Last Thursday night, while Madonna struggled to shake off the burdens of being fifty-freaking-four in some remote corner of Planet Earth, I sat in the Power Station listening to UTA art history professor Ben Lima inform a packed room that “Madonna has been the topic of hundreds of academic journal…
See also: Courtney Kerr, Dallas Fashion Blogger Whose Closet We Covet, Scores Bravo Show Sol LeWitt explained conceptual art best: “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work … The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” I’ve had bar fights over…
See also: Dallas Handmade Arts Market’s Grand Opening is This Weekend Sometimes you have to take the plunge, no matter how terrifying. Early this year, Jorge Herrera walked away from a successful and secure career in the financial world because he had a dream, both for his own professional gratification…
Excerpt from Paul Sharits’ “Shutter Interface” (1975) *Maybe don’t watch this if you have epilepsy. As far as artistic genres go, video art is still a young tyke. It didn’t grow into a known and identified category until the late 1960s and early ’70s, and from there it’s exploded. Still…
In the late nineties I heard an episode of NPR’s This American Life about life in prison. The segment that stuck with me was from a former inmate who wound up in the prison infirmary, where a piece of red thread somehow ended up on his infirmary blanket. The gist…
The most surprising aspect of Ari Richter’s skin art — aside from its unorthodox canvas, of course — is its unexpected beauty. Richter guided me last Thursday through the white drywall maze of CentralTrak to his summer studio, where he was putting the finishing touches on what will open on…
See also: “Rachel De Joode’s Brief and Wondrous Art,” a preview of the show. I left Rachel De Joode’s “Real Things” show at Oliver Francis Gallery, subtitled “Explorations In Three Dimensions,” feeling nagged by this question: Is ascribing meaning to an artwork the job of the artist or the viewer?…
What do you get if you mix rainbows and sprinkles, unicorns and starbursts, with a little country-and-western Texas realism? Well, Jennifer Moreman is the woman to ask. Now living in Tyler, Moreman grew up in Dallas, where she graduated from Trinity Christian Academy before taking a BFA from Baylor. She…
Again, this isn’t safe for work. If you don’t already e-stalk Hennesy Youngman, awesome-up your life by getting hip to him. He has an answer to every artistic dilemma. This new video gives solid advice for anyone giving a tour of their work space, namely: Serve quesadillas. Follow the Mixmaster…
While it isn’t clear how one discovers a talent in the balloon arts, those competing at Sunday’s Festival of Balloons were well-versed in the trade. Roughly 600 sculptors from 50 countries gathered at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel to flex their elastic prowess and construct colossal balloon sculptures. Birds of prey,…
We can infer a few things about this car’s mystery driver: an appreciation for elegant, if mature, BMWs; the desire to snarf some Chipotle, as evidenced through this sweet ride’s location last night on Lemmon; and an ambition toward counter-cultural paint jobs with a gentle, perhaps unintentional, nod to the…
Special effects make-up guru Kevin Kirkpatrick is very much our kind of dork. He’s structured the gore for everything from Tron to True Blood but still managed to squeeze in time to make these amazingly creepy human-like renderings. That’s laced with a bit of irony: Kirkpatrick spent three years perfecting…
If you want to hear about Michelle Rawlings’ dad, you should head over to Unfair Park. The Dallas blogosphere went into a four-alarm, screaming alert last week at the announcement that the “Mayor’s Daughter” had been chosen for a solo show at Oliver Francis Gallery that, it would seem, contains…
Artist and musician Sally Ackerman was spotted yarn bombing trees along N. Bishop Avenue last Sunday afternoon. She explains that what started as a “love bomb” for a friend at Artisan’s Collective turned into a gig when TV producers from the show Dallas hired her to knit up four more…
I knew a girl in South Florida with a highly unfortunate tattoo. The over-sized, Old English back piece read: “MOEW.” I asked her about the word’s significance and she replied, “It’s supposed to say ‘MEOW.'” Ouch. The artist, she explained, put the letters on individually and showed ’em to her…
Celebrity and consumerism build the flavor base for Decade of Aggression, the new exhibit by Austin street artist, Failure. Continue on to witness Failure’s gritty world of nipples and gas masks…
Never has there been an event as catastrophic or storied in maritime lore quite like that of the Titanic. It is the story of an impermeable ship with giant expectations. It sought to revolutionize the way goods were shipped; improve and increase the transportation of immigrants; and change the game…
Today’s FLP (or FLPs) come from the Joel Cooner Gallery. They’re called door boards, and they are exactly what they sound like: boards that are hung over and around doors. Or the openings to homes, anyway. These are from the Star Mountains in central Papua New Guinea from the Ok…
Are you an artist searching for that perfect, unbuffable wall (aka: The Holy Grail of graff writers)? How about putting your name on something permanent by taking your skill set indoors? Your mom would be so proud…Local graffiti art collective, Gallery Bomb, is experimenting with new Dallas talent. The crew…
Well, here’s your cool timelapse video of the day… Over on Dallas’ Reddit page this morning, caught an exciting piece from local artist Andy Buchanan. The two-minute plus video chronicles the construction of Buchanan’s action-y, three-dimension-y mural “Rescuing Freedom.” According the YouTube vid, the piece took three weeks to complete…
People can be, shall we say, incredibly emphatic when they talk about religion. But, sometimes, they’re a little too emphatic. Enough that you can’t help but wonder what they really feel.Today’s FLP, “Fanatic Aunt” by r. mateo diago, one of four pieces in a series titled “iChat God Talk,” examines…
Sculptor Shawn Smith likes to take stuff apart so he can put it back together–pixel-by-pixel. He finds images online, and then crafts them into 3D reality: One little piece at a time. He starts with a Google image, usually nothing more than a thumbnail. He zooms in until the image…
