In the CultureMap Tent
And the winners are . . . See which local artists you voted into Bayou City ArtFest with graffiti power
Daniel Anguilu, Famous Monsters
Patrick Turk, Kaleidoscoptical Super Jesus Revolution
For CultureMap's Community Artist Award, the Lawndale Art Center culled some of the best emerging Houston artists and you decided which of them would show at this weekend's Bayou City Art Festival by voting on CultureMap.
Now, meet the winners: Local artists Daniel Anguilu and Patrick Turk. Anguilu received 38 percent of the vote for his Famous Monsters piece and Turk garnered 24 percent for his Kaliedoscoptical Super Yoga Boys Revolution to make the top two cut in the spirited voting.
Once you have seen Anguilu's unmistakable style, you're sure to recognize his hand on murals spread across the walls of buildings throughout the city — from a recent commission at Lawndale, to small murals on the sides of abandoned businesses, to his current project at the Baha'i Center on Fannin Street.
Both artists will show their work in the CultureMap tent throughout the Bayou City Art Festival at Memorial Park this weekend.
Anguilu's artistic start was in freight train graffiti. On travels throughout Mexico and Central America, Anguilu began to be influenced by the folk art, and started working with images rather than text, transforming the folk art with a style all his own.
Not long after Anguilu's permanent move to Houston, just over three years ago, New Living co-founder Adam Brackman connected with the artist, offering to donate paint and supplies and blank walls to apply that paint to.
"I just want to paint," says Anguilu, who takes on split shifts at his day job so that he can paint en plein air on his break between. He doesn't sign his work, much less contact galleries to show it for him.
Although primarily a large-scale muralist, Anguilu doesn't limit himself to that art form: At the BCAF, he'll be showing prints and small paintings.
A Galveston native, Turk has lived and worked in Houston for six years — at Sarah Balinskas Fine Framing by day, and on his own art on the side.
His past shows include solo and group exhibitions at Lawndale, Art League Houston, the now-defunct ArtStorm, the Texas Contemporary Art Fair and Williams Tower. These venues invariably attract a different crowd than the Bayou City Art Festival, but this doesn't worry Turk.
"I try to make my work appeal to a wide range of people," Turk tells CultureMap. "It's not homogenous or boring."
It's true. Turk's collaged pieces are extraordinary — initially eye-catching because of the color and pattern, and doubly interesting upon closer examination, when the details come to light.
Both artists will show their work in the CultureMap tent throughout the Bayou City Art Festival at Memorial Park this weekend.
