Creative Houston

New Director of Houston Arts Alliance Has Plans

OutSmart magazine: Arts Guru Jonathon Glus, 2008-Sep, by Marene Gustin: "Houston hasn't had a really strong municipal arts group,” Glus says. "The community doesn't know what to expect." ... It's all starting with the citywide arts database that launched earlier this summer. HAA members and grantees can now access a combined database of donors and ticket buyers to target marketing. A boon to smaller and mid-size groups, as well as individual artists, the information is scrubbed four times a year, and it's deep. ... Part of the organization's mission is to support the arts industry, as with the database, but it also grants funding—$2,731,600 to 218 applicants last year—and works to raise the city's profile as an arts center. Thus, the cultural tourism initiative, something Houston's never done.

Houston Takes Off in NY Style

NY Times Style Magazine: Second Cities Take Off, Fall 2008 Travel Guide:
It’s the new . . . Miami, full of petro-wives itching to become someone’s patron.
Who’s there . . . Designers and artists of every stripe, who come together at David Brown’s Spacetaker, an arts resource center in the Winter Street Studios.
They hang at . . . Scott Tycer’s new Textile, a restaurant in a renovated mill; the latest opening at the New World Museum; the back-in-vogue Café Annie; and the Continental Club for acts like Molly and the Ringwalds.
Mascots . . . Magda Sayeg and Dan Fergus, the ‘‘It’’ couple behind Domy books, Café Brasil, Raye boutique and the Knittas, a guerrilla gang that leaves knitted cozies on stop signs.

Houston Art Alliance Helping Artists Recover

Houston Chronicle: Houston blog helps artists recover from storm, 2008-Sep-29, by Douglas Britt: The Houston Arts Alliance has created an "artist recovery blog" to facilitate communication between the city's estimated 500 arts organizations and 14,000 working artists in the wake of Hurricane Ike. Jonathon Glus, the alliance's CEO, announced the launch of haahelps.com Friday at a town hall meeting held to assess the storm's impact on the arts community. Glus and Jerome Vielman, assistant director of grants and services, presented early findings of a survey that requested information about facility and studio damage, program cancellations and postponements, suspension of fundraising activities and interruption of artists' work.

Calendar@The Dance Card

The Dance Card - Dance Source Houston (DSH): Originally founded as the Houston Dance Initiative, Dance Source provided performance opportunities and free critical services to the community. In 2005, Dance Source expanded into its own independent organization, its goals to support the creation and promotion of dance and to be an integral component of the local thriving dance community.

Sam Houston Racepark Becoming Entertainment Complex

Houston Business Journal: Race Park, Live Nation ready to roll in the rock, 2008-Mar-21, by Greg Barr: Diversifying the entertainment options, boosting attendance at race park events and creating more awareness about the 300-acre facility was the mandate of Andrea Young, who was brought in as Sam Houston's chief operating officer in April 2007 by the park's majority owners, Houston-based Maxxam Inc.She concedes that the move to add music concerts had its share of growing pains while she began a hiring spree to boost the race park's sales and marketing staff, simultaneously adding more country music concert and festival events last year -- but is now ready to be a serious player in the region's competitive entertainment market....Young's game plan involves eventually adding a major annual music event with general admission tickets along the scale of the New Orleans Jazz Festival, which attracts some 200,000 fans over eight days, or the Austin City Limits Festival.

Alley's Edge is its Resident Company

Houston Chronicle: Team players: Alley's ensemble share vision, passion, 2008-Mar-9, by Everett Evans: While the Alley hires other actors as needed, some of whom become virtual semiregulars, the 12-person core troupe is viewed by everyone at the theater, and many observers beyond, as perhaps the company's greatest asset....Teresa Eyring, executive director of the Theatre Communications Group (the service organization for nonprofit professional theaters), estimates only about 10 maintain a resident troupe at all, and few of those have as large a group as the Alley does...."I think the Alley's resident company is extraordinary in terms of its talent," New York-based director Scott Schwartz says. "Absolutely top-quality actors by any measure, all making a home here in the same place."

HGO Luring New Audiences

Houston Chronicle: Will HGO subscribers buy into new season?, 2008-Feb-7, by Charles Ward: HGO is amassing a war chest for a five-year plan aimed at selling tickets to groups of people in niche markets who might not otherwise go to the opera. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has given $1 million toward the project, called Nexus, Freud said.

See More Texas Film

Houston Film Commision: Every first Thursday of the month we will have a FREE screening of award-winning Texas-made short film entries from the Houston Film Commissions Texas Filmmakers Showcase or from other film festivals. The one hour-ish screenings will begin at 9PM at Dean's Credit Clothing, 316 Main Street (between Preston & Congress). Come see some great films that you may never get to see again or to just talk film in the comfort of the hippest venue downtown. If you can't make it, do the right thing and tell a film making friend.

Building African American Library

Houston Chronicle: In search of black history treasures. 2008-Jan-4, by Leslie Casimir: Community historian Patricia Prather...seemed entranced on a recent afternoon as she sat in Punch's living room, sifting through the 86-year-old's stacks of yellowed papers and folders. "People have history in their homes, but they just don't know it." Prather, 64, was commissioned by the city of Houston to find artifacts, documents and photographs to be housed at the long-planned African American Library at the Gregory School.

Patricia Johnson on Houston's Cultural Evolution

Houston Chronicle: Houston art scene has experienced a cultural evolution. 2007-Dec-2, by Patricia C. Johnson: I signed on as the Houston Chronicle's arts writer in June 1981. Taking stock 318 months later, it's impossible to compress the city's extraordinary evolution from a third-coast art wannabe to an internationally recognized art destination.

Valiente Award goes to Mel Chin

Houston Chronicle: Artist Mel Chin tapped for Valiente Award. 2007-Nov-11: Voices Breaking Boundaries will honor artist Mel Chin with its 2007 Biennial Valiente (Courage) Award. Chin, who was born in Houston in 1950, has made a powerful mark internationally with work that addresses social, ecological and political issues with depth and grace.

From Houston to Marfa

Houston Press: Open House at the Chinati Foundation. 2007-Oct-25, by Troy Schulze: It was great to see so many Houston artists exhibiting in Marfa and enjoying that unique exposure. There were familiar sights like Bexar's No Thanks, a projection of the artist's face, distorted by the addition of actual nails in the wall, and a distilled version of Teresa O'Connor's haunting installation (g)host. Houston photographer Katy Anderson's Texas-themed photo Somewhere I Call Home depicts children in a Kid Nation version of the Lone Star State.

Houston Oral History Project

Houston Arts and Media: Press Release 10/7/2007: Houston Arts and Media's oral history project, called Neighbor to Neighbor, has received a generous United Way of Greater Houston Community Building Grant that will take it into Phase Two of the citywide project which has been collecting the memories of longtime Houstonians.

American Voices founded by Houston Native

Houston Chronicle: John Ferguson shares love of music with others, 2007-Oct-8, by Valerie Sweeten. American Voices takes American music and culture around the world, especially to developing countries and countries which lack other opportunities for cultural exchange with the U. S.

OMIGOD: Houston Tops the List

Sorry to sound so gushy, but ArtInfo, one of the major surveys of art activity seldom notices Houston, but today we TOP the list! Congratulations to the Houston curator who made it happen, ArtInfo.com: Top Ten USA. 2007-Sep-25, by Allen Strouse: One of the most active photographers during the second half of the 20th century, Lee Friedlander has also been a passionate champion of the photographic book. “Making the ordinary extraordinary: Books and photographs by Lee Friedlander” includes a crucial sampling of the artist’s publications, as well as important books by Eugène Atget and E. J. Bellocq. On view until January 13, 2008, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Gray on Johnson's Legacy

Lisa Gray does an excellent job of putting Philip Johnson's work into perspective. Houston Chronicle: Philip Johnson's final work in Houston is for St. Thomas, 2007-Oct-3, by Lisa Gray: The Edward P. White Memorial Plaza is the ultimate Philip Johnson work — "ultimate" not just because it's among his last, but because after years of distilling other people's ideas, he got around to distilling himself.

New Photos of Houston on Exhibit

Houstonist is pleased to announce 600 sq mi: Photos from Houston, our first-ever photography show. It's a juried exhibition of photographs from Houston, from Main Street to the coastal prairie and everything in between. The photos show what makes Houston what it is: the buildings, the landscape, the people, the art, the taco stands, the shotgun houses, the freeways. At MSquared Gallery in the Heights (325 W. 19th Street) from Sept. 5 to Oct. 7, 2007.

Mayor White Funds Oral History Archive

Houston Chronicle: Project records true tales of Houston. 2007-Sep-4, by Carolyn Feibel : The city has dedicated $275,000 to start an oral history archive, with the goal of interviewing 100 Houstonians in one year and putting their stories online...."We're losing the generation that made the city what it is," said Jill Jewett, the mayor's cultural adviser. The city has done five interviews so far, and has dozens on its "to do" list, from prominent players (politicians, energy executives and philanthropists) to everyday residents, such as a Ship Channel worker, a civil rights activist, or a construction worker who helped build the Astrodome.

Learn Houston History at Rice

Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, Rice University: We Built This City: Movers and Shapers from Houston’s History Six Wednesdays, September 19-October 24, 2007, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Fee: $130.00   (CEUs: 0.9) Local experts will examine the impact of several influential individuals, families and groups that altered the course of Houston. Topics: Jesse H. Jones. Hogg Family Philanthropy in Houston, 1905-1975. Nighttime Talks in the Rice Hotel Lobby.  Women Who Helped Shape Houston. The Suite 8-F Group and Its Influence on Business. Houston Today: Lessons Learned from Suite 8-F. Cosponsored by Historic Houston.

Power for Dancers

Houston Chronicle: Shelly Power's skills as dancer, teacher used fully, 2007-Aug-16, by Jennifer Friedberg: Since Shelly Power returned to the Houston Ballet in 2004 as associate director of the Ben Stevenson Academy, she has made it a goal to give more children the opportunity to learn about dance and to prepare academy students for a range of career options. With 25 years of artistic and administrative experience, Power, 51, also took over the ballet's outreach and education program and expanded Houston Ballet II and the six-week summer intensive program...

Art Space Emerges from Shadows

On August 16, KUHT-TV aired the first two episodes of the Artery Media Project. Please call them and ask when we can see more: 713-748-8888! Houston Chronicle: Artery turns lens on itself, 200-Aug-16, by Douglas Britt: For 20 years, the Artery, an alternative-art space, has doubled as a miniature ecosystem and a cultural laboratory, hosting writers, musicians, activists and visual and performing artists under a meticulously lit canopy of trees. However, few people beyond those who are well connected to Houston's arts and activist grapevines know about it.