Editor’s Note

June / July 2022

TERRI PROVENCAL

Publisher / Editor in Chief terri@patronmagazine.com Instagram terri_provencal and patronmag

Though the art season slows for summer vacations—fewer openings, galas, and events—those working within the arts keep up the pace. Fall is just around the corner, and this year’s annual selection of Patron Art Influencers finds them busy planning, creating, and making.

Casting our net wider this year, all told there are 13 of them winnowed from a diverse spectrum, including Dallas Contemporary’s executive director Carolina Alvarez-Mathies; artists Marjorie and Ludwig Schwarz; Karpidas Collection’s collection manager Sara Hignite; curator and director of educational programming at The Warehouse, Thomas Feulmer, who is also an artist; gallery owner Daisha Board; the first City of Dallas Poet Laureate Joaquin Zihuatanejo; performance artist Christian Cruz; gallery owners Dr. Valerie Gillespie and Emmanuel Gillespie, both artists, educators, and curators; filmmaker and educator Amber Bemak; and OutLoud cofounders Allison Caldwell and Jeffery Bryant Moffitt, who work to amplify youth voices. Steve Carter, Nancy Cohen Israel, and Eve Hill-Agnus joined me to tell their stories in these pages. Prepare to be motivated by their impressive minds, community building, and acumen. Their remarkable persistence gives art lovers a reason to get out of the house and engage.

It doesn’t get more influential than the centuries-old lineage of glassmakers inhabiting the Murano islands, just a ferry ride from Venice. Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, promises to enthrall with extraordinary examples of Murano techniques alongside the work of American artists who were deeply influenced by what they found there.

Advocating art as a mechanism for well-being, Art for Tillman, written by Gavin Delahunty, discovers a persistent group who believe in the power of art for recovery. Just a year old, Tillman House is an affordable sober-living community encouraging long-term sobriety for graduates of Dallas 24 Hour Club, which provides transitional living, support services, and essential life skills for homeless alcoholics and addicts. CEO Marsha Williamson worked with Delahunty and board chair Michael Young to engage top area collectors to donate work to the two-story building to foster healing. Patron takes a look inside.

Hannah Lupton Reinhard brings her fantasy realism to the Green Family Art Foundation with House of Stars and Angels, opening June 4. We caught up with the Swarovski-loving California dreamer in Dipped In Stardust. Dallas is smitten with Hadi Fallahpisheh, a Tehran-born, Brooklyn-based artist whose Young and Clueless currently occupies The Power Station. While here, the artist took to the Katy Trail to install Guest, comprised of four cheerfully hued companion sculptures. Read about him in Dark Victory.

In Atelier, we interview Australia’s Nicky Zimmermann, the creative director of the eponymous fashion label she cofounded with her sister Simone in Sydney. Celestial Chic finds Zimmermann guided by the zodiac in a collaboration with Scottish artist Anita Inverarity for fall’s Stargazer collection. On the bespoke heels of May’s 2022 Met Gala and exhibition In America: An Anthology of Fashion and the Dallas Museum of Art’s bejeweled opening of Cartier and Islamic Art: The Search for Modernity, we pursued artinclined labels of style. Elaine Raffel shares details in Artfully Amplified.

Finally, the Bard of Avon is roaming Samuell-Grand Park this summer, as Shakespeare Dallas celebrates 50 years of producing works which have starred the likes of Morgan Freeman and Sigourney Weaver. The season kicks off with the 16th-century rom-com A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream at SamuellGrand Amphitheatre on June 15. As the weather gets steamier let’s take the influencers’ lead. Remember sly Iachimo said, “Boldness be my friend. Arm me with audacity from head to foot.”

– Terri Provencal