals, spring shows, and here-and-gone special art events on our must-see list. From new outdoor sculptures in the Heights to a new art pop-up installation series at City Place to FotoFest at Sawyer Yards to one of Houston’s favorite art parties downtown, art is blossoming everywhere this month.
“Anthony Almendárez: Hello, My Name Is ____” from DiverseWorks (now through March 16)
Taking over the exhibition space at MATCH, this multi-channel video and sound installation draws upon survey questions related to employment and labor policies in the United States. As an artist and composer working with sound, video, photo and live performances, Almendárez’s work explores different modes of storytelling. Like much of his work, “Hello” confronts audiences with the nature of identity and how we construct it. This piece also explores the parallels and contradictions between predominantly accepted notions of work vs. artistic labor.
“hallowed be thy name” at Art League Houston (now through April 20)
This new exhibition of textiles, sculpture, and mixed media installation by Chicago-based artist Krista Chalkle takes the images and motifs from Gothic cathedrals and reimagines them as exaltations of queerness. The exhibition features work that emulates stained glass windows and church ritual fabric pieces using them the forms to recount stories of queer agency and liberation. As a whole, the show works to deconstruct the traditional hierarchical structure of the Church in order to emphasize principle tenets of community and fellowship.
“Visions via Riding High” at Art League Houston (now through April 20)
Creating paintings that deal with the relationship between cars and memory, the Detroit-born, Houston-based artist Alexis Pye’s work certainly resonate with both cities. Many of the works in the exhibition depict a real neighborhood in the east side of Detroit, but with painterly embellishment that take the images into the fantastic. ALH notes that in Pye’s art, the car becomes a moving exploration of Black culture within and outside of its marginalized constructs. The images challenge perceived ideas of Blackness that are constantly moving forward and becoming looser and abstract.
“FotoFest Biennial 2024: Critical Geography” at Silver Street Studios (now through April 21)
We always embark upon a journey when wandering through a new FotoFest exhibition, but this year theme’s takes that figurative idea and makes it literal and logistical as the Fest’s artists take a critical eye to geography in its myriad of forms, with a special focus on environmental issues. The exhibition highlights a range of unorthodox strategies these photographers use to construct new narratives around place and community while imagining alternative organizations of social space.
Photo courtesy of The Color Condition
“Our intent is that the 2024 Biennial, featuring both existing and newly commissioned works from local and international artists, will allow viewers to engage in important dialogues around the social dimensions of space and our shared planet,” says Steven Evans, Executive Director of FotoFest. “We look forward to once again celebrating Houston’s vibrant art and photo community while embracing these new perspectives around place-making, the image, and geography.”
The Art Car Museum (closing April 28)
As CultureMapreported the only-in-Houston, iconic museum dedicated to the art car is set to close next month. Don't miss a chance to take one last spin around the museum. The latest, and now likely last, of the special exhibitions the museum presented over the years is “Creative Era of Ann Harithas,” a showcase of the work of the museum’s co-founder. The exhibition stands as both a retrospective of Harithas's body of work as an artist and a tribute to the era of creativity ignited by Harithas. Featuring pieces from her extensive body of collage works from the 1980s to the 2010s, the exhibition also showcases her own art car creations and those she commissioned and collected.
“Periwinkle” by The Color Condition at City Place (now through June)
This month the north Houston mixed-use development City Place will unveil the first of a new series of Instaworthy pop-up art installations, “Periwinkle” by Dallas based installation creators, the Color Condition, a.k.a Sunny Sliger and Marianne Newsom. The creative collaborators use long streamers to reshape and add color to outdoor landscapes and interior spaces. The immersive and expansive installation blends vibrant colors, patterns, and movement to create fantastical realms reminiscent of Candyland, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
"True North 2024" along Height Blvd. (now through December)
For the last decade, spring has given Houston art lovers the perfect reason to take a walk along the boulevard — Heights Blvd that is — for a look at what new contemporary sculptures have grown amid the tree-lined esplanade. From whimsical to topical, the works always stop traffic and give us reason to get out and take a slow stroll through the artwork. As always, this artful treat is thanks to an all-volunteer team, along with the Houston Heights Association in cooperation with the City of Houston Parks and Recreation and Public Works Departments and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
This year’s eight chosen Texas artists are Nela Garzón, Dion Laurent, Wyatt Little, Suzette Mouchaty and Patrick Renner, of Houston, and Clayton Hurt, Ricardo Paniagua and Art Shirer, of Dallas, with the installations going up throughout the month. Houston artist and biology professor (UH-Downtown) Mouchaty, who is also a UH-Downtown biology professor, has already erected "Monument to Sea Slugs,” inspired by marine nudibranchs, and Nela Garzón’s "Pre-Columbian Unlooted Bat or Vampire for the New World" has also been seen hanging in the 800 block area.
Samora Pinderhughes: "The Healing Project” at Eldorado Ballroom (March 21)
While we might only have one night to catch this performance artwork, several leading Houston art organization partnered to bring Pinderhughes’s work to Houston, including Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Project Row Houses, and Hobby Center for Public Affairs at the University of Houston. As a vocalist, pianist, artist, and filmmaker Pinderhughes creates large, multi-disciplinary projects, which invite audiences to examine what is visible and what is hidden in our daily lives, and how to make social change. “The Healing Project” is an examination of the prison industrial complex in the United States, amplifying the testimonials of those affected by incarceration, policing, violence, and detention through original music and film.
Yet, Pinderhughes also calls the work an empathetic experience for both artist, subjects and audiences, uniting those who have been silenced with storytellers to create deeply affecting art rooted in connectivity and compassion.
"Ruth Asawa Through Line" at Menil Drawing Institute (March 22-July 1)
Though perhaps more widely known for her sculpture artwork, the pioneering artist made drawing a lifetime practice that was the foundation of her creations. This retrospective of her works on paper features drawings, collages, watercolors, and sketchbooks alongside stamped prints, paperfolds, and copper-foil works, showing the breadth of Asawa’s innovative practice.
Organized thematically around Asawa’s creative period, influences, and medium, the exhibition touches on the complexity of Asawa’s work from the inspiration of origami, to her love of patterns and how her sculptures became an extension of her drawings.
“Ruth Asawa’s drawings are complex and rich, owing much to her striking creativity, her curiosity about the world around her, her cultural background as an American artist of Japanese descent, and her European-based artistic training in the Bauhaus tradition,” states Menil director, Rebecca Rabinow. “The Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art are honored to present this first retrospective survey of her drawings.”
Bayou City Art Festival Spring Downtown Art Festival at Sam Houston Park (March 23-24)
If it’s March, it’s time to head downtown for one of our favorite outdoor art seeing and buying events. This year the Festival has gathered more than 250 artists from around the country, representing 19 different disciplines, to showcase their art. The featured artist for the Spring Festival is Karina Llergo, a mixed media artist from Chicago who strives to capture the dynamic energy of the human body and its soulful essence transforming figures into fluid entities, incorporating dance, air, and water to create an otherworldly likeness. Don’t miss an exhibition of student artwork composed of the top 30 finalists from the Middle School Art Competition.
Come for the art but stay for the food and entertainment, as the fest also features two entertainment stages, a food truck park, a craft beer and wine garden, additional live entertainment and beverage stations throughout the festival, an Active Imagination Zone, a VIP Hospitality Lounge, and more.
“Night Light” along the Buffalo Bayou East trails (April 6)
Yes, we’re putting this media art event on our calendar a little early, but we don’t want to miss this night of art light, as it only comes around once a year. Presented by Buffalo Bayou Partnership and the Aurora Picture Show, the evening will showcase four new, site-specific art installations located throughout Tony Marron Park with video works projected on surfaces along a half-mile stretch of waterfront trails. Look for abstract and experimental video and light artworks from celebrated Houston artists Ronald Llewellyn Jones, Violette Bule, and the duo of Nick Vaughan & Jake Margolin. These distinct pieces will engage with and animate infrastructure and site features, including the water itself. The evening will also feature the premiere of “HomeBayou,” a stop-motion short film about the Buffalo Bayou East area created by artist Ezra Wube in collaboration with East End and Fifth Ward residents.
