Left Hand First In daily life, pretty is quite the compliment. Sure, it may rank lower than beautiful or stunning. But every good flatterer knows the power of telling a woman she’s pretty. In art, pretty is perjorative. You want to insult a serious painter? Tell her that her life’s…
Randy Guthmiller started a zine to make friends. When he moved back to Dallas after college, he would attend gallery openings and leave without talking to anyone. He needed a conversation starter, an entry point to access the sometimes-insular art scene. So he created, SHAPES, a simple publication filled with…
Last night, the popular, beloved even, storytelling series Oral Fixation presented another round-up of true life tales. It was the third or fourth time I attended — this time to see my kickass writer Caroline North. Each one I’ve witnessed has been engaging. Real people telling their true stories can…
Halloween comes once a year, and there’s a lot to see. We dispatched photographers all over Dallas to capture some of the best. From Deep Ellum to Denton and Uptown to Slipknot, here are some of the best costumes from the holiday weekend…
Maybe you read about the sand show in the Trinity Groves warehouse and thought to yourself, I wonder what they’re going to do with all that sand? Build a private beach? Donate it to the local sand volleyball league? At this point, all the theater company knows is that after…
Deborah Voigt is fabulous. She’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime performers on an imagined performing arts bucket list. Like Alan Cumming in Cabaret, or Joshua Bell on violin (who will be at the Winspear next week, coincidentally). And if you’re going to see Voigt, you’ll want to see her singing Strauss,…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. Christopher Carlos and Tina Parker often soak in the spotlight. No strangers to the stages of local theaters and frequently illuminating the televisions, these two keep busy with acting and directing gigs. And that’s when…
Salome Look, there’s a lot of sex in the Bible. Chances are, you didn’t talk about any of it in Sunday school. Salome, for example, the seductress who set her sights on the unattainable John the Baptist. When he denied her advances she had her daddy, Herod II behead him…
Draftsmen of the Apocalypse CentralTrak opens a group exhibition that explores violence and “mankind’s eventual doom.” All the artists in this exhibition use their work to pinpoint or illuminate aspects of violence in either history or the present day. While seemingly apropos for Halloween weekend, it seems the thread that…
Flowers are nature’s beautifiers. We’ve appropriated them as tokens of affection or apology. We cut them from their roots and place them in vases to add color to our otherwise dull lives. Oh, and for centuries, we’ve painted them. Some of the 19th century’s greatest painters, including Cezanne, Manet and…
Look, there’s a lot of sex in the Bible. Chances are, you didn’t talk about any of it in Sunday school. Salome, for example, the seductress who set her sights on the unattainable John the Baptist. When he denied her advances she had her daddy, Herod II behead him. OK…
When the director chooses at Dallas Black Dance Theatre, it seems they tend to stack the deck. The official season opener for the company will be a new series titled, Director’s Choice, which will include works from contemporary choreographers like Alvin Ailey, Gene Hill Sagan, and a new piece from…
Long before Val Kilmer found himself interested in the person, Mark Twain, there was Hal Holbrook. Like a long time before. Holbrook’s show, Mark Twain Tonight, has been touring the country since 1954. That’s sixty years for anyone who’s worse at math than I am. Talk about dedication. Of course,…
In the two person exhibit, Hugs & Kisses, at the Cliff Gallery, the work of artists Erin Stafford and Heyd Fontenot is not so much in juxtaposition as in union. Fontenot’s quirky nudes and Stafford’s glammed out sculptural installations are kismet. Hear the artists discuss their individual work and hear…
Stop digging through files, punching numbers into your calculator, and put that Go2Meeting on mute. You’ll want to watch this video from the Dallas Zoo of an adorable baby giraffe. First-time giraffe mommy Chrystal gave birth to a 6-foot-tall baby over the weekend and the zoo released a video of…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. John Pomara exhibited artwork before the Internet. With degrees in studio art, and exhibitions on his resume dating back to the 80’s, it was more than a decade into his practice before he took an…
We’re just passing this information along. Apparently the city of Dallas has a list of whom they’ll commission for public art in Dallas. And apparently this list is currently accepting applicants, even those without any public art experience. And apparently these applications will no longer be accepted after October 30…
Halloween is on a Friday this year. This means your excuses are all worthless and you will have to participate in the festivities. But house parties are so 1998. Get out of the house and do something. Want to go to a haunted house? We’ve got you covered. Want to…
If you’re up on the local comedy scene, which seems to rotate around the nuclear hub of the Dallas Comedy House, you may have found yourself snort-laughing at jokes coming out of youngster, Saffy Herndon. The 9-year-old comedian, who tells jokes about everything from cartoons to her dad’s drinking habits…
Patricia Reed’s “The Two” greets visitors to Zhulong Gallery’s international group show, Systema. A pair of bright red megaphones frozen in french kiss, any amplified messages lost in the other, in what you can imagine as an echo chamber of yelling instructions. When used appropriately, megaphones can relay instruction to…
Across Dallas stages, a long ignored genre of theater seems to have taken center stage. Science fiction, with all its robots, aliens, and future societies has been seen in its intellectual (Tomorrow Come Today at Undermain Theatre) and its campy (Rocky Horror Show at Dallas Theater Center). This weekend, Ochre…
Sometimes ink is given to the artists showing at the Nasher Sculpture Center simply due to its reputation. Which is not unexpected: It’s the norm in the art world to approach a venerated institution’s offerings as more noteworthy than less high-profile spaces. Plus, with bigger marketing budgets, the Dallas Museum…
