ArtsHouston April 2008 Issue

Art Goes Green in Houston FotoFest 2008: China Fight Club: Houston’s Combat Master Brian Byrnes Front Row Seats: Team Behind KUHF’s Hit Arts Program Plans for Improvement 1

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September 16-28, 2008

December 4-21, 2008

February 10-22, 2009

March 24-April 5, 2009

May 12-24, 2009

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W WO

June 16-28, 2009

What a season.

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2 Photo by Joan Marcus

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Arts Houston April

2007 2008 Symphony Season

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Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony April 3, 5, 6, 2008 Tickets: from $26

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Johnny Mathis April 23, 2008 Tickets: from $35

Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony May 1, 3, 4, 2008 Tickets: from $26

Michael Krajewski, Principal Pops Conductor

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“Words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer match the landscape of...fact.”

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-Hugh in Translations 16

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Features Art Goes Green in Houston

With all the hype surrounding everything “green,” from groceries and travel to cosmetics and architecture, environmentalism has lately become the height of fashion. Far from being a passing trend (though its hype may fade as the next big thing grabs our attention), “going green” is a concern that has grabbed the focus of artists and art lovers alike for the past few decades.

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FotoFest 2008: China

Houston’s FotoFest 2008, focusing on China, offers not only the opportunity to see some tremendous art but also gives viewer a chance to learn about this until recently quite closed country rich in culture, history and beauty.

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Fight Club: Houston’s Combat Master Brian Byrnes

The famous saying, “Live by the sword, die by the sword” has a different resonance for those toting swords on stage. Stage com bat keeps us at the edge of our seats, yet it’s an illusion. No one really dies, because of course the show needs to go on the next night.

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Front Row Seats: Team Behind KUHF’s Hit Arts Program Plans for Improvement

Call any Houston arts lover between 3 and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and you’ll likely get brushed aside – because that’s when arts aficionados are tuning in to KUHF 88.7’s The Front Row, the only program of its kind in the Bayou City – and one of the only shows of its style in the country.

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april 2008

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Departments

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Publisher’s Note Editor’s Picks Style and Substance with Tom Richards

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Graze April Arts Calendar Featured Listings Restaurant Review: The Grove

“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” So goes the saying among actors.

To take the concept a step further, one might consider what songwriter Tom Lehrer said: “Irreverence is easy – what’s hard is wit.” It is entirely appropriate in April, the month of frivolity, to examine the career (such as it is) of this man who, in his heyday, achieved the most elusive of artistic goals, successfully producing a synthesis of music and humor.

One of the “spoils of war” in the restaurant business – yes, there are many, as Anthony Bourdain would attest – is the chance to do really cool stuff. So it came as no big surprise when the Schiller-Del Grande Group (they of Café Annie, Café Express and Taco Milagro) was chosen to handle the food and drink at Discovery Green.

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Where to Eat

Reviews

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Main Street Theater: Translations Masquerade Theatre: The Scarlet Pimpernel Houston Ballet: Gershwin Glam AD Players: The Importance of Being Earnest Gallery Sonja Roesch: Machine Learning Museum of Fine Arts Houston: Pompeii: Tales From an Eruption The Jung Center of Houston: Garland Fielder: Contortions CTRL Gallery: Jane South and John Sparagana 7

artshouston publisher’s note Nin Quozheng, Smoke No. 038, 2006; from Mined in China on view at Houston Center for Photography through April 20

Issue Eighty Four Founder Chas Haynes Publisher Frank Rose Associate Publisher Varina Rush Editor in Chief,Visual Arts Tria Wood Editor in Chief, Performing Arts John DeMers Sales Manager/ Photographer Kara Duval Interns Karen Lopez Amanda Stecker Issue Contributors Holly Beretto Garland Fielder Sarah Gajkowski-Hill Victoria Ludwin Tom Richards Nancy Wozny

ArtsHouston is published monthly in Houston, Texas. ISSN 1541-6089. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the expressed written consent of the publisher. Copyright 2007. Individual issues may be purchased for $3.00, a yearly subscription (12 monthly issues) for $28.00.

For advertising information, call (713) 589-9472.

Letters to the editor may be sent to: ArtsHouston, 3921 Austin Street, Houston, Texas 77004; or frank@artshouston.com. Tel (713) 589-9472 • Fax (713) 429-4191 Web: artshouston.com 8

“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival,” so said the writer Wendall Berry. Environmentalism has left the fringes of society and entered into popular culture. An Inconvenient Truth, essentially a filmed lecture, was an Academy Award-winner in 2006. We can buy biodegradable bottles of water, organic food, bamboo clothing and the like. While the core issue of an insatiable lust for products may be an unlikely foe to tackle on a global scale, perhaps we can now consume more responsibly.

In this issue we begin a three part series on the environment in an art context. Tria Wood introduces us to Kathy Kelley whose discarded tire sculpture Suckling is Continuous but no Longer Functional now graces Freed Park at the corner of Houston Ave. and White Oak. “Environmental” art is nothing new, but perhaps needs closer examination as the consequences of unconscious consumerism become clearer. Look for an exploration of sustainable architecture in the May edition.

The cover image bridges our “green” article and Victoria Ludwin’s piece on FotoFest 2008.

The photograph comes from Houston Center for Photography’s show Mined in China, curated by Susan Meiselas. Unless you’ve been under a rock in March, you know that FotoFest’s theme this year is China. This timely subject grants us a view into a country and culture until recently has been quite literally “closed.” China is on the fast track to becoming a world superpower and coal smoke knows no boundaries. The trade deficit with China is growing at an astonishing rate; compare $2 billion in 1987, $49 billion in 1997 to over $256 billion last year. Clearly, this is an issue which will become more apparent as time moves and as artists grapple with the subject.

We also visit with fight choreographer Brian Byrnes whose sequences can be seen at Houston Grand Opera, Main Street Theater, The Alley Theatre and in classrooms at the University of Houston. Holly Beretto then introduces Houston audiences to a new member of KUHF’s The Front Row, St. John Flynn (no, he hasn’t been canonized).

Enjoy!

Publisher, Frank Rose frank@artshouston.com

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april editor’s picks 2008 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition

Who are the hot new up-and-comers on the Houston arts scene? Scout out several at the Blaffer Gallery this month. The 2008 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition marks the crowning achievement of a new generation of emerging artists graduating from the University of Houston. Following three years of research and development, this exhibition offers many students the first opportunity to show their work in a museum context and challenge the public with new, fresh ideas. A catalogue published by Blaffer Gallery, including selected reproductions of each artist’s work, will accompany the exhibition. Opening: April 11th, 7-9 p.m. and on view through April 26th. Call 713.743.2255, or visit blaffergallery.org for more information.

Love / Protest / Reflection

DiverseWorks and Foundation for Modern Music present internationallyrecognized artists, soprano Julia Bronkhorst and pianist Maarten Hillenius in Love / Protest / Reflection, a concert featuring modern art song by Dutch, South African, and American composers. The Amsterdam based duo will present an evening emphasizing tolerance, healing, and understanding, while uniquely expressing the complex and entwined relationship between the cultures represented within the program. In her first ever Houston visit, Bronkhorst, an authority in Dutch and South African musical history and a critical success in Europe, will sing music by a host of diverse international composers, including Henriette Bosmans, Wolfgang Wijdeveld, and Hendrik Hofmeyr, and Rosa Nepgen, South Africa’s preeminent female composer.

This intense program explores the many perspectives present in shared histories, namely the complicated history between the Netherlands and South Africa. Using spiritual and protest poetry to express themes of violence and reconciliation, Love / Protest / Reflection offers a rare glimpse into the lives of South Africans from living composers and performers directly affected by the Apartheid system. For advance tickets call 713-223-8346, or visit diverseworks.org

Going for The Gold

A new musical running this month offers a stirring overview of Judaism in the 20th century, from the rise on the Nazis who brought about the Holocaust to the formation of modern Israel to the birth of modern terrorism at the 1972 Olympic Games.

The Gold, written and composed by Houston plastic surgeon Dr. Philip Yosowitz, produced by his daughter Laura and directed by Brad Dalton, features the kind of majestic songs that audiences associate with Les Miserables, given additional poignancy by Jewish folk melodies that remind us sometimes of Fiddler on the Roof. With performances through April 6 at the IW Marks Theatre Center at the Jewish Community Center, The Gold is being produced by Arts with an Impact in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence. Tickets may be purchased at the website TheGoldTheMusical.com or via the 24-hour hotline (800) 838-3006.

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Worldfest

Mariachis and bagpipers will play (alternating of course), as Worldfest kicks off its 10-day international film festival April 11th. Screening opening night is Before the Rains set during India’s growing unrest beneath British rule and Gandhi’s rising power. A tea plantation owner undertakes an immense and dangerous project of building a road over the mountains to expand his plantation. However, his infidelity with a local young wife married to an abusive husband soon turns into a nightmare. Showcasing 53 new Independent Feature Films and 75 new Short Films, including 11 films made by Houstonians and Texans, Worldfest runs from Friday, April 11th to Sunday, April 20th at the AMC Studio 30 Theatres at Dunvale. Visit worldfest.org for film times and ticket information.

Post-Tension: Fresh Views on Abstraction

Hot new gallery/collective The Joanna is “really excited” about their fifth big show featuring work from I Love You Baby, Shane Tolbert, Mark Hesterlee and Jessica Ninci. Works currently filling the cozy house-cum-gallery space explore the world of contemporary abstraction from a variety of fresh, fun, intriguing and often irreverent perspectives. For further information email joanna@thejoannawesite. com or visit thejoannawebsite.com.

Media Archeology: Live & Televised

Aurora Picture Show presents the fifth annual Media Archeology Festival April 17-19, 2008. Featuring events at DiverseWorks Art Space, the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, and Rice University, the three-day festival is supported in part by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at University of Houston and 91.7 KTRU-FM (Rice University Radio). Curated by Aurora Artistic Director Andrea Grover and New York musician/curator Nick Hallett, this year’s festival is titled Media Archeology: Live and Televised and features multimedia artists who incorporate audio/visual technology with live performance.

Each of the performers uses pre-recorded video and audio to create a mise-en-scène of projected sets, props, and environments--sometimes creating a stage, a sound-scape, or an entire cast. The festival kicks off with a performance by legendary culture jammers Negativland, returning to Houston for the first time in eight years. Animator and performer Brent Green takes over the second night with live narration and music (by Brent Green, Howe Gelb and Jeremy Gara) to accompany Green’s stop- animation films, and video and performance artists Tara Mateik and Shana Moulton round out the closing night of the festival. Go to aurorapictureshow.com or call 713.868.2101 for a full schedule of events and venues.

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Style & Substance with Tom Richards Illustrations by Varina Rush 12

“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” So goes the saying among actors.

To take the concept a step further, one might consider what songwriter Tom Lehrer said: “Irreverence is easy – what’s hard is wit.” It is entirely appropriate in April, the month of frivolity, to examine the career (such as it is) of this man who, in his heyday, achieved the most elusive of artistic goals, successfully producing a synthesis of music and humor.

What can you say about an individual who attended summer camp with Stephen Sondheim, graduated from Harvard at 18, invented the Jell-O shot, and coined the phrase “in my copious spare time”? Tom Lehrer is, to quote musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic, “the J. D. Salinger of demented music.”

The comparison is apt. Not only has Lehrer been incredibly influential on multiple generations of smart-asses, he is an artist whose reputation rests on an extremely small body of work: sporadic concert appearances, a few dozen songs, and a handful of albums. As radio host Barry Hansen (aka Dr. Demento) put it, “Tom Lehrer has definitely gotten the maximum out of the minimum.” Lehrer is an artist who has always kept his musical career at arm’s length, preferring to pay the bills by teaching mathematics rather than selling records.

How to best describe Tom Lehrer’s style… Mad Magazine set to music? An intellectual Ray Stevens? Irving Berlin, if he had a serious personality disorder?

Lehrer’s first successful tune, written in 1943, was part of his application to Harvard. Set to a melody from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the lyrics included the following twisted couplets: “I will leave movie thrillers and watch caterpillars/ Get born and pupated and larva’d/And I’ll work like a slave/ And always behave/And maybe I’ll get into Harva’d.”

Fortunately for Lehrer, someone on the admissions committee had a sense of humor, and he was accepted.

During his years as an undergraduate, Lehrer would sing and play the piano at campus functions (once sharing a bill with fan dancer Sally Rand), entertaining his classmates with songs like “Fight Fiercely Harvard,” a polite ditty which lampooned the standard issue, somewhat bloodthirsty, college fight song (“Fight, Fight, Fight/Let’s not be rough, though!”).

In 1953, Lehrer released his first album, a low budget, do-it-yourself affair (“every expense was spared”) which quickly sold out its initial pressing of 400 copies. Word of his peculiar talent began to spread, and after completing a compulsory hitch in the army –during which he formulated the aforementioned Jell-O shot - Lehrer gained notoriety with

“Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” (“My pulse will be quickenin’/ With each drop of strych’nine) and “The Masochism Tango” (“I ache for the touch of your lips, dear/But much more for the touch of your whips, dear”).

But it was more than just clever wordplay. Lehrer was slightly ahead of the curve, capturing the subtle (OK, maybe not so subtle) whiff of cynicism that was beginning to waft through Eisenhower’s America.

The quintessential Lehrer song features an ironic juxtaposition of a jaunty melody with edgy lyrics, usually dealing with an issue of the day. He took on the nuclear threat in his neo-gospel number “We Will All Go Together When We Go” and race relations in “National Brotherhood Week” (“It’s fun to eulogize/The people you despise/As long as you don’t let ‘em in your school”).

One has to admire his willingness to offend any and all.

He fearlessly skewered the Catholic Church in “The Vatican Rag,” singing, “Get in line in that processional/Step into that small confessional/There the guy who’s got religion’ll/Tell you if your sin’s original.”

Lehrer was never an ego-driven artist, and the concert stage quickly lost its appeal. “I never had the temperament of a performer,” he said. “I do not require anonymous affection, such as that manifested by the applause of large groups of strangers…Moreover, I always considered myself a writer rather than a performer. I didn’t relish the prospect of doing pretty much the same show night after night, any more than a novelist would enjoy reading his book aloud every night.”

Lehrer released his last album of new material in 1965, drawing together a number of songs composed for the satirical television series That Was the Week That Was. He continued to teach but did compose occasionally, contributing songs to the PBS program The Electric Company and writing some additional material for a revue of his songs called Tomfoolery in 1980.

Tom Lehrer will be 80 years old this month (“I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity”), and his work is still popular, having made the leap from LP to eight-track to CD. But maybe “popular” isn’t exactly the word to use, since Lehrer is, in essence, a cult artist, existing outside the mainstream. A cult artist maybe, but one whose influence has been profound and far reaching. In the liner notes for More of Tom Lehrer, the composer seemed to foresee his legacy, saying, “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will have all been worth the while.”

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Watercolor Art Society Houston invites you to visit the new gallery and facility in the Museum District. ● Classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced artists ● Juried gallery exhibit each month ● Art receptions monthly — 2nd Friday ● Figure lab and drawing group ● Paint-Outs and Paint-Ins ● Annual membership and international shows ● Outreach programs ● Open studio ● Critic groups ● Monthly newsletter

Pond Dance by Cynthia Reid

The Heights by Bonnie Hubley

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Les Mains by Martin Butler

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THE ENGINE Photographs by

John Lienhard

Listen to Engines Of Our Ingenuity on 88.7 or at www.uh.edu/engines

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Opening: Saturday, April 5, 2008, 6 – 9pm Show Dates: April 5 thru 28, 2008

( " - - & 3 : 301 East 11th Street • Houston, TX 77008 • 713.869.4770 Future exhibitions and events go to www.ggalleryhouston.com

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Art Goes

Green in Houston story by Tria Wood photos and illustrations by Kara Duval

W

ith all the hype surrounding everything “green,” from groceries and travel to cosmetics and architecture, environmentalism has lately become the height of fashion. Far from being a passing trend (though its hype may fade as the next big thing grabs our attention), “going green” is a concern that has grabbed the focus of artists and art lovers alike for the past few decades.

Environmental art is generally thought to have sprung from the larger environmental awareness movement of the late 1960s, although ancient works such as the Serpent Mound in Ohio and the Nazca Lines in Peru certainly serve as predecessors for those artists whose work involves the Earth itself.

Early contemporary forms of environmental artwork such as Land Art gained popularity with works such as Robert Smithson’s 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty, although many artists working in this vein came under fire for the techniques used to construct such works, which often had an adverse environmental impact.

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From dance to theatre, music to film, visual arts to opera, Fresh Arts is your best link to 22 of the most progressive arts organizations in Houston.

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int o

Ripping

the existing landscape with bulldozers, say

Smithson’s critics, is hardly a way to express environmental concerns. As our collective environmental consciousness has grown, however, so have the styles, techniques and media used by environmental artists. With such varied materials as plants, litter, recyclables, and time itself, these artists construct whole new ways of making art that defies commodification, using the land itself as an artspace. Focused less on restructuring the land, contemporary artists working in this vein look for ways to reveal the intertwining ways in which Earth and its creatures, including us, interact. Their more complex concerns are enacted in works that explore temporality, community and sustainability.

Houston artists have played and continue to play a role in the world of environmental art; famously, Houstonian Mel Chin has enacted such works as Revival Field and SWING, each of which explored issues of land reclamation. The sculptural planting of Revival Field explores a technique called “green remediation” in which a special variety of plants known as hyperaccumulators are used to remove heavy metal pollution from a St. Paul, Minnesota landfill. SWING. (an acronym for “Sustainable Works Involving Neighborhood Groups”) deals with a more urban situation, reclaiming abandoned houses in Detroit in order to create agricultural and community involvement opportunities for their neighborhoods through growing worms, gourmet mushrooms, and the like. Through these works, Chin posits artwork as an act of creativity with effects that far outstrip the possibilities imposed by gallery walls, working in time and real-world impact as well as in the aesthetic realm. loser to home, Buffalo Bayou Art Park (BBAP) is preeminent in its support for environmental artists in Houston, offering generous display spaces in public grounds along the bayous. “The arts are much more approachable when there aren’t the walls of the museums or galleries to get in the way of community involvement. And since our projects are situated in the outdoor environment, they will hopefully begin to make the audience aware of the spaces surrounding the sculptures, and help to bring an appreciation of the nature, and in turn an ecological awareness,” says BBAP Executive Director Elaine Bradford. 2002 and 2003 BBAP projects involved artists working with local high school students to produce environmentally themed works of public art. Bradford recalls that in 2002, artist Teresa O’Connor and a

group of students from Natural Legacy’s Student Environmental Art Club “created a sculpture out of trash collected from the bayou that spelled out ‘recycle’ in large letters,” which was then installed on Berry Bayou. Similarly, 2003 BBAP Artist-inResidence Steven Siegel guided students through the creation of another trash-based sculpture of crushed post-consumer plastic. “It was on display in Sesquicentennial Park behind the Wortham Theater,” says Bradford; “This project brought ideas of consumer waste and recycling to a very public space downtown. The gigantic ball of trash, I believe, was a way to open people’s eyes to personal environmental impact.” More recently, Spacetaker’s former gallery space featured the work of Buffalo Bayou Art Park’s 2005-2006 Artist-in-Residence Mara Adamitz Scrupe. Her project Garden for the Third Coast, began with a gallery component in which organically grown seedlings of now-scarce plants native to Buffalo Bayou were displayed in hand-thrown clay pots in the glow of solar-powered illuminated illustrations of these same plants in full bloom. At the conclusion of the gallery display, the seedlings were distributed to local gardeners and environmental aficionados for transplanting that would help boost the biodiversity that was once natural to the area.

BBAP’s latest installa-

“The arts are much more approachable when there aren’t the walls of the museums or galleries to get in the way of community involvement.”

C

Kathy Kelley and Kara Duval go tromping around in Kelley’s studio

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“This is what I do because this is what feeds my soul”

Jeff Shell

tion is in partnership with the Green Valentine Project. Green Valentine began in 2003 in the mind of Jeff Shell, who had moved to the Woodland Heights wanting to make a difference in his own life and in his community. Establishing his own garden and flock of chickens on his back yard, he decided that he wanted to plant trees as well. He started in Stude Park, organizing mass planting ventures with a group of volunteers and the support of the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department and the Heights Beautification Project. For his 2008 event, Shell, who is also an art collector, wanted to incorporate art into his planting ventures. Thinking of the administrative issues involved in requesting and sorting out proposals, he discussed his ideas with Art Guy Jack Massing, who suggested that Shell partner with Elaine Bradford and BBAP. Fortuitously, BBAP was looking to expand its reach, and was enthusiastic about Shell’s idea. BBAP submitted four proposals with concept sketches to Shell, who was entranced with Kathy Kelley’s submission Suckling is Continuous but No Longer Functional.

Shell raised the $6000 needed to fund the installation, and before he knew it, the project was placed in Freed Park. Shell’s excitement has been contagious; the reaction to Green Valentine has been overwhelmingly positive. Although many have urged him to make this a nonprofit effort, Shell prefers to keep the program as it stands, at least for now: “This is what I do because this is what feeds my soul,” he says.

Kelley’s installation, which consists of three spherical structures made of reclaimed tires, reflects the artist’s fascination with issues of consumerism. Far from evangelical in her environmental stance, Kelley hastens to admit that her work is “a response to [her] own consumer gluttony” as much as to the cycles of consumption and waste around us, though she fervently hopes that we can find ways to balance capitalism and sustainability. Her recent work involves tires and other found objects, which she sees herself as “rescuing from the waste

stream” as she incorporates them into her work. Although she was especially drawn to the sort of bulky waste that one often sees on the freeway shoulder, she says, “It took me a while to get up the guts to pull over and pick something up from the side of the road.” Around the same time, her research on Mother Teresa made her consider the idea of redemption—not just of people, but of objects. “I feel that I’m redeeming these objects by giving them value,” she explains; in creating artwork from discards, she imparts the materials with a new life and a new purpose.

As she began to conceive of Suckling is Continuous but No Longer Functional, Kelley referred to psychoanalytic Object Theory, especially Melanie Klein’s notions of breastfeeding as intertwined with the development of gratitude and envy. As Kelley designed the sculptures, one of which is covered in giant innertube “nipples,” she was thinking about our culture as “resorting to the boob of consumerism,” she says, our obsession with non-functional products that leave us empty, “the continuous nature of our taking” from the planet’s resources.

Reflecting this, the nipples of her sculpture offer no sustenance; instead, she notes, the Houston Parks Department was a bit concerned that people might reach into them to dispose of their trash—an ironic notion that Kelley is happy to incorporate into the work’s purpose. “I want this work to ask how we can move forward from here,” she says, again expressing hope that the free market can incorporate environmentally sustainable practices.

BBAP

is hoping to continue yearly projects with Green Valentine, says Bradford, and of course it has more plans for the future: “Right now we are working on getting approval for a sculpture by Houston Artist Michelle O’Michael for April of this year. She will be producing an ecological sculpture at the Sabine Street ArtPark that will be flowers and grasses growing from coir installed on a steel framework. The sculpture will grow and change through the season.” Of this new project, O’Michael says, “The sculpture movement from installation through seed growth cycles is a physical expression of the content of an organism’s or the planet’s life and natural factors that are involved and influence life.” In the coming fall, BBAP plans for installing art along the MetroRail lines, hoping to continue its public arts reach throughout the Houston area.

“We want to be able to help artists produce interesting public projects regardless of location,” says Bradford.

Through environmental art projects like those supported

by BBAP, Green Valentine, and other Houston arts organizations, Houstonians have a great opportunity to experience groundbreaking—and groundmending—artworks with a very real impact on our world. These works help us realize our interconnectedness with the environment, and the potential we have to make a positive impact through everyday actions and awareness.

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FotoFest 2008: China story by Victoria Ludwin

H

ouston’s FotoFest 2008, focusing on China, offers not only the opportunity to see some tremendous art but also gives viewer a chance to learn about this until recently quite closed country rich in culture, history and beauty.

China is in the middle of tremendous change as it slowly opens itself up to the global economy, and artists and photographers have been documenting the change in the culture and landscape. FotoFest and Houston’s participating galleries offer a perspective dating from 1934 to now.

Throughout Houston, FotoFest curators have put up an extensive series of shows. Several installations address different time periods in recent Chinese history and serve to provide images for events in China’s past as well as illuminating the transformations currently happening in the country.

The FotoFest exhibitions are grouped into three time periods: 1934-1975 (Ethnography, Photojournalism and Propaganda), 1985-2000 (Independent Documentary Photography) and 1994-2008 (Contemporary Conceptual and Staged Photography).

Many of the works on exhibition have never been shown outside of China before, especially those from 1934-1975, during the Communist regime. In addition, several galleries have mounted their own shows of Chinese photography to add to this incredible festival of art.

Ethnography, Photojournalism and Propaganda are the subheads for the shows grouped around the time period 1934-1975, a period in Chinese history fraught with conflict, war and political upheaval. One Allen Center and Two Allen Center are exhibiting three shows together: Ethnography in Western China 1934-1939, photographs by Zhuang Xueben; The Northern Front, The Anti-Japanese War, 1937-1946 in China,

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photographs by Sha Fei; and The Cultural Revolution, 1965-1975 in China, photographs Weng Naiqiang; Xiao Zhuang; Wang Shilong, curated by Chen Guangjun and Xu Weiying. The first show focuses on the farthest western regions of China, near Tibet, and the ethnic and cultural identities of those who lived there. Sha Fei, the featured artist of the second show, photographed the war for the Chinese Communist Party, and later helped organize a mass media organization system for disseminating propaganda for the party. In 1950, he was executed and his work was blacklisted; only in the last twenty five years has his work been shown again, thanks to the work of family and colleagues. The work of three of Sha Fei’s colleagues, those he trained, makes up the third exhibition. These photographers also worked for the Communist party during the Cultural Revolution and their photographs show the effort to promote the idea of collective solidarity. All three photographers worked for news publications during the Cultural Revolution.

In a similar vein, Elder Street Gallery is presenting the photojournalist Jiang Shaowu and Xie June for a past and present view of China. The photographs of Jiang Shaowu (74 yrs old) show his experiences during the “Great Leap Forward” while working for newspapers in Communist China. He captured images from the countryside as well as political upheavals, and hid his photographs under his bed. Xie June (35 yrs old) focuses his work on the current changes in life in China, as the country becomes more industrial.

Several shows focus on contemporary work from the late 1980s to 2008. These are united by their explorations of societal issues in contemporary China: religion, ethnicity, gender, urban transformation, identity, globalization, and the how

past Chinese art and history come to bear on contemporary works. All the exhibitions are by Chinese artists working in mainland China. As part of the FotoFest series, Bering & James features two Chinese photographers, Xing Danwen and Zeng Han, exploring issues evolving from the newly affluent in urban China. Winter Street Studios is also hosting a FotoFest exhibition of artists Li Lang, Lu Nan and Wu Jialin, who shoot independent documentary photography. Vine Street Studios, home to the FotoFest headquarters, has mounted an extensive show of photographs focusing on 1994-1997 in China.

The Houston Center for Photography is also hosting a large group show of Chinese artists who turn their lenses toward the coal mining industry of China and its effects on the landscape and the people around it.

Art League Houston is showing three contemporary artists as a set of individual shows: Sun Guojuan’s Sweetness Forever, Chen Lingyang’s Twelve Flower Months and Liu Lijie’s Another Episode. The work is strikingly personal, often using the body as subject matter, implying the importance of the individual in a country that until recently eschewed that idea in favor of the group.

G Gallery presents China’s Pok Chi Lau, a photographer educated in the US and teaching at Kansas State University. He documents the lives of Chinese immigrants in the US, as well as creates mixed media work addressing life after the Cultural Revolution in China.

De Santos Gallery is exhibiting photographs of one of China’s most well-known landmarks: the Chen Changfen’s photographs of the Great Wall of China are striking: taken over the course of forty years, the images speak to the power of the wall and the connotations it naturally bears. The lack of people in the photographs all but accentuates the force the wall has had on the people of China throughout history.

Two photographers from the MFAH’s Red Hot show last August are being shown at McClain Gallery. Zhang Dali, who shoots his own graffiti on construction sites (as buildings go both up and down), highlights the rapid change in the Chinese urban environment, inserting the figure of a human head into an otherwise desolate landscape. Interestingly paired with Dali is Huang Yan, who instead applies landscape onto the human form. The photographs of these beautiful and painterly landscapes, done in a traditional Chinese style, bring to the forefront the idea of humanity in the past and human life living amid a natural landscape.

Deborah Colton Gallery reprises her August show entitled China Under Construction, which was the unparalleled best of the gallery shows of Asian art last summer.

Curated by Maya Kovskaya, a Beijing-based art critic, the show gives a much closer-to-the-ground experience of contemporary Chinese photography. Again, it’s not a show to miss.

While the shows certainly provide a window into the past and present worlds spinning in China, the photography itself, independent of its country of origin, is spectacular. We can only wish FotoFest ran annually!

Clockwise from page 20: Cang Xin, Energy no.2, from the series Man and Sky as One, 2007 Weng Naiqiang, Red Guards on Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1966; Courtesy of 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing Zhuang Xueben (1909-1984), Tibetan Boy, Xia He County, Gansu Province, 1936, Courtesy of Zhuang Wenjun

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Clockwise from top left: Zhuang Xueben (1909-1984), Tibetan Minority Girl in Jiareng Li County, Sichuan Province, 1934, Courtesy of Zhuang Wenjun Jiang Zhi, Sucker no. 3, 1997-1998; Courtesy Three Shadows Photography Center, Beijing Liu Zheng, Quelling The White Bone Demon, 1997; Courtesy Three Shadows Photography Center, Beijing Sha Fei (1912-1950), Children Shouldering Wooden Guns, 1938; Courtesy of Wang Yan Han Bing, Love in the Age of Big Construction II-1, 2006 Zhao Liang,Relationships-Making a Telephone Call, 1998 Courtesy Three Shadows Photography Centre, Beijing Chen Lingyang, Twelve Flower Months #4, 2000 Chen Lingyang, Twelve Flower Months #2, 2000

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T

he famous saying, “Live by the sword, die by the sword” has a different resonance for those toting swords on stage. Stage combat keeps us at the edge of our seats, yet it’s an illusion. No one really dies, because of course the show needs to go on the next night.

The man behind so many of Houston’s swinging swords and fast punches is Brian Byrnes, fight director, certified teacher of combat arts, Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) fight master, and Associate Professor at the University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance. Byrnes’s work has heated up productions at the Alley Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, Stages Repertory Theatre, The Ensemble Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Houston Ballet, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, Main Street Theater, and Houston Shakespeare Festival.

And, that’s just his Houston credits. When blades strike and heads roll, it’s usually Byrnes calling the shots.

Byrnes was first exposed to fight combat in college at the University of Iowa, and it was love at first jab. His senior year he took up sport fencing, which he found very useful in the development of his craft.

“The process of landing a touch, but not being touched, is great training for developing effective distance and timing,” says Byrnes, who continued training various combat techniques to reach the expertise he now brings to area stages. For Byrnes, the “scene” is always the operative idea in creating a fight. Each battle needs to be cut from the same cloth as the piece he’s working on. When working with Dominic Walsh on his Romeo & Juliet, the fight scenes revealed a flavor of Walsh’s intricate choreography. “Violence shouldn’t ever be gratuitous,” he says.

“It’s often what moves the story forward. You want to bring the audience into the character’s world.”

It’s been a banner spring for Byrnes that found him directing combat in Shakespeare’s Othello at the Alley, Craig Wright’s Lady at Stages, and Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd at HGO. And that’s in addition to his weekly classes at the University of Houston, where he teaches physical theater, movement for actors, and several levels of stage combat.

Byrnes spent a good deal of March immersed in Othello, directed by Scott Schwartz at the Alley, where he has choreographed over 50 productions thus far. The process is more complicated than it seems. You just don’t hand over lethal weapons

“It’s a fine line,” says Byrnes, “You want it to look realistic but you never want the audience to be concerned for an actor’s safety.” and command a fight.

“I sat down with Scott to get an idea of his treatment,” says Byrnes. “We were going for a brutal and immediate energy to the fight scenes.” In keeping with the stripped-down, made in front of the audience’s eyes style of the production, Byrnes used a variety of swords, knives, and several “found/improvisational” weapons that were already on hand. He echoed the rawness and danger of the setting in his visceral fight scenes.

Over at HGO, the denizens of the HMS Indomitable in Billy Budd are sharpening their daggers. This will be his first production of Budd and marks Byrnes’ 30th HGO production, in addition to his master classes for the HGO studio. “Working in opera is fairly specific,” admits Brynes. “You know a fight is going to last so many measures and needs to be exactly timed to the music.”

Budd employs swords, cutlasses, daggers, knives, muskets, pistols, and a variety of nautical equipment to keep the action on edge. Daniel Belcher plays Budd and is thrilled to be working with Byrnes again. Belcher worked closely with Byrnes in his portrayal of Mercutio in HGO’s 2005 Romeo and Juliet.

“I am lucky he is doing the fight direction for Billy Budd.

His fights are always incredibly realistic, and he works individually to each artist’s strengths. Also, the man is amazingly patient with each of us,” says Belcher. “I have been able to apply much of what I have learned from Brian throughout my career.

I look forward to seeing what surprises he brings to the table.”

The feeling is mutual from Byrnes, who enjoys working with singers that see combat work as a crucial element to their training. Byrnes feels the shift in opera towards more solid acting skills has been a good thing. “HGO is really invested in making the combat scenes believable,” he says.

The fight scene often occurs at a pivotal place in the plot, which is exactly the case in Lady, Wright’s intense drama that depicts a group of childhood friends who find themselves on different sides of the Iraq war debate. Byrnes had to cope with firearms and hand-to-hand combat as well as figuring out what kind of blanks to use. Lady’s director, Leslie Swackhamer, faced several challenges.

“Brian worked with us to make sure that we carried the guns and handled them in ways that are realistic to hunters, but 25

Brian Brynes demonstrates a warm up for combat class

also in ways that would never make the audience or the other actors feel threatened or unsafe,” says Swackhamer. “We had an extra challenge because the space is small and very alive for sound. We had to try a number of different load combinations to come up with a charge that would not deafen the audience and the actors, yet would still have a realistic edge.”

Byrnes also contributed to Swackhamer’s Don Giovanni at Opera in the Heights last season.

“His fights are always dynamic and theatrical,” she says.

“He is amazingly sensitive to the text, and to furthering the story we are trying to tell. As a director, I love working with him because I know that he has a million tricks up his sleeve; he will make my fights unique, and he will be dedicated to making sure my performers are safe and secure.”

Safety is key in fight combat. “It’s a fine line,” says Byrnes, “You want it to look realistic but you never want the audience to be concerned for an actor’s safety. I can always tell when an actor is in control. We practice distance, and masking (the angle the audience sees), and action/reaction to make it look real.”

Stepping into his graduate stage combat class at the University of Houston, you see students pummeling each other in various combinations as they practice several styles of combat.

According to his students there’s no quicker way to drop into your body than waging a combat scene with your fellow actors.

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“It’s just like learning your lines,” says Kristen Green, who has finished flying over the back of one of her classmates. “This kind of training also builds trust.” Choreography is key to keeping everyone safe. “Once you have it your body you transpose it just like a script,” says Leraldo Anzaldúa, who recently showed off his ace combat skills in Bertolt Brecht ‘s The Good Woman of Setzuan. “It’s a physical dialogue and you become very aware of your body.”

There’s a general consensus that combat training establishes a self awareness that can inform any role, whether it’s physical or not. For student David Millstone, the process goes even deeper. “One of the challenges for any actor is to go to the darker places,” says Millstone. “I find in combat work I often visit the unexplored parts of myself.”

Byrnes brought that “unexplored” part of Hamlet to Houston audiences in his direction of the Nova Arts Project production last season, complete with riot police, a ticking-bomb Hamlet, and an atmosphere of certain doom and collapsing momentum.

“Brian’s view of Hamlet was of a dark world devoid of all kindness. The characters only knew action and brutality and that showed clearly in the physicality of his interpretation, direction, and fight choreography,” remembers Amy Hopper, co-director of Nova Arts who also worked with Byrnes at University of Houston. “His world was in constant movement.”

In addition to directing Hamlet, Byrnes also wrote Nova Art’s debut production, Stella...Stella for Star in 2005 and several children’s plays.

The bottom line for Byrnes is to place stage combat into the larger realm of an actor’s world.

“It’s really a matter of physics,” he says. “The movement itself needs to be believable. It’s just good acting training.”

Houston Audiences can next catch Brian Byrnes’s combat scenes in the HGO’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd on April 25 &27, May 2, 4, & 9, at Wortham Center.

Visit houstongrandopera.org.

Anthony Freud, OBE, General Director Patrick Summers, Music Director

Apr 11 | 13m | 17 | 19 | 23 | 26 | May 1 | 3, 2008 Sung in Italian with English Surtitles

Ana MarĂ­a MartĂ­nez, Cynthia Clayton*/Garrett Sorenson, Alexey Dolgov*/Joshua Hopkins, Brian Mulligan*/ Albina Shagimuratova, Alicia Gianni*/Patrick Summers, conductor; Evan Rogister, conductor*/Richard Bado, chorus master/James Robinson/Allen Moyer/James Schuette/Stephen Strawbridge/Karen Reeves *May 1 and 3 (matinee) performances only

Call 713-228-OPERA (6737) or visit HoustonGrandOpera.org Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation Official Airline of Houston Grand Opera

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Official Healthcare Provider to Houston Grand Opera

27

Front Row Seats

Team Behind KUHF’s Hit Arts Program Plans for Improvement story by Holly Beretto photos by Kara Duval

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all any Houston arts lover between 3 and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and you’ll likely get brushed aside – because that’s when arts aficionados are tuning in to KUHF 88.7’s The Front Row, the only program of its kind in the Bayou City – and one of the only shows of its style in the country.

Every weekday, The Front Row profiles all that’s happening in Houston’s arts and culture scene. With in-depth interviews of musicians, actors, writers, museum curators and artists, if it’s happening in Houston, you’ll likely hear about it on The Front Row. The curtain rose on the show four years ago, the result of a conversation around a conference table about how to improve upon the station’s programming. The timeslot seemed to be a bit of a void. KUHF’s programmers and administrators had tried some NPR (KUHF is one of Houston’s NPR affiliates) content there, without a lot of success. They’d tried a mix of news and public affairs. They were already broadcasting concerts by church choirs, Da Camera, the Moores School of Music and others on a weekly Sunday show, but wondered, was there a space for a daily magazine show?

Indeed there was.

“We had no idea how unique it would be,” said Debra Fraser, KUHF’s station manager.

“It was an experiment where we said, let’s put together music, arts interviews, some recorded music,” said Dean Dalton, who served as the show’s first executive producer and host.

Producer Bob Stevenson remembers that meeting as well, and remembers the team thinking that if there wasn’t enough 28

content, they could always play music. “I think by about the fourth day we realized that wasn’t going to be a problem,” he laughs.

Indeed, The Front Row’s success took everyone by surprise.

Fraser estimates daily listenership is about 17,000, according to the station’s Arbitron ratings number—which doesn’t count how many people download the show from the station’s Web site, kuhf.org, or who listen to the re-broadcast every evening at 10:00 p.m. on the station’s HD channel. The Front Row’s early success lives on today.

“I was at the Alley Theatre,” says Stevenson. “And I overhead this gentleman telling two women something like, ‘I heard that on The Front Row,’ and their reaction was simply matter-of-fact. They needed no explanation of what the show was.”

“The reaction has been tremendous,” says Fraser. “And it’s always something like, ‘Thank you for doing this.’”

Thank you is right. The effort behind producing a daily arts magazine show is extensive, drawing on the talents of a team of four, all of whom have other obligations at the station. Added in, from time to time, are helping hands from others on the KUHF team. Stevenson estimates everyone at the station has worked on the show in some form or fashion over the years.

One of those is Catherine Lu, who came to KUHF as a music announcer after KRTS was sold back in 2004. She’s the host of the Sunday Afternoon Concert, and has been with The Front Row since 2006.

“Dean invited me to join the team,” she explains. “Music and creative writing have always been my passions. Now, I interview artists (musicians, writers, artists, performers) and fill in for the host when necessary.”

Hosting The Front Row is clearly a big job. Dalton brought to the table a wealth of classical music knowledge, having been a singer in choirs, as well as a being a pianist and violist. He stepped down as host earlier this year, although he will continue to do reports for the show.

St. John Flynn, KUHF’s new director of cultural programming and host of The Front Row, began hosting the program this spring. He came to KUHF from Georgia Public Broadcasting, where he was a cultural affairs producer and All Things Considered network host. He also developed Cover to Cover, a monthly radio “book club” that highlighted the works of Georgia authors.

“I immediately knew it was the perfect job for me,” he says about the posting he saw for the KUHF position in Current, the public broadcasting industry newspaper. He said he was excited about the opportunity to combine management with arts and cultural coverage and program production. “The Front Row is Above: Clockwise

already an incredible production. I hope to take it to the next level.”

His plan to do that includes broadening the focus of the show, especially through adding more literary elements to it, as well as developing a substantial web presence for it, and making it more accessible to audiences that don’t necessarily listen to KUHF regularly or have a background in classical music.

Regular listeners already know they can access archives of the program from the station Web site, and can hear excerpts of interviews that might not have made it onto the program (The Front Row combines live segments with taped content, all of it produced specifically for the show).

But listeners are about to get more.

“We’re going to start some video content,” says Fraser, who is excited about taking The Front Row into a more multimedia arena. Plans include interviewer-recorded video from discussions that happen outside the KUHF studios, and Fraser emphasizes that those will look as though they were done “through our eyes, to show what we’re seeing from a particular story.”

Over the time that The Front Row’s been on the air, everyone involved in it has taken great pride in covering the Houston arts scene and telling the stories behind the performers, artists and administrators who help make things like plays, ballets, opera, art shows and classical music concerts come

from left: St. John Flynn, Catherine Lu, Chris Johnson, Bob Stevenson and Todd Hulslander

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to life. It takes time, attention to details – and some serious choices. One of those was deciding that early on, The Front Row would concentrate on professional and semi-professional arts groups only.

Stevenson estimates that there are only between fifteen and twenty “slots” per week on the show, and in a city like Houston, where there’s something happening culturally nearly all the time, it’s impossible to pack everything in.

“But,” he says, “we have a very good track record.”

“I can’t emphasize how unique The Front Row is among public radio stations in the U.S.,” says Flynn, who was impressed from afar with the program’s commitment to the city’s arts scene. “For a public radio station to produce a daily hour-long arts magazine is an incredible feat; it shows the commitment of the station to the Houston arts community and to its listeners, and it speaks volumes to the quality of the staff at KUHF.” Fraser agrees.

“There are a lot of neat things we get to do because of who we are,” she says, noting that a commercial station wouldn’t take the time or invest the resources into a daily program like this one. “It’s a huge investment, and it’s something that only public radio can do. And it’s really kind of a privilege to be able to do this.”

Lu agrees that’s a privilege to cover the arts scene the way the team does. Her duties on the show allowed her to interview Elizabeth Alexander, who was her English professor in college and is now a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet, teaching at

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Harvard, as well as internationally-renowned violinist Sarah Chang.

“I admire them as artists, and it was amazing to have a glimpse of their personalities and their thoughts,” she says.

That’s also one of the things Dalton noted as a favorite part of working on the program.

“There’s that moment of magic that happens when you get someone to go someplace in an interview that maybe they haven’t been or where you haven’t been, and it touches a chord,” he says.

“It’s just so much fun,” adds Stevenson, “to sit and talk with these highly skilled, highly trained and highly accomplished artists who come into our studio. Their enthusiasm for what they do transfers to us and that transfers to the listeners, and everyone gets excited.”

Everyone involved with The Front Row says they’ve received emails and calls from listeners – and cultural programming organizations – that attest to the excitement surrounding the show.

“We hear a lot of ‘Thanks for telling us what we didn’t know,’” says Fraser. “It’s a cool time to be providers of content.” Adds Flynn: “I believe it is our job to hold a mirror up to the entire community and to reflect that cultural diversity back to our listeners. That’s what I believe our public service mission is.

“It’s a lot of work,” emphasizes Stevenson. “But I’m also having more fun at my job than I’ve had in a long time. I love talking to creative people about what they do.”

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performance review

Translations Main Street Theater

Hugh (Mark Adams, foreground) and son Manus (Steven Laing, background), photo by Doug Killgore

Main Street’s production of Brian Friel’s Translations had a particular resonance for the topics currently on the political table. The erosion of the cultural tongue, the grace of the naming of places, and the recklessness of imperialism lie at the heart of this poignant drama. Friel never shied away from politics, and Translations was no exception.

The story takes place over the course of a few unusually hot August days in 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag/Ballybeg, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal.

Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland have arrived to map and rename the land in their own crude and rather lifeless tongue. It’s quite a class at the hedge-school run by a drunken scholar, Hugh, who begins every thought with three ideas. Unfortunately, an alcoholic fog never allows him to get beyond the second idea. Manus, his crippled son, pines for the local dairymaid, Maire, who seems rather taken with Yolland. Owen, Hugh’s successful son, arrives to help translate for the officers and be a liaison to the British.

What seems like a routine mission takes a curious turn when Yolland becomes missing in action after a tryst with Maire. Captain Lancey threatens to kill the livestock, then pillage the village house by house if Yolland is not found. The play ends at the height of the hysteria, leaving us to ponder the depth of the destruction, and the full weight of the threat of ruin.

The excellent cast was headed up by the noble Mark Adams as Hugh, the ultra-literate scholar whose poetic style fails to save the day. Nicholas Collins portrayed Yolland with suitable swagger and a touch of dashing innocence. Carolyn Johnson’s charming Maire gave new meaning to the Mars vs. Venus gender miscommunication issue. Joel Sandel endowed Owen, the wealthy brother turned translator/peacemaker, with robust energy. Steven Laing delivered a believable performance as Manus, the gentle cripple who does not get the girl.

David Harlan’s Jimmy Jack, the lonely scholar who can read several languages but does not change his clothes, was spot-on. Kay Allmand’s delicate and effective semi-mute girl, Sarah, spends most of the play just diligently watching her world disintegrate around her. James Arrington, Steve Bullitt, and Lyndsay Sweeney completed the strong cast.

Rebecca Greene Udden’s fine direction kept the focus on the Friel’s rhythmic language, where it should be. The economy of Jodi Bobrovsky’s ramshackle school house, combined with Andrew Ruthven’s lighting design, conjured a harsh, but elegant landscape. It was dreary all right, including some rather authentic rain provided by sound designer Craig Seanor. A collective effort to keep the environment spare made the words all the more powerful. Hugh has the last word, (actually in the dead middle of the play), when he says. “Words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer match the landscape of...fact.”

– Nancy Wozny

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performance review

Masquerade Theatre The Scarlet Pimpernel

Marguerite (Kristina Sullivan) and Chauvelin (Ilich Guardiola) share an exchange while Percy (Luther Chakurian) looks on

Frank Wildhorn’s camped-up take on Baroness Orczy’s Englishman who feigns foppishness to cover heroics during the French Revolution is far from the best musical Houston’s Masquerade Theatre has ever tackled. Since 1997, it has been a perennial also-ran with too many songs suffering from too much “belting disease,” and not enough real emotion to support them. Yet the production at the Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall may well have presented the most mature ensemble work the local troupe has done to date.

Wildhorn, probably best known for the deliciously over-the-top Jekyll & Hyde (featuring one of literature’s greatest stories ever told) seemed in Pimpernel to be trying for something similar – yet without the terrific story. The show, which had no fewer than four briefish runs on Broadway (as opposed, understandably, to one long one) seems to stop in its tracks every 3-5 minutes for another loud, overwrought song in the style of Jekyll’s “This Is the Moment.”

As a result, what you think must be dozens of songs belted out in the style beloved today all end up sounding alike. At its worst, the result is less high-octane musical theater

than high-decibel American Idol. And the many moments in Pimpernel crafted by the marketing department to serve us Les Miserables warmed over only emphasize the emptiness of all this noise.

Still, Masquerade’s resident company has seldom looked, sung or acted better.

The cast was larger than usual, with several guest artists taken on. And the set, lighting and costumes were about as attractive as they’re going to get this side of big-bucks Broadway. Leading the cast was a new incarnation of Luther Chakurian, so effective as the demonic Sweeney Todd a season or so back. In the course of the evening, he played the wildly, comically foppish Sir Percy, who gathered around him a group of truly “merry men” flitting about the stage, but also dropped this pretense to cross the English Channel rescuing French men and women from the guillotine. In its own crazy way, Chakurian’s was a performance worthy of all his previous impressive work at Masquerade. He also got to embody a Belgian spy who wormed his way into the good graces of Robespierre and the show’s villain Chauvelin (or Inspector Javert, if this were a much better musical), played with conviction

and intense musicality by Ilich Guardiola.

One of the remarkable evolutions in this Pimpernel was displayed by Kristina Sullivan, whose lovely lyric soprano has often been trapped in ingénue songs about pretty birds and such. Though, again, the story didn’t justify them, Sullivan got a bushel of darker, lusher, more emotional songs to sing here, the sort that talk about the complexities of relationships in ways meant for greater, sadder universality. The entire cast sang and moved well throughout an overlong evening that bandied between Les Mis grandiosity (“Into the Fire”) and Phantom of the Opera theatricality (“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” the bal masque number that – sound familiar? - opened Act II). All the men involved in Sir Percy’s double life deserve kudos for their prancing. Their singing of tongue-in-cheek “The Creation of Man” was a just-this-side-of cross-dressing delight.

And John Gremillion’s brief but brilliant limp-wrist-rising bit must be the only stage business ever to reference Dr. Strangelove and Rocky Horror in a single motion.

– John DeMers

35

performance review

Houston Ballet Gershwin Glam

Houston Ballet broke the winter ballet drought with varied program including Balanchine’s classic Serenade, Christopher Bruce’s biting Swansong, and Stanton Welch’s shiny new ballet, The Core. Serenade is a ballet that makes young women want to become dancers. Who can resist the sight of a flock of perfected spaced ballerinas reaching with their gently bent wrists? It’s one of those moments in ballet that feels utterly complete. The company showed off strong ensemble work and adherence to Balanchine’s pared-down style. It was a break-out night for Katharine Precourt, who demonstrated gorgeous line, superb technique, and an unforced grace.

Bruce’s Swansong shifted the mood in a decidedly somber direction in his examination of the psychological dialogue of torture.

Swansong may have been created in 1987 during the heart of turmoil in Latin American, but who knew that in 2008 torture would be such a regretfully timely subject.

There’s even a visual reference to waterboarding. Swansong featured outstanding performances by Ian Casady and Nicholas Leschke as the tap-dancing interrogators, and Connor Walsh as the transcendent victim. Casady and Leschke projected a cool disassociated demeanor that emphasized the dehumanizing aspects of torture. Walsh pushed past the safety zone in his performance and revealed the inner workings of a breaking psyche, and the faint glimmer of

hope in his dramatic walking-toward-thelight escape.

Welch’s glamfest, The Core: Gershwin the Heart of the Big Apple, pulled out all the stops and then some. Picture That’s Entertainment ballet style. This jam-packed ballet had an everything but the kitchen sink appeal and included Manhattan skylines, familiar iconic characters, fire escapes, street lamps, even the George Washington bridge.

Barbara Bears (in a blond poodle wig) and Simon Ball steamed up the stage with their Stella and Stanley “Streetcar Named Desire” imitations. Melody Herrera conjured Ann Miller in her charming performance as “Rosie.” Come to think of it, just about every part of this ballet contained some kind of nod to the past. In the end, though, The Core suffered from looking too frivolous against the lingering sting of Swansong.

The Cinderella story got an extreme makeover in Welch’s American premiere of this classic tale. With over 1,500 versions of the story already in existence, certainly there’s room for one more, and this one is a keeper. Welch combined pathos, following the dark tenor of Prokofiev’s score, with sharp wit, and full-bodied characters. So, there’s no pumpkin—get over it.

Surely, it’s a better deal for our heroine to get transformed into an almost-princess (who still wipes her nose on her big entrance) by a bunch of zomberellas lurking around her mother’s grave.

The right out of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil graveyard scene rocked the house, and recalled Michael Jackson’s famous Thriller video. Amy Fote played up the tomboy in her tough-girl Cinderella as she progressed from troubled child to woman in love. She embraced the character with heartfelt abandon. The bespectacled Ian Casady was perfectly cast as the smitten nerdy wallflower turned Cinderella’s love interest. Walsh’s movie star good looks worked well as the conceited prince.

James Gotesky’s stepmother showed off a combination of Cruella de Ville and Anne Bancroft in his holier-than-thou strut. Steven Woodgate and Oliver Halkowich looked fabulously dowdy in their stepsister act, en pointe no less.

Kristian Fredrikson’s glorious storybook setting and luscious parade of gold-trimmed black gowns kept the dark thread alive.

Alternating between grandiose American Gothic interiors and a velvety black near empty stage kept a strong visual tension which was well matched by Welch’s complex narrative tone. Welch has smartly kept the arc of the story intact while rearranging the details, much in the way a true teller of tales would do, to make one rousing and very relevant ballet. When all was said, done, and danced, few missed the mice. Ermanno Florio led Houston Ballet Orchestra in a crisp performance.

– Nancy Wozny

Ian Casady, Connor Walsh and Nicholas Leschke in Swan Song, photo by Christopher Bruce

36

performance review

AD Players The Importance of Being Earnest

Above: Jennifer Dean as Gwendolyn, Laurie Arriaga as Cecily Cardew and Chip Simmons as Merriman, photo by Orlando Arriaga

Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest jumped to brilliant life on the A.D. Players stage. A work that pokes fun at society, at wannabes, at the average Joe, it’s a work of quick wit, sharp observation and clever good fun.

Essentially, Earnest is something of a great buddy flick for the stage.

Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing have been leading something of a double life. John lives in the country, where he cares for his 18-year-old ward, Cecily Cardew. The only way he feels he can get away is to pretend to be going to the city to visit his (nonexistent) brother Ernest. Algie, on the other hand, lives in town, but has often used his (also non-existent) sick friend Bunbury as an excuse to get out of obligations and head to the country. Hilarity and mis-identity ensue throughout.

Part of what makes this play work so well after more than 100 years is Wilde’s sharp writing. The thing that made it work so well at A.D. Players was the casting. Jeanette Clift (who is also the group’s founder) was a brilliant delight as Lady Bracknell, Algie’s aunt, who is determined to marry her daughter Gwendolen off to just the right sort of person—the sort which does not include Algie’s orphaned friend John, who, we learn, was left as a baby in a train station. Clift acts with her whole body, conveying what could be pages of dialogue in a look, a mere gesture of her hand. With a voice that’s gravelly with disdain, she’s every inch the Victorian societal matron.

Jeffrey McMorrough and Kevin Dean as Algie and John (both of whom adopted the name Ernest at various points in the piece) play off each other like the greatest Jeeves and Wooster episodes, their hijinks, one-upsmanship and courting of their ladies simply delightful.

As their beloveds, Jennifer Dean (Gwendolen) and Laurie Arriaga (Cecily, for whom Algie falls head over heels), earn laughs and sympathy for their portrayals. Arriaga’s Cecily, in particular, is deliciously daffy.

Lovely sets and lighting, designed by Stormy Mitchell and Angela Washenfelder, respectively, enhance the uppercrust, society feel of the production. Christy Watkins’ direction was sharp, and, despite some uneven accents from the cast, the production truly hit all the right notes. “There’s something about that name – Earnest,” the characters offer up at various times during the play. Indeed, there very much is.

– Holly Beretto

37

visual art review

Gallery Sonja Roesch Machine Learning

If it is possible to have positive results by trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, Matthew Deleget has done it at Gallery Sonja Roesch. Machine Learning is comprised of four abstract painters from New York, all of which are more than competent in their field. The theme of the show, however, sits like a bottled tan on the flesh of an otherwise radiant repose.

Deleget’s ambitious conceit is to align contemporary abstract painting with the rise of the Internet, especially the focus of search engines; hence the title, a sort of artificial intelligence vibe focusing on pattern recognition as a way of making bits and bites behave in a savvy manner. The problem is that none of the work has anything remotely to do with the Internet. There is a sort of “pattern recognition” happening in the mostly stripe paintGilbert Hsiao Revolver II, 2006 ing oriented work of the four artists, but it is a huge stretch to fit that into the world of Google. The Acrylic on wood panel biggest pitfall is that there really is not (and perhaps should not) be a pragmatic leg to these paintings, while 30 inches in diameter there obviously must be with the Internet. It is as though Deleget is forcing the viewer to wear a pair of 3D glasses to look at a three-dimensional vista. It’s just not needed. This happily does not hamper most of the work itself. Gallery Sonja Roesch is a premier showcase in Houston for “reductive” work, as the eponymous owner dubs it. It is refreshing how her shows can embrace a sense of humor in an often pedantic medium. And here, while not spot-on, most of the work in the show holds up to scrutiny.

The standout pieces are from Henry Brown, an abstract painter of note in the field. His paintings encourage inspection and deliver on many levels. His compositions are derived from notebook meanderings and retain a sense of authenticity one would expect from such a methodical approach. An undercurrent of penciled circles and directional lines dictate the painted surface that presents a sort of warped expanse of space. Smartly cropped, the paintings recall a 70’s aesthetic that simultaneously recalls Battlestar Galactica and Sol LeWitt. The angles depicted in the paintings pull the eye into the work, and when one closely inspects the surface, the visual information retains a sort of integrity not found in some of the other paintings.

Gilbert Hsiao’s paintings, while very unique and powerful, have a way of dissolving negatively into process when dissected. His layered stripes converge and repeat in a textured patterning that feels almost sculptural. His process draws attention to the surface in a Stella-like manner, especially given the shaped surfaces Hsiao is employing. It is as though the artist is channeling Stella’s groundbreaking minimalist works from the 1950s and 1960s while giving homage to that pioneer’s later works vis a vis Stella’s own garish color palette. They work, but they also confront the eye in a way that repulses. The stripes that compose his paintings also belie process in a way that is perhaps not intentional.

The tapelines are prominent as well as the bleeds from the paint application. This may perhaps be nothing more than a geeky technical faux pas, but it is hard not to get caught up in the application when gazing at the works, which they definitely lend themselves to.

Douglas Melinin’s paintings are very striking. Their exploration of “pattern” perhaps comes closest to the ill-considered thesis of the show, but when viewed over time, they speak of a labored and tired process. As intricate as these works are, the 1980s color scheme falls apart when studied. The ambitious and dynamic stripes (which comprise all of the imagery) are layered upon layer, predictably and clumsily. It feels as though the artist became so entranced with the linear subject matter that he forgot about the requisite attention to surface. One can only think of tape and paint viscosity when looking at the work.

This problem does not arise in the works of Terry Haggerty. His surfaces are amazingly austere. It is as though Haggerty has tapped into the cerebral cortex of the venerated and late director Stanley Kubrick and created works that succumb to a similar scrutiny. The large works are clean, smooth and intelligent in both their conception and execution. While not “machine” perfect, Henry Brown, Relative Position, 2004; Acrylic, pencil and gesso on canvas, 36 x 72 inches the subtle imperfections make the paintings, where in other paintings from the show, the “matter” of the paint hinders.

All of the works are above average for the genre and are definitely worth the trip. The halfbaked premise of the show is best left unexplored; the Internet has nothing to do with this work, but it’s work worth viewing nonetheless.

-Garland Fielder Through May 3rd, 2309 Caroline Street, 713.659.5424, gallerysonjaroesch.com 38

visual art review

Museum of Fine Arts Houston Pompeii:Tales from an Eruption Through June 22, 1001 Bissonnet Street, 713.639.7300, mfah.org

Life was going along just fine for the thriving people of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Terzigno until August 24, A.D. 79, when Mount Vesuvius buried the town in layers of ash and pumice. The sole surviving witness, historian Pliny the Younger, described a “plunge into darkness.” The darkness lifts in at the MFAH in Tales from an Eruption, a dazzling display of 479 pieces that have been excavated during the past 15 years. Not that there’s ever an upside of a catastrophe, but one just has to marvel at how these exquisite objects have fared through the centuries. Goethe had it right when he wrote after a visit, “Many disasters have befallen the world, but few have brought posterity so much joy.” Vesuvius, a stratovolcano, is one of the most deadly and heavily monitored volcanoes in the world, and continues to threaten its nearby residents.

Bronze and marble sculptures, frescoes, jewelry, table silver, and casts of bodies caught mid-escape make up the body of the exhibit. Full-scale photographs, including a panorama of the city’s main street, grace the entrance and other key points, lending a sense of context and providing a suitable container for the many small objects. The exhibit’s design strikes a potent balance between place and object as clues to these long silenced people are revealed.

These objects are astoundingly intact due to the extraordinary preservation quality of ash. Large pieces anchor the exhibit, like a statue of Apollo, the god of music and the sun, found at the House of Menander, a relative of Nero. A marble statue of a standing woman comes with a surprising removable head so that the head of the lady of the house could be replaced by that of the current emperor’s wife during her visit to the household. Delicate earrings, rings, necklaces, and bracelets fashioned from gold and precious stones show off a strong design flair; an enchanting two-headed gold snake bracelet wrongly promised good luck. An intricate silver Kantharos cup decorated with high relief reveal a highly defined taste for luxury goods.

A collection of surgical instruments demonstrate some astounding medical knowledge.

Skeletons of the victims indicate well-set bones and superior knowledge of orthopedic surgery. Apparently these people had excellent diets and strong teeth, although some showed the beginnings of the lead poisoning which eventually contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.

In their final moments, the denizens of this doomed town gathered all the worldly belongings they could and headed out to a certain death. In their very act of escape, as presented in this exhibition, we see what they valued. This show gives us more than just a

glimpse of their daily lives, but compelling clues to a thriving metropolis. With their expansive gardens, statuary, and atriums, one gets the feeling of the high quality and rather comfortable lives the upper crust lived. Pompeii could very well have been the first suburb, and its people could well have started the yard art trend.

Amidst these gentle garden homes, however a darker strain of life flourished.

Life wasn’t so easy for the slave class, most notably the gladiators, whose intricately decorated ceremonial armor makes an impressive statement. Some enjoyed rock star status and were able to win their freedom, yet most risked their lives in one of the most inhuman sports activities in all of history.

Perhaps the most startling elements of the exhibit are the remains of the people of Pompeii themselves, caught frozen in time, unable to flee. Their twisted forms evoke the final moments of this monstrous natural tragedy.

-Nancy Wozny

Top Left: Statue of Apollo, The House of the Menander, Pompeii, 1st century A.D., Marble Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Top Right: Roman, Armband, House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii, 1st century A.D., Gold, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale

39

visual art review

The Jung Center of Houston Garland Fielder: Contortions

Garland Fielder, Untitled (Yellow Ceiling Mount, Black Floor Mount), Sizes variable, wood, paint & hardware, 2008

Entering the current Jung Center exhibit, one feels unsteady, off-kilter, in a different dimension altogether. The geometric cube sculptures of Garland Fielder are comforting in their preciseness, yet their precarious placement, half sunk into the walls, the floor, even the ceiling of the room, give the impression that one might just as easily start melting into the seemingly firm floor. Trained in painting and drawing in San Francisco and at the University of North Texas-Denton, Fielder has always been deeply influenced by the optical illusion of cubes. In a more intimate way, he was philosophically drawn to the question of whether what one sees is objective or is in reality a choice one makes.

The world of optical illusions, geometry, and the play between line and space all figure into Fielder’s current show displayed with consummate tranquility in the very appropriate space of the sedate Jung Center. First, there are paintings in which the interplay between lines, shadow and empty space boast Mandala-like patterns. Inarguably, concentration on these perfectly constructed geometric forms produce a calming, almost hypnotic effect on the viewer.

Fielder’s sculpture is one of clean lines, abstract forms and bold colors. He cites the

early work of Frank Stella as an influence, apparent in the stark contrast of line and space in these three-dimensional cubes that sink effortlessly into the planes of surfaces. The walls, floor and tables all look as penetrable as the surface of pond, which is precisely how Fielder decides where to position the flat “surface” of each cube, the part that will lie flush with the table or floor on which it rests. An artist who is open to the organic progression of technique, Fielder was deeply entrenched in a mathematician’s nightmare (and a carpenter’s hell) while poring over equations as to how he would saw the sculptures so that their askew placement would have the desired effect. Suddenly, a technique for slicing the cube presented itself--he takes perfectly intact wooden cubes to a pool and dips them in, carefully recording the water line, so that the edges are flawless. Fielder’s carefully designed diptychs of realized sculptures are pictured backwards in a two-dimensional blueprint image. These are reminiscent of drafts and yet once again, are intended to play on the viewer’s perception of what exists and what is imagined.

This show is an exploration of the concept of pure form. The two and threedimensional paintings and sculptures are only a few of the ways Fielder is exploring this concept. His not-yet-realized project involves construction of the perfect forms of Platonic solids—the five, unique, threedimensional shapes in which all the faces, edges and angles are congruent. The polyhedrons were named for the Greek philosopher who theorized that each represented a different classical element.

Fielder’s sculptures already grace several prominent business buildings throughout Houston as well as private collections. Part painter, part sculptor and part philosopher, Fielder is a local artist whose unique talent will be intriguing for those who have not seen his installations, and for those who have already realized their somewhat otherworldly essence.

-Sarah Gajkowski-Hill

Through April 29th, 5200 Montrose Boulevard, 713.524.8253, cgjunghouston.org 40

visual art review

CTRL Gallery Jane South and John Sparagana Through different approaches to cutand-paste methods, Jane South and John Sparagana are paired in a fascinating show of meticulously assembled creations. Both artists use cut paper to forge forms that play with senses of perspective and color in quite astounding ways.

South’s untitled three-dimensional works in paper, paint, and balsa wood appear substantial, yet are so light that straight pins seem to be their sole source of attachment to the wall. Resembling nothing so much as fantastic machines, their intricately cut surfaces are layered in ways that create a delicate interplay of light, shadow, and color that changes as the viewer moves around them. Lines of shadow and seam are delicately painted on the surfaces to provide a further illusion of substance; the paper surfaces could easily be mistaken for plasma-cut metal forms. South’s aesthetic is reminiscent of Victorian patent draw-

ings, carnival rides and Rube Goldberg contraptions; each work, though static seems poised to whir into motion. These cartoonish industrial forms reverberate with a sort of ominous playfulness that belies the undoubtedly painstaking nature of their creation. Her works, on the whole, embody a quite successful irony through their exquisite fragility.

Sparagana’s large pictures are pixilated renditions of large appropriated images; these mammoth reproductions are further removed from their magazine sources through a process of crumpling (or “fatiguing,” as the artist terms it), cutting, and weaving. Strips of these prints mere millimeters in width are fused basketweavestyle with metallic strips, giving the resulting images a sheen that enhances their ghostly quality. The original images remain elusive, disintegrating almost magically as the viewer approaches, yet never quite resolving with

Above:

increasing distance. Attached to a thick background of white paper, which in many cases serves as a negative space counterpoint to the images, each image fairly buzzes in the retinas with its kinetic colorplay energy. Through his process, Sparagna’s work questions the implied intimacy of his source images, which were pulled from the pages of various magazines.

Neither artist’s work is remotely done justice in print; these works depend heavily on close observation and the viewer’s changing perspective for their success.

A visit to the gallery is the only way to experience what these artists have divulged through their intricately crafted work.

-Tria Wood

Through April 5th, 3907 Main Street, 713.523.2875, ctrlgallery.com

Jane South, NC Yellow, 2007; Hand cut & folded paper, ink, acrylic, balsa, 27 x 56 x 16 in

41

April Arts Calendar April 1 Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Andrea White: Window Boy, 7pm.

April 2 The Jung Center 713.524.8254 cgjunghouston. org Garland Fielder: Contortions, Linda Walsh: Landscapes of Water, thru 4/29.

April 3 Houston Symphony 713.224.7575 houstonsymphony.org Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, thru 4/6, Jones Hall.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Bapsi Sidhwa: The Pakistani Bride, 6pm.

April 4 Talento Bilingue de Houston 713.222.1213 tbhcenter.com La Labor - Paintings by Roel Flores, thru 6/8.

Joan Wich & Co. 713.526.1551 joanwichgallery. com Helmut Barnett: The Shape of Things, thru 5/3.

Stages Repertory Theatre 713-527-0123 stagestheatre.com Rounding Third, thru 4/20.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Gulf Coast Reading Series, 7pm.

Houston Poetry Fest First Fridays 713.521.3519 houstonpoetryfest.net Barbara Youngblood Carr, 8:30pm, Inprint House.

Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre 281.480.1617 bahbt.org Swan Lake, thru 4/6, University of Houston Clear Lake’s Bayou Theatre.

Masquerade Theatre 713.861.7045 masqueradetheatre.com Lucky Stiff, thru 4/6, Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center.

April 5 Mackey Gallery mackeygallery.com Anthony Thompson Shumate, thru April.

Redbud Gallery 713.862.2532 redbudgallery.com Susan Plum, thru 4/27.

G Gallery ggalleryhouston.com The Engine: John H. Lienhard’s photographs, thru 4/28.

HEB Houston Children’s Festival houstonchildrensfestival.com thru 4/6.

Houston Heights Home and Garden Tour 713.861.4002 houstonheights.org thru 4/6.

April 7 Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Kevin Brockmeier: The View From the Seventh Layer, 7:30pm.

April 8 Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Inprint Prize Winners Reading, 7pm.

Houston Friends of Music 713.348.5400 houstonfriendsofmusic.org Belcea String Quartet, 8pm, Stude Concert Hall, Rice University.

April 9 Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Valentin Gertsman: Construction Site = Art, 5pm.

April 10 CTRL Gallery 713.523.2875 ctrlgallery.com Katy Heinlein, thru 5/24.

Dominic Walsh Dance Theater 713.652.DWDT dwdt.org E_Merging II, and 4/11, 7:30pm, Hobby Center, Zilkha Hall.

Society for the Performing Arts 731.227.4SPA spahouston.org DanceBrazil, 8pm, Jones Hall.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Virginia Ironside: No! I Don’t Want to Join a

Book Club, 7pm.

DiverseWorks 713.223.8346 diverseworks. org Foundation for Modern Music presents Julia Bronkhurst, call for details.

Rothko Chapel 713.524.9839 rothkochapel.org American Portraits: I too sing...the darker brother featuring the Houston Ebony Opera Guild, 7:30pm.

April 11 Houston Grand Opera 713.546.0200 houstongrandopera.com Puccini: La bohème, thru 5/3.

Houston Symphony 713.224.7575 houstonsymphony.org Motown’s Greatest Hits, thru 4/13.

Worldfest International Film Festival 713.965.9955 worldfest.org thru 4/20, AMC Theatres, 2949 Dunvale.

Watercolor Art Society 713.942.9966 watercolorhouston.org April show, judged by Arthur Turner, thru 5/2.

April 12 Blaffer Gallery 713.743.9521 blaffergallery.org 2008 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition, thru 4/26. koelsch gallery 713.862.5722 koelschgallery.com Claire Cusack and W. Tucker, thru 5/10.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Inprint Special Event: Marjane Satrapi, 7:30pm, Hobby Center, Zilkha Hall.

Da Camera 713.524.5050 dacamera.com Manuel Barrueco and Cuarteto Latinoamericano, 8pm, Wortham Center’s Cullen Theater.

Woodlands Waterway Art Festival woodlandsartsfestival.com thru 4/13.

April 13 MFAH 713.639.7300 mfah.org John Alexander: A Retrospective, thru 6/22.

Da Camera 713.524.5050 dacamera.com Pacifica Quartet: Elliott Carter and Late Beethoven, thru 4/15, The Menil Collection Museum.

April 15 Main Street Youth Theater 713.524.6706 mainstreettheater.com James and the Giant Peach, thru 5/23.

April 16 Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Tony Earley: The Blue Star, 7pm.

April 17 Aurora Picture Show 713.868.2101 aurorapictureshow.org Media Archeology: Live & Televised | Negativland, 8pm, Rice University, Herring Hall.

Museum of Printing History 713.522.4652 printingmuseum.org Orchidaceae: Photographs by Frazier King, thru 6/21.

Talento Bilingue de Houston 713.222.1213 tbhcenter.com Mi Bandera es La Tierra, thru 4/19.

Gremillion & Co. 713.522.2701 gremillion.com Fernando Casas, opens 6pm.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Robin Romm - The Mother Garden: Stories, 7pm.

April 18 Aurora Picture Show 713.868.2101 aurorapictureshow.org Media Archeology: Live & Televised | Brent Green, 8pm, The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Kent Shaw & Jenny Browne: Calenture, The

Second Reason, 7pm.

Houston Symphony 713.224.7575 houstonsymphony.org Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, thru 4/20, Jones Hall.

Canal Street Gallery 713-724-0709 canalstreetgallery.com There Goes the Neighborhood!, opens 7pm.

April 19 Aurora Picture Show 713.868.2101 aurorapictureshow.org Media Archeology: Live & Televised | Shana Moulton, 8pm, DiverseWorks Art Space.

Aurora Picture Show 713.868.2101 aurorapictureshow.org Media Archeology: Live & Televised | Tara Mateik, 9pm, DiverseWorks Art Space.

Houston International Festival 713.654.8808 ifest.org thru 4/20 and 4/26 thru 4/27.

April 21 Inprint Brown Reading Series 713.521.2026 inprinthouston.org Robert Hass, 7:30pm, Alley Theatre.

April 22 Lawndale Art Center 713.528.5858 lawndaleartcenter.org 13th Annual 20th Century Modern Market, thru 4/27.

Brazos Bookstore 713.523.0701 brazosbookstore. com Jim Parsons & David Bush: Houston Deco, 7pm.

April 23 Houston Symphony 713.224.7575 houstonsymphony.org Johnny Mathis, thru 4/13.

April 24 Rice Gallery 713.348.6069 ricegallery.org Launch: Rice Student Art Exhibition 45, thru 5/10.

A.D. Players Children’s Theatre 713.526.2721 adplayers.org The Emperor’s New Clothes, thru 5/24.

Society for the Performing Arts 731.227.4SPA spahouston.org Itzhak Perlman, 8pm, Jones Hall.

April 25 Houston Grand Opera 713.546.0200 houstongrandopera.com Britten: Billy Budd, thru 5/2.

A.D. Players 713.526.2721 adplayers.org The Heiress, thru 6/1.

DiverseWorks 713.223.8346 diverseworks.org Charles: 40 yrs of photographs by Charles “Teenie” Harris, thru May. Blaffer Gallery 713.743.9521 blaffergallery.org Charles “Teenie” Harris: Rhapsody in Black & White, preview and salon, 6pm.

April 26 Houston Symphony 713.224.7575 houstonsymphony.org Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio, St. Paul, 7:30pm, Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church.

Da Camera 713.524.5050 dacamera.com Vijay Iyer Quartet, 8pm, Wortham Center’s Cullen Theater.

Miller Outdoor Theatre 713.284.8352 milleroutdoortheatre.com Dance of Asian America: East Meets West VI, 8pm.

Inner Art Corridor innerartcorridor.com 3rd Annual “I C Art” Open Studio Tour 2008, thru 4/27.

April 28 Progressive Forum 713.664.0020 progressiveforumhouston.org Bill McKibben, author of End of Nature, 7:30pm, Wortham Center, Cullen Theater.

April 29 Alley Theatre 713.228.8421 alleytheatre.org The Gershwins’ An American in Paris, thru 5/18.

42 Do you have May event that you would like to see listed here? Send all pertinent info to tria@artshouston.com by April 10th

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Stations Anthony Thompson Shumate Apama Mackey Gallery 628 East 11th Street Opening Saturday April 5, 6-8:30pm Through mackeygallery.com

Peel Gallery Shop is the evolution of the traditional gallery space, mixing art and retail with aplomb, going beyond the usual home décor store by focusing on individual artistry rather than mass-marketed consumption. 4411 Montrose. peelgallery.org

of no relation III Leslie Scates and Lower Left in performance Saturday, April 5, 2008 8pm Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex 2201 Preston @ Hutchins Tickets: $15 available at barnevelder.org | 713.529.1819

Join for cocktails and the art of Shelley Shanks.

Thursday, April 3 5 to 8 p.m.

Hogg Palace Lofts, 401 Louisiana, 4th floor Parking on street and in nearby lots

John Palmer is represented by fine art galleries in cities such as New York, London, Seattle and New Orleans. Palmer’s art can also be seen in Tony’s Restaurant and the Ritz Carlton in Dallas. Palmer’s studio is currently located at Winter Street Studios. His new residence and studio on Heights Blvd will be completed in April 2008.

JohnPalmerArt.com 43

restaurant review

The Grove

by John DeMers

More Delicious Than a Walk in the Park

One of the “spoils of war” in the restaurant business – yes, there are many, as Anthony Bourdain would attest – is the chance to do really cool stuff. So it came as no big surprise when the Schiller-Del Grande Group (they of Café Annie, Café Express and Taco Milagro) was chosen to handle the food and drink at Discovery Green.

If you don’t yet know Discovery Green, you probably should and you probably will. This recently opened green space in downtown Houston, right in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center and the Hilton, is trying to be all things to all people – and, as the saying goes, this means you. It’s a lovely park for daytime strolling, but also, according to its planners, a venue for concerts, weddings, corporate events, dance recitals, storytellings and just about anything else. In the evenings too.

And since the drawings shown throughout the design process always had people in them, those people would need to be fed.

The logical extension of Discovery Green, expressed in food, wine and cocktails, is The Grove, a place of soaring ceilings worthy of a European cathedral – except they’re modern, of course, meaning more like a contemporary museum – plus top-to-bottom windows that, in the daytime in ‘60s vernacular, let the sun shine in. In the evening, the trees of the park are still very much there, a mystery land of light and shadow, as though The Grove were your dining room and nature grew within it.

Actually, what grows within The Grove is a kitchen. And to run that already-busy machine, Schiller-Del Grande selected one of our favorite chefs anywhere, Ryan Pera, who came to town to breathe new life into 17 at the Alden. The fact that he was whisked away for this new gig is proof that he pleased a lot of people at his old one.

The menu, though, may take a bit of getting used to.

Instead of a classic progression from appetizer to entrée to dessert, this list is more a creative explosion of suggestions that almost seem, well, impromptu. They’re not, of course, but on a one-sheet full of copy blocks that aren’t necessarily “in order,” there is a disorienting but potentially pleasurable sense that you can just order whatever you want whenever you want it.

Imagine that!

Among what seem to be the starters (cleverly presented 44

with the Hamlet allusion “To Share//Or Not//To Share”) are some unexpected items that say a mouthful. Pera has the gumption to serve deviled eggs – who besides maybe your mother has made those in the past decade – spiffing them up with Spanish chorizo and tapenade – along with a nifty Carolina festival of pulled slow-roasted pork with corn cakes and maple sweet-and-sour sauce. Throw in an order of Long Island duck meatballs with coarse-grained mustard sauce plus the mildly Asianized charcoal grilled chicken wings, and your meal should be off to quite a start.

As your eyes pinball about the menu without guidance, you’ll notice both “simple salads” like Caesar or iceberg and “chef salads” with things like grilled salmon, rare tuna (sushi by way of Nice) and spicy Gulf shrimp with avocado, mango and Serrano peppers. Still, we suppose the heart and soul of Pera’s work at The Grove can be found in the page’s lower left corner: The Grove Kitchen: American Rustic Cooking.

Though some items are sure to change with the seasons, this kitchen’s opening effort was kinda Tuscany-MeetsProvence-Meets-Some-Mythical-American-Heartland-in-OurDreams. Considerable slow-cooking was on display, the kind of thing that makes so-called peasant foods anywhere on earth some of the best things to put in your mouth. On our maiden voyage at The Grove, favorites included fisherman’s stew with shellfish (bouillabaisse anyone?), mesquite-smoked Texas quail with baby turnips and wild mushrooms, and pork tenderloin with glazed bacon, Napa cabbage and marinated black-eyed peas.

For main courses you can organize yourself, you can order something from the lists called Rotisserie or Simple Grills, and then outfit it yourself from lists of vegetable sides and sauces.

We love Pera’s combinations, but this can be fun as well.

Desserts are a debauche at The Grove, but more through intensity and quality than size alone. As virtually every sweet finale is based on a childhood memory, your favorite will somewhat depend on what you remember. Our personal choices include the squares of pecan and key lime pies, the roasted pear bread pudding and the deep-dish apple cobbler with cinnamon ice cream.

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Where to Eat

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“Purely Indian, Purely Good” -Allison Cook, Houston Chronicle

Yatra Brasserie 706 Main, 713.224.6700 yatrausa.com

Flemings Steakhouse 2405 W. Alabama 713.520.5959

Max’s Wine Dive 4720 Washington 713.880.8737 maxswinedive.com “our favorite joke-becomes-dinner of all time, the Texas Haute Dog. This one makes the weiner from grass-fed gourmet beef, wraps it in an artisan bun, covers it in what may be the best “Texas red” chili anywhere (venison or otherwise) and sprinkles it with cotija cheese, crispy fried onions and pickled jalapenos. As young IMers love to put it... OMG!” -John DeMers, ArtsHouston

Ouisie’s Table 3939 San Felipe 713.528.2264 ouisiestable.com

Salud! Winery 3939 Montrose 713.522.8282 saludwinery.com Salud! Winery caters to all your wine needs. Try before you buy! Sit and enjoy some cheeses or fine chocolates on the patio with your selection, or bring it home. We’re big on education, so talk with our trained staff and taste any of the wines before taking a bottle home.

Tart Cafe 4411 Montrose 713.526.8278 tartcafe.com 46

Want to make your own? You’ll be guided through the steps of making wine. 45 days later when the batch is ready, you return to bottle the wine and put on labels designed specifically for you.

Campo Azul Añejo Tequila

Campo Azul owns their own agave plantations in order to ensure consisitent quality and supply of their Weber Blue Agave plants. They are in the Mexican Jalisco region, whose rich red clay and soil are highly valued in the Tequla industry. They have perfected a state of the art distillation and difusing process to extract more sugars from the juice, which is then aged in white oak casks in cool, dark cellars below ground. This is a truly delicious, refreshing, aromatic tequila, smooth enough straight or to sip on the rocks.

80° 750ml $24.99 w/key*

Contrapunto Albarino Rias Baixas Located in the Northeastern region of Spain known as Galicia, Rias Baixas is known for its seafood and a Gaelic culture uncharacteristic to the rest of Spain. The wine from this region has become increasingly popular recently in the foreign markets, and for good reason. This wine is full of ripe citrus tree fruit (grapefruit and orange) with plenty of floral nuances like orange blossom and honeydew. The palate is bursting with fresh lemon meringue flavors. Enjoy in Texas heat and with any seafood fare. 750ml under $12

Maple Grove Farms Products

Maple Grove Farms of Vermont has over 90 years of expertise in producing high quality food products. Their highly sought-after line had their humble beginnings in 1915, with two local women who made maple candy using pure maple syrup and cream that were produced on their farm. Today, it has grown into one of the largest packers of pure maple syrup and a top specialty salad dressing brand in the US. They still make and hand pack the maple candies that started it all. Over the years, they have developed products at the request of consumers, such as fat free, sugar free, gluten free, all natural, and dairy free. Their goal is great tasting, ‘good for you foods’. and their commitment to quality is your satisfaction. Assorted products and prices.

Not all items available in all stores.

Prices include 5% Cash Discount, and may be subject to change.

"And now, for our Encore Wine...“

"You can find it all at Spec's"

If you haven't been to Spec's Superstore lately, you're in for a true treat!

A world of wines, foods and liquors all under one roof. With over 40,000 items in our Deli alone, it would be impossible to list 'em all, so here's just a little sampler:

Queso de Valdeon Spanish Blue Cow & Goat Cheese Brezzi White Truffle Oil Rothschild Hot Pepper Peach Chipotle Sauce Boulder Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper Potato Chips Columbus Chorizo Salame Gus Meyer Lemon Dry Soda White Toque Coconut in Shell Sorbet And so much more! Visit us here, or visit us online at www.specsonline.com, but you just gotta come see us! With friendly help, Just Flat Cheap Prices and 5% Discount for Cash or Debit Cards, you'd be wasting your money going anywhere else!

713-526-8787 • www.specsonline.com 2410 Smith Street • Houston, TX 77006

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Encore White Meritage 750ml under $12 cash

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