In their own time The Dallas Visual Art Center has announced its 2000 Legend Award recipients, to be presented in ceremonies at the Fairmont Hotel on September 14. DVAC honors artists, collectors, and arts professionals each year who have made a special contribution to the Dallas arts community. The Legends…

Storm troupers The 15th year of the big art show must go on, but downtown Fort Worth is still a mess, so organizers have moved the behemoth Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival at the last minute out of tornado-ravaged downtown and over to the city’s cultural district. The April…

Up-write Citizens Brigade If you think newspaper coverage of visual arts in Fort Worth stinks, you’re not alone, and the Fort Worth Art Dealers Association has got a crusade for you. It’s more constructive than what one local artist suggested. “We could make used-gum sculpture and place it on every…

[Flashback to 1954. Scene: interior bedroom. Pregnant wife and husband talking in bed.] WIFE: It’s less than a month now. We have to resolve this. HUSBAND: I don’t think it’s such a big deal. W: Our last name is Fuhrer! What on earth are we going to call this baby?…

Walking papers Guess there simply wasn’t enough “green” at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary on St. Patrick’s Day, or so administrative manager Mary Nicolett was told when she found out she would be out of a job beginning April 21. “I was told it was budget constraints,” says Nicolett, who has…

Cliff Redd is coming up on the first anniversary of his self-proclaimed “life sentence.” The John Lithgow look-alike fairly squirms in his seat as he talks about his return to the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, where he took up last April 15 where he left off in 1997 as executive…

Unbuckling the Bible beltWriter-performer Paul Bonin-Rodriguez thinks Dallas is the perfect place to unleash his irrepressible, small-town, Dairy Queen-working “sissy boy” alter-ego, Johnny. He also believes the McKinney Avenue Contemporary’s theater space is the perfect venue to tell “The Bible Belt and Other Accessories,” even though he’s heard of the…

Money, money, money You can count on one hand the number of living, local artists who can command $40,000 for a single work of art. So, heads up, all the rest of you. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority is requesting statements of qualifications, including résumé, slides, and supportive materials, from…

Unlike dog owners who tend to look like their dogs, or married couples who take on each other’s characteristics over time, artists seldom look like their paintings or sculpture. It’s often the smallish, geeky guy who paints big, bold canvases or crafts throbbing, tumescent sculpture. And it’s the squeaky-clean, plain…

League of their own Never one to mince words, Jack Alder, founder and executive director of Theatre Three, had his doubts about the future of the Dallas Theatre League, a 6-year-old nonprofit group established to get local theaters working together for the good of one and all. But that part…

Hardhat Shakespeare Since Cliff Redd returned to his roots as executive director of the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas last April, all hell’s broken loose. “You might say we have a hyperactive staff,” Redd says of the ambitious programming changes for the festival this summer, plus the February launch of an…

The last time Drew Daleo showed his art at Gallery 414, he seemed stuck in a rut of war machines and military imagery that some people liked and some hated. If you didn’t fancy the content — World War II bombers and fighter planes — it was hard to get…

Fighting fire It’s been quiet — too quiet — since Talley Dunn filed her lawsuit against former employer Gerald Peters in August. The scandal-curious were beginning to believe that a settlement must be in the works, since the dueling gallerists were quietly conducting business as usual. Dunn opened Dunn Brown…

Ever pressed flesh with a machine? Scrunched your fat ass or angular cheekbone up against a copier’s glass and pushed “start?” If you have, then Dallas artist John Pomara believes you’re in a particularly good position to appreciate his art and his commentary on a technology-based culture and its struggle…

Suburban sprawl The ArtCentre of Plano has found a way to get its foot in the door of the Dallas art scene, increase visibility for its Plano programming, and create additional revenue. The nonprofit ArtCentre is now providing exhibition management and some curatorial support to Deep Ellum’s Mitchell Lofts Atrium…

Not waiting for Guffman Just barely more than a year after a fire melted the mismatched seats, equipment, and an inventory of costumes at Grapevine’s 15-year-old Runway Theatre, the nonprofit will reopen February 4 with Nunsense — which is, according to former board member Francine Simpson, “the perfect show, since…

It may come as no surprise that there’s a new book out in the For Dummies series. It’s called, of course, Art for Dummies, and it purports to alleviate the dreaded fear of art, a condition that strikes terror in the hearts of God knows how many people. Or so…

Fest intentions Fort Worth advertising agencies were trash-talking Downtown Fort Worth Inc. last year when the nonprofit that puts on the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival (among other pro-Cowtown activities) chose a Dallas-based ad agency to promote the weekend-long spring event. Resource 3 in Dallas wrested the account away…

Out of the fire sale The grande dame of Dallas commercial gallery owners, Edith Baker, took exception to her year-end holiday exhibition’s being lumped together with Angstrom Gallery’s “fire sale” in the January 6 Blink. Her Masquerade show, featuring works that were smaller than typical Baker fare by 50 gallery…

At first, there’s something strangely familiar about Dallas Museum of Art’s new “Art Kid,” a savvy cartoon boy/girl who introduces school-age children to the wonders of exploring an art museum. Then it hits you: It’s Pat, Julia Sweeney’s androgynous Saturday Night Live character who could never be trapped into revealing…