It’s a good four-and-a-half-hour drive to Houston; kind of a haul just to see some art, but then a spontaneous road trip can do wonders for the Dallas-weary soul. And Houston presents this odd, looking-glass parallel to this city, with its jutting skyline and crawling traffic and damp heat. You’re…
The Webb Gallery offers a double-layered excursion. One, it’s about 35 miles south of Dallas, in Waxahachie’s historic district. Nice little drive. Two, the artwork is a departure from all the newfangled contemporary and conceptual stuff you find in urban art spaces. See, Bruce and Julie Webb, the gallery’s youthful…
There’s this company over on McKinney Avenue, an enterprising outfit that handles post-production for television and radio commercials–editing, sound effects, voice tracks–and the building is overflowing with some of the best artwork in town. Only, the art collection at CharlieUniformTango (that’s the name of the place, though they like to…
Josh Alan Nominated for: Blues, Folk/Acoustic Who knew what to make of Alan’s 1997 Blacks ‘n’ Jews? The title track was a work of absolute genius and chutzpah, the history of black-Jewish relations rolled up into one glib, sharp statement: “Marchin’ two-by-two down in Mississippi/One was a Panther when the…
Bruiser, a rottweiler-mix pup, was found stumbling through an alley, dragging a heavy chain. He had mange and heart worms. Winston the cattle dog was forsaken as well, running lonely through Oak Cliff. How about a smiley little shih tzu with one eye, or a fuzzy poodle with diabetes? Snoopy…
Two unrelated facts: the French Revolution happened more than 200 years ago. Painting has been called “dead.” So what’s an artist doing painting the clasped hands of Napoleon and the baleful gaze of Louis the XVI? He’s kicking beautiful dust in the eyes of narrow-sighted fact-mongers, that’s what. Toronto-based Tony…
The gallery space feels womb-like–dark, humid, warm. Actual mist floats though the air. An old film whirrs on a tiny antique projector, little strobe lights throw images toward an old stuffed chair. Smoke and mirrors, if you will, where the claustrophobic meets the soothing in the strange and ominous microcosm…
Machine art. Interactive kinetic sculpture. Robotic performance art. Extreme technology art. Whatever you call it, it’s usually violent, incendiary, and nihilistic. That’s what makes it fun. The Seemen, a San Francisco-based machine-art collective, descend on the Orbit Room on Tuesday, April 21, to show this cloistered town the thrill of…
What follows are brief reviews of some highlights from the USA Film Festival, arranged chronologically. The festival runs Thursday, April 16, through Thursday, April 23. All events take place at the AMC Glen Lakes, 9450 N. Central Expressway, except for the Master Screen Artist Tribute to Christopher Walken, which will…
Damned if she does, damned if she don’t. Los Angeles-based Susan Otto faces the same speedbumps other female artists face in this post-feminist age, but she tackles them with a finely tuned sledgehammer. She pounds away at social constructs, at the notion that the female voice is a tired one,…
It’s a shame that of all the young Asian-American filmmakers showcased at this year’s Festival, the one to nab the most hype is spotlight-chaser Jon Moritsugu. A shame, but not a surprise. Moritsugu is a hack–hack director, hack screenwriter, hack editor and producer. His films, driven by quasi shock-value and…
I don’t know that the title Fireworks really fits the art show to which it refers. Clay works, huh? Real explosive stuff. I guess if you leave it in the kiln long enough… In case you haven’t noticed, an international “celebration” of clay and ceramic works has run through this…
Central Expressway at 3 a.m. is a different kind of war zone than its daytime persona. Instead of cars locked bumper-to-bumper in a familiar, maddening crawl through the center of the city, the after-hours Central is far more cinematic. Nearly surreal in its undulating grimness, the only cars it carries…
Radiohead is finally coming to town. Why do I hear groans? I’m so tired of critics trying to be perverse by denouncing Radiohead’s 1997 release OK Computer. Seems some of them are compelled to label it pretentious and arty and smug after the first wave of critics deemed it brilliant…
“South by Southwest is a little like Fantasy Island. It’s a place where dreams come true.” The lead singer-guitarist utters those words like a child, his voice so high it could touch the stars. He performs for a packed house, a few hundred early-morning revelers who’ve seen Saturday turn into…
U.K. snubs This is Hardcore Pulp Island Records England’s failure to establish a rock-and-roll stronghold in the States, Oasis very aside for now, can be attributed to an unapologetic ethnocentric bent: Such blokes as Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, Blur’s Damon Albarn, and especially Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker write songs for and about…
I couldn’t see the bathtub in Richard Diebenkorn’s giant abstract painting. Didn’t even try. But two women who had broken off from our guided tour at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth did. Or so they said. In fact, that bathtub got ’em pretty excited. “And see, Susan. Right…
One more time: Dallas ain’t Cowtown. Never was. Fort Worth is. The old cattle drive routes were west of here, but ever since Trammell Crow dropped a bronze stampede in downtown Dallas, the culture hounds’ arguments over the city’s cowboy history have erupted again. Why? Because everyone wants in on…
When the Conduit Gallery invited Good/Bad Art Collective to stage the first show in its new annex, the union evoked a list of strange but workable partnerships. A shot of whiskey in a beer. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. CBGB’s and early punk rock. The common thread? Each of these…
For 11 years now, the Dallas Video Festival has been better appreciated across the country and around the world than it has in the city whose name it bears. You could offer this as evidence that Dallas has earned its reputation: that of a Southwestern money mecca whose residents would…
Ask a roomful of college graduates how many have waited tables for a living. Don’t be surprised by an impressive show of hands. Or by a high turnout of those still making their living from tips rather than tackling the corporate world. The real surprise: that a documentary about the…
Best known for his just-this-side-of-cloying giant Polaroids of his Weimaraner dogs, William Wegman has kept one foot in the elitist high-art sphere while cultivating larger commercial success since the mid-’70s, when he broke from his post-art-school conceptual experimentation to work with his beloved pooch Man Ray. In video shorts and…
