art community in creating a summertime Big Houston Art Party. This year, Everybody Wins, as the juror distributed the prize money evenly to all artists shown. $48 and change to each artist selected—a kind of refund of the $30 entry fee with $18 more-Our party pic was the stack of egg cartons bronzed with thick paint and embedded with plastic bottles that lit up with LED lights by Tivakorn Sirinopawongsakorn called Detritus 8. It offers a transformation, a delightful discovery, a magical gestalt in the combination and then a touch of dazzle with paint and light. And of course the papier maché, by Rachel Gardner, Primal in Plastic. I wonder the presence of the medium or the presence of the animal-- which comes first. Love that tactile immediacy matching that animal with its emotional immediacy. Which leads us to The Texas Gallery, 2012 Peden Street, around the corner from the River Oaks Theatre, to see Wegman’s Weimaraners in Good Dogs on Nice Furniture. Wegman was asked by a young person how do you become an artist. He replied, Get a dog. The form of the animal as well as the dog behavior are both part of the charm of these photographs. These photographs are elegant in their simplicity. Topper and Flo sitting nicely in the Eames chairs, Wegman is a master with dogs, they behave, no photoshop here. Black Chair, White Background, White Chair, Black Background, the figure is the dog. All of these living room sized pieces are refreshing, perfect summertime fare. If art were seasonal I’d go looking for the coolest, the most refreshing, most free with color and open that there are, as Marcel Duchamp would say, the most retinal art for the summer and save the complexity, the art work that demands a lot of mental work and offers depth of meaning for the Fall. Summer’s pleasure is to please the eye, so the spirit can go Ahhhhh. And in the lineup of Colquitt Galleries on Upper Kirby from the
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AUGUST 6 - 19, 2015
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