Movin' on Up
Blaffer breaks into downtown with Milam Street micro museum
A Bradford work completed while in residency at Houston Center for ContemporaryCraft
A Bradford work completed while in residency at Houston Center for ContemporaryCraft
A Bradford work featured in the 2010 "Ladies First" exhibition at Art Palace
Artist Elaine Bradford's zoo of vibrantly-hued crocheted animals is moving downtown as part of the Blaffer Art Museum's Window Into Houston exhibition series inside two windows on the bottom floor of a historic Milam Street building. It's the museum's way of staking a claim downtown, capitalizing on proximity to the University of Houston Downtown and an emerging pedestrian corridor around Market Square Park.
"There's been a lot of talk about a downtown presence for Blaffer," Claudia Schmuckli, the museum's director and chief curator, tells CultureMap. "We'd been looking at opportunities, and this one presented itself very happily."
Originally planned as an off-site temporary venue while the Blaffer undergoes a renovation in July, the site has been solidly identified as a long-term micro museum, composed of two large window displays.
"We thought the windows would make a wonderful venue for a semi-private, semi-public exhibition space that is accessible and truly visible to anybody," adds Schmuckli. The display is part of an otherwise private downtown residence.
Bradford will be debuting her work "The Sidereal," in which she will reimagine the windows as dioramas displaying the habitats of her crocheted creatures. The artist's crocheted narrative involves a collection of animal specimens "discovered" by fictitious scientist Dr. Thomas Harrigan during expeditions into a dimension dubbed, "The Sidereal." The work is an extension of Bradford's multi-venue project "The Museum of Unnatural History."
The artist explains in a statement:
One window will feature a pair of bears (Procyon besheret) in their forest habitat. These forest-dwelling mammals display an unusual mating ritual. Individuals spend years wandering the forest in search of a mate with matching coat color and pattern. Once this mate is discovered, the bears together dig a burrow large enough to accommodate both of them. They then nest inside, pulling the soil in to cover their bodies. What takes place inside the burrow is unknown, but the two emerge ten days later with their tails fused."
Bradford suggests that the second window display will highlight "cloud hares," a suction pawed species that inhabits a tunnel network of arctic caves.
"When we were trying to identify our first artist," explains Schmuckli, "we immediately thought of Elaine because of her 'Museum of Unnatural History' project, which dealt with display itself. We knew that she would be ideal."
From Box 13 to a Hiram Clarke public library, Bradford is ubiquitous in the Houston art arena, although her Window into Houston cameo represents her first solo museum exhibition.
All Window into Houston exhibitions will highlight local artists. Following Bradford will be Patrick Renner, whose sculptural interventions have included placing haphazard ladders in a tree in Russ Pitman Park and a Galveston Arts Center exhibition featuring found architectural objects.
An opening reception for "The Sidereal" will be held on Wednesday, April 6, 6:30 - 8 p.m at Window into Houston, 110 Milam St.
