I myself being a Box 13 member, made a sculptural piece with members, Karen Brasier Young, Emily Sloan and David McClain. We disassembled an 8-ft diameter sun pinata into 4 pieces, reworked them separately based on parameters that we set, and then reassembled the fractured star in the gallery. My piece is the wall pinata in the image below. Inside McClain’s piece (floor section) is the soundtrack and title to our collaborative piece, Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.’s 1977 hit, You Don’t Have to be a Star Baby

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This kind of tactic is actually how the PG Contemporary exhibition I was just in came to fruition. PG Contemporary’s landlord was sitting on vacant property only two storefronts down from the gallery. The landlord did not charge anything to host the temporary annex show. Added bonus: It is rumored that someone contacted the landlord about renting the space for a gallery. With artist projects such as Sharsten Plenge’s plan to transform an abandoned JCPenney into an art complex in Houston, I think it is about time H-town had its own non-profit resource to utilize vacant property and bring art to new areas of the community.

If you know of any non-profit organizations who focus on this, please let me know. I would love to visit them and learn more about how they function.

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Hello friends,

Above is a walk-through video created by one of the co-curators of the current exhibit I am in. Pan y Circos is a group exhibit curated by Robert Boyd, editor/publisher of The Great God Pan is Dead, and Zoya Tommy of PG Contemporary Gallery. I encourage everyone to go see it! I think they did a wonderful job and I am honored to have been selected to participate. You can also read a review from Houston Press here!

Screen Test is an audition-style public-participation performance, resulting in a video compilation of everyone’s shoots. The setting for these performances is a staged audition room with a camera, microphone and floor marks. Everyone is given the same instructions: stand in front of a stationary video camera and pretend to be shot by a gun. Anyone can participate, no experience necessary. Each performance can be as funny or as serious as the participant chooses, lethal or not.

I am interested in how people interpret violence. This project idea evolved from my personal witnessing of a horrific act. When asked to describe what I had seen, the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “It was just like the movies!” Even though many people have not witnessed dramatic acts of violence in person, they have all seen movies. I am curious as to how media has shaped people’s individual interpretations of the experience of being shot.

*This is an ongoing project. If you are within the USA and are interested in hosting this performance, please fill out the contact form on my blog page.

1. Only one person may enter at a time.

2. You may stay as long as you like.

From there, each visitor could walk up the stairs and interact with the hands however they wanted. The person behind the wall could not see anyone. Each experience was unique, ranging from soothing and therapeutic to kinky and sexual.

My desire is that this will give artists on the verge of starting their careers a chance to experience the excitement of sharing their artwork with a large audience. I remember my first solo exhibition. It was soon after I received my BFA and I saw it as the perfect confidence booster as I moved into my MFA. With The Lens Capsule, I can’t help think of the usual venues for emerging artists during Fotofest. Coffee shops, studios-turned-galleries and other small obscure locations with little art community attendance tend to dominate. This format of exhibition brings art directly to the people other than trying to bring the people to a remote space. I hope people take advantage of Emily and I’s efforts.

For more information, visit www.thelenscapsule.com.

A sinister pink romance: The Lawndale Big Show People’s Choice Award winner is …

I was lucky enough to have a two-part residency (the proposed project only ended up using 1 of the 2 requested time slots). So instead of wasting that time, I used it to create a second project! The first day was used as a collaborative opportunity between me and a dance Group called Them. I used sheets left from Hypnopomp to cloak all the furniture in the room as well as the dancers. Given the empty space provided by Skydive and its old plank walls, I imagined it as a deserted home, full of stories. The dancers improvised movements using the sheets to see what movements best conveyed a sense of spookiness without screaming ghosts. I am very excited with the video footage and hope to work with the group again.

On the second day, I coaxed the public to participate in an audition-style video piece. Everyone who came by the art space for public hours had the opportunity to stand in front of the camera and then pretend to be shot by a gun. I gave them the options of a funny shooting or a serious shooting, lethal or not. I found it interesting how life-like some people were, or how common themes/patterns developed as more people were “shot”. I hope to continue this video project in the future so that I can collect a much larger group of shootings. However, I was very excited with the performances I received in this first round.

I will have two pieces in the show. You can see my video, DUET, as well as the suit body, Casualty in Formality. In addition, if you come to the opening on July 1st (see link), there will be free alcohol and a DJ! As they say at Lawndale, come and literally rub shoulders with the art world!

In addition, there will be a slide jam at a later date in July. Please stay posted for future events.

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