He used concrete, stucco, and found objects—mosaic tiles, wrought iron fencing, wagon wheels, mannequins, and tractor seats—to transform two plots on Munger Street in the East End into a vividly painted architectural maze of walkways, balconies, exhibits, and performance stages.
It became a meeting place and notorious party site for artists such as Donald Barthelme, Jack Boynton, David McManaway, and Charles T. Williams, along with numerous Houston art patrons and international visitors such as Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle.
In 1968 in San Francisco, Chip Lord and Doug Michels founded the architecture and art collective Ant Farm, which later included Douglas Hurr, Hudson Marquez, and Curtis Schreier.
On display in the oversized attic of a house on Hyde Park Street was a range of artifacts, including 250,000 postage stamps wrapped in bundles of 100, dinosaur excrement and bones, Indian skulls, tools, handmade models, over 1,000 clocks, the U.S. Constitution in Braille, wax recordings, a three-toed horse hoof, short wave radio paraphernalia, bee tracking glasses, dressed fleas, and many other curiosities and miscellany, all carefully arranged and catalogued.
The Kilgore College Rangerettes, a renowned women's synchronized drill team dressed as miniskirted cowgirls, performed during the opening night of an exhibition at CAM organized by James Harithas featuring the work of Antoni Miralda, a sculptor whose medium is food and its attendant ceremonies.
Later in 1994, Lombardi began an art practice of tracking various political, energy, and military-industrial complex conspiracies on thousands of index cards, then mapping the connections on elaborate flow chart-like drawings.
Students at the original Lawndale Art Annex on Dismuke and Lawndale included: Sharon Kopriva, Ed Wilson, Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth (The Art Guys), Paul Kittleson, Kelly Alison, Bert Samples, Craig Lesser, Donald Redman, Mary Jenewein, Barbara Jones, Robert Shuttelsworth, Glen Gipps, Chuck Dugan, Wes Hicks, Judy Long, Jim Poag and Jeff Delude.
The artists in the first show were Bill Angert, Rusty Arena, Lee Benner, Jim Bril, Certer Burnette, Daniel Cilhoun, Patti Candelari, Mimi Davies, robert Fain, Kirt Ferris, John Fournier.
Artists who have had studios at CSAW include Wes Hicks, Virgil Grotfeldt, Deborah Moore, Orson (Titus) Maquelani, Kevin Cunningham, John Calaway, Robert Campbell, Jack Massing, Rick Lowe, John Peters, James Bettison, Jim Pirtle, Nestor Topchy, Steve Wellman, Ken Adams, George Hixson, J Hugo Fat, Frank Anthony Porreco III, Rodney Elliott, Daniel Adame, Teresa O’Connor, Elaine Bradford, Ben DeSoto, Cynthia Cupach, Y. E. Torres (Yet), Betsy Odom, Jacqueline Rusca and I Love You Baby.
Accompanying events included “A Celebration of the Churches” with gospel singing; Ed Hugetz and Brian Huberman's video Who Will Stand with the Fourth Ward, produced by SWAMP; a University of Houston College of Architecture design charette; and a roundtable discussion with architects V. Nia Dorian Becnel, William Neuhaus, and Renzo Piano, and community organizer Lenwood Johnson.
The festival in Houston exploited the city's special qualities and spaces, including the Astrodome, the tunnel system of downtown, various office lobbies, a YWCA pool, and incoming airline flights.
Paul Kittelson received one of these modest $500 grants and created his Stegosaurus, a life-size dinosaur made of foam cushions over a metal armature, which he installed under the Highway 59 overpass (later demolished) at Montrose Boulevard.
DiverseWorks brought Los Angeles artist Robbie Conal to Houston to install his posters of politicians and celebrities guerilla-style throughout the city, including images from his Men With No Lips and Women With Teeth series.
Included in this inaugural exhibition were works by Paul Kittelson, Noah Edmundson, Jackie Harris, The Art Guys, Dean Ruck, Olin Calk, Carter Ernst, Ken Adams, Pati Airey, and Tim Glover.
Nestor Topchy, Rick Lowe, and Dean Ruck moved to a six-acre site on Feagan Street in the West End to fashion one of the most energetic communal art projects in the city.
Begun by artists Wayne Gilbert, Kelly Alison, Bill Hailey and filmmaker Ramzy Telley, Rubber–An Art Mob mounted twenty-five to thirty exhibitions in Texas.
True Artist Tales began as a make-believe comic soap opera in which Gilbert sprinkled recognizable characters with pseudonyms to present a semi-fictitious rendering of the Houston art scene.
In 2002 the group began meeting regularly on Wednesday nights at CSAW and adopted the name I Love You Baby (ILYB) and inducted Chris Olivier (Bexar), and Dale Stewart as members.
Curator Chris Ballou and artist Sean Thornton staged a series of interactive public art exhibitions in response to what they saw as inadequate art-presentation strategies by galleries and museums.
Unusual in format, these exhibitions appeared in unlikely places: Frost Free was held in the appliance department of a Sears store; Potlatch occurred in a local warehouse as part of Rolywholyover–A Circus for Museum by John Cage, presented at the Menil Collection; and Cross-City Blowout was a traveling “art mobile” stuffed full of artworks from Houston artists.
Sculptors Dan Havel, Dean Ruck, and Kate Petley collaborated on O House, a large-scale installation that transformed a small bungalow slated for demolition in Houston's West End neighborhood into a camera obscura.
Artist Jim Pirtle renovated a nineteenth-century storefront building on Main Street in downtown Houston into a coffee bar/ chess club/gallery/performance space that he dubbed notsuoH—Houston spelled backwards and the name of an early twentieth-century civic celebration.
Bert L. Long, Jr., created Field of Vision, a series of eyes resting on pedestals fashioned out of concrete and installed in a parklike setting in the Fifth Ward; each was dyed a different color to reflect the diversity of the neighborhood.
Notable for Turrell's open-roof Skyspace, this Quaker place of worship, funded largely through the generosity of the arts community, today is open for public viewing every Friday evening.
Artist Paul Horn, in collaboration with Dolan Smith, took over the entire top floor of the Holiday Inn Select at Highway 59 and Kirby for the exhibition The Million Dollar Hotel.
Otabenga Jones & Associates, the Houston-based artist collective of Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Jamal Cyrus, Kenya Evans, and Robert Pruitt, began staging artworks and installations dealing with African American social and historical issues.
It included work by artists Aimee Jones, David Krueger, Donna Huanca, Gabriel Delgado, Rosalinda Gonzalez, Gorton Othengo, Jason Villegas, John Champion, Jon Read, MD Williams, and Virginia Fleck.
A billboard at Highway 59 and Montrose Boulevard provided a venue from June through November for the works of five artists: Ryan Molloy's The Jones’ Got Platinum Doorknobs; Katrina Moorhead's Sampled Sky; Fannie Taper's Trust; Mark Wade's Manifest Destiny; C. Andrew Boyd's Hero 1K; and Danny Yahev-Brown's untitled project.
Founded by Juan Alonzo, this alternative studio space was established to create an environment to nurture an exchange of ideas and experiences through artistic practices to the benefit the surrounding East End neighborhood community.
Located in Houston's East End at Harrisburg Boulevard and Cesar Chavez Street, the nonprofit artist-run exhibition and studio space BOX 13 was founded by Elaine Bradford, Woody Golden, Michael Henderson, Young-Min Kang, Kathy Kelley, Teresa O’Connor, Whitney Riley, and Mat Wolff.