Happy 4/20 weekend!
As a perfect merging of events, 4/20 falls on Record Store Day and the Deep Ellum Gallery Walk -- yeah, you're welcome. There's an opera festival kicking off in Fort Worth, a screenprint showcase, a boxing match, GIF art, George Saunders (we've got free passes for that), two home shows, a Renaissance festival and Kettle Art's farewell exhibition show. It's another big ol' Dallas weekend so let's make a plan together.
Puff, puff, pass this list around your crew and click on the event titles for more information. I'll see you out there. (I'll be the one elbow-deep in a Pringles tall can.)
Thursday 4.18 Jubilee, Kettle's Last Art Show (current location)-- Attention: Do not cry on the art! Artists hate that. Tonight is the beginning of the end: a gallery retrospective group show celebrating Kettle's longstay Deep Ellum address. Join everyone, simply everyone, as we unite to sing this song in the name of Kettle's community legacy.
Scotch Whisky Extravaganza -- This party is just proof that you're running in the wrong circles. This club is dedicated to drinking delicious whiskey. If you've got enough money, you can go.
CentralTrak's Next Topic: "Art Writing and Art Criticism in Texas" -- A recurring topic in our hood is that there are too few people writing about art, which seems easy enough to solve, right? Just get more art writers? But it isn't as simple as that. Training, background, available time, niche interest, willingness to publicly say something's terrible or great and detail why it is the case, conflicting interpersonal relationships within a small community -- these things all play a role in the void. Tonight, a few minds will get together at CentralTrak to hash it all out, which will be too inside baseball for most of you, but positively titillating for the remaining handful.
Citizen Twain -- Chris Knight Val Kilmer's been hanging out/being weird all around Dallas for the last two weeks. That's because his new one-man show about Mark Twain runs this weekend at the Wyly. I mean, we're all going to this, right?
Friday 4.19 George Saunders -- The New York Time's Magazine dedicated an entire cover to Saunder's newest book Tenth of December, calling it the best book you'll read in 2013. I agree. He's got a special way of speaking his characters' brains, and a jazzy pace to his prose. He's doing a reading at the DMA and tickets are sold out. DO NOT PANIC: I'm doing a giveaway.
Continental Gin Open Studios, plus "Doing Lines" -- Dallas' Continental Gin Building is a creative stronghold, a rented crashpad for ideas by artists of every medium, and a few times each year they invite you to party with them and gawk at all they do. This weekend is that time. Piggybacking onto the affair is the group show within a show, "Doing Lines."
Bud Light Pro Fight Series -- Yeah! Bloodsports! It's a welterweight match-up, featuring fist-thrashers Hector Vazquez, Dallas' Julio Cesar Rangel and Fort Worth's Tony Lopez, with a main-event match between Houston's Rogelio De La Torre and Waco's Milton Bad Boy Ramos.
"Under Pressure," the North Texas Print Guild Spring Exhibition @ Art Hotel -- Who doesn't love a screenprint show? Crazies, that's who. Get an eyeful of the best poster-based art of the season at this tidy little group show, happening at some place called Art Hotel in the Cedars.
Dwell With Dignity Thrift Studios -- Nesters, beware: Dwell Thrift is an amazing gift for your home, soul and pocketbook. DWD is a local organization that assists families transitioning out of homelessness by furnishing and designing their new apartments' interiors. It's a lovely mission, and it's partially funded through shopping events like this where you find newly refinished or reclaimed pieces in the Dwell showroom and snatch 'em up on the cheap. It opens to the public on Friday, so get there early for first pick.
Eraserhead with Wig Party -- It's David Lynch's surrealist feverdream, and Texas Theatre pulls it out in style, with a 35 mm screening and an accompanying wig party. Better pop it high and tight if you want to pose perfect in the lobby.
Saturday 4.20 Record Store Day -- It's the happiest day of the year! The line-ups are pretty killer too. Did you see the Relatives are playing at Good? Deep Ellum Gallery Walk -- There's 15 spots listed on the Deep Ellum Gallery Walk, but considering you've already visited Kettle, here's four that you need to hit. * "GIF the Fuck Out" -- A Celebration of all GIF art, organized by scamp misfits HOMECOMING! Committee, and housed by the Deep Ellum Windows Project. * "Loose Cooperation" -- A way bitchin' group show curated by Sally Glass, featuring work by 14 artists, including Stephen Lapthisophon, Rachel De Joode and Cassandra Emswiler, and many others. Also housed in a Deep Ellum Windows joint. * "Space for All Endings" at Kirk Hopper -- Life's a film for Dallas-turned New York artist, Keri Oldham, whose watercolor world displays the end of days: the credits. Check out her blend of cinema and reality, dipped in celluloid sentiment at this opening reception. * "Of Twark and Trubble, featuring 'The Perfidious Petards'" -- Of course you're going to pop into Public Trust to see this new show by Jacobine van der Meer.
Fort Worth Opera Festival Kicks off -- It's one of those magical weekends to be an opera lover. Of the four that FWO will offer during the course of its multiweek fest, you can see either La Bohème or Glory Denied in the next few days.
Sunday 4.21
Scarborough Faire -- As if the new mermaid lagoon wasn't reason enough to visit this Renaissance hold-out, this weekend features the Highland Games. Yes, you can finally use that "Caber? I barely know 'er!" joke that you've been squandering.
Battle of the Home Tours: White Rock Lake vs. Turtle Creek -- We've got two big home tours happening this weekend. In one corner sits the all-modern, more humbly ticket priced White Rock Homes. In the other corner, the ultra-plush, antique furnitured high-rise living Turtle Creek dwellings. Pick your poison. We've got a ticket giveaway for the White Rock tour.
