THE goods

Glasshouse

Pictured: Stained Glass Rondel Window. Find unique art glass for your decor. Windows, doors, and special projects.

Showroom: 919 Dragon St. 214.761.1100 glasshouseproducts.com

Yoga Mart

Terrific Valentine’s gifts, necklaces, bracelets and more. 6039 Oram (at Skillman) 214.534.4469 yogamartusa.com

career day at Lakewood Elementary

Debutantes And Cowboys

Who doesn’t need that special dress for Valentine’s Day? We have plenty to choose from with accessories to match. Shop our annual sale 25% to 60% sale in February!

9219 Garland Rd. ( in the shopping center of the Reserve at White Rock) dcboutiqueonline.com

Video

Lakewood Alumni Day

Watch college students visit their elementary alma mater.

It’s never too early to talk to kids about college. Lakewood Elementary School counselor Lydia Dickson knows this. That’s why, last month, she invited about a dozen Lakewood alumni to visit fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. There were a couple of Woodrow Wilson High School seniors, but most of them were college students home on break. The morning started as an impromptu reunion of 20-somethings who’ve known each other since elementary school, drinking coffee and eating oatmeal cookies. Then they broke into pairs and stood before the attentive kids. The Lakewood students asked a lot of questions: Why did you pick your college? How long are your classes? Do you live in a dorm? Did you get to pick your roommate? What is the food like? Is there recess? “They were very inquisitive,” says Savannah Landis, a student at Purdue University. One kid even asked about parties. Another asked a speaker what was the “worst” thing she’d done since college. Her answer: “I took chemistry.” “They had a lot of questions about scholarships, which I thought was impressive,” says Emily Ziegler, who attends Texas A&M University. “I don’t know if I even knew about scholarships at that age.” For most children that age, Dickson says, the concept that college isn’t free is news. Also, she says, most elementary school students don’t understand that college is an adult thing: No one tells you to go to class or do homework, and you decide your own schedule and set your own rules. Among the kids, there was much high-fiving and exclamations of “yesss!” upon learning that many college students use iPads in class, or that there are scholarships for dance and lefthanded people, for example. This career day was part of a push that Dickson has undertaken to expose students to professionals and life after graduation. “I want my kids to understand and be excited about college,” she says. —Rachel Stone

Visit lakewood.advocatemag.com/video.

Humor In Art

Kevin Rubén Jacobs introduces himself as Oliver Francis of Oliver Francis Gallery in a promotional YouTube video. In reality, Jacobs is a 23-year-old curator who always seems to be laughing at a joke no one else gets. He opened Oliver Francis Gallery, in an old building at 209 S. Peak, last June with the goal of shaking up the Dallas art scene and presenting shows that are challenging to the viewer. “I love when people have to stop and think about something,” he says. “I don’t like passivity. ” Jacobs was a philosophy major at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2009 when he decided to add a second major in art. He became frustrated with the art program, and eventually dropped the double major and graduated with a philosophy degree. “So, I don’t have an art degree,” he says before bursting into that trademark laughter. Art has become the focus of his budding career, however. An internship at the Goss-Michael Foundation led to a fulltime job as exhibitions manager and collections assistant. Through Oliver Francis, he is doing his part to create the art scene he wants to see in Dallas. There are plenty of opportunities to see great, established artists at the Nasher and the Dallas Museum of Art, for example. “What about students?” Jacobs says. “What about emerging artists?” Jacobs accepts shows only from artists whose work excites his sensibilities, and he’s not interested in whether it is marketable. He pays $500 a month for the space on Peak, and he lives at home with his parents in North Richland Hills. “I don’t know why more people don’t do this,” he says. “This place is so cheap. Why don’t more people go in on a space like this?” Last month Oliver Francis opened “Emphaticalism” from Michelle Rawlings, an MFA candidate in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jacobs also is working on a museum in a room behind his office at the gallery, inspired by SMU professor Michael Corris’s Free Museum of Dallas. Jacobs toyed with naming it “The Freeer Museum,” but opted finally for The Orthodox. He didn’t explain that name, but we sense some irony there. —Rachel Stone Oliverfrancisgallery.cOm

Woodrow Wilson High School cost $700,000 to build, between 1926 and 1928, and it was the most expensive school building in Dallas. The school board hired Potter Art Metal Studios to craft detailed pendant lights and lanterns for the school’s exterior to give it distinctive ornamentation. And when J.L. Long Middle School opened in 1933, custom Potter fixtures graced its exterior, too. Now both schools are undergoing renovations, and once again, the architects called on Potter to refurbish the light fixtures the family-owned company created more than 80 years ago. Richard Potter, the company’s third-generation owner, becomes animated talking about the project. Aside from approximately 30 outdoor fixtures for both schools, Potter also is refurbishing 21 lights from the Woodrow auditorium. “They’ll be gorgeous,” he says. “You couldn’t appreciate the detail before.” Workers clean and repair the pieces before adding a chemical patina to darken the details and finally, seal them with an acrylic lacquer. They’re also being rewired. A few of the fixtures must be replaced, and workers are replicating the 1920s designs. The fixtures at Woodrow, built in the Elizabethan style, are gothic. And the fixtures from Long are art deco. The project is estimated to cost about $100,000. Potter says he doesn’t know how much the lights originally cost. This isn’t the first time Potter has been asked to restore its own work, which appears in landmarks such as government buildings and White Rock Lake, as well as countless homes. Unfortunately, the renovation project doesn’t have the funding to refurbish 10 art deco pendant lamps in the J.L. Long auditorium. They would cost about $5,000 a piece to restore, and the architects have opted to instead purchase new lights. But Potter and designer Izabela Wojcik are hoping that Long boosters might unite and somehow raise $50,000 to save the old light fixtures. For almost 80 years, Long students have been looking up at those artfully crafted pendants, and it would be a shame to replace them with something inferior. “Off-the-shelf fixtures are not going to look as good,” Wojcik says. “These looked good 100 years ago, and they’re always going to look good.”

—Rachel Stone