5 Art Events for Your Weekend: February 17-19

Terrell James – SOTOL VIEW
Barry Whistler Gallery
315 Cole St., No. 120
6 p.m. Saturday
Dallas’ art circles are familiar with Houston-based artist Terrell James, but they’ve not been privy to the two particularly lush, mural-sized paintings in her new show of works at Barry Whistler Gallery before now. The title, SOTOL VIEW, references a trip to Big Bend National Park and the influence it had on her art. James has lived and worked in a hodgepodge of different places in the U.S. and abroad — Berlin, Marfa and Harlem to name a few — but this exhibit plays to her seventh-generation Texan roots.

Gina Orlando — Accidental World: Party Island
Circuit 12 Contemporary
1811 E. Levee St.
6 to 9 p.m. Saturday
Sometimes works of art require a second (or third) look. Remember those trippy paintings that were popular in the ’90s? While not quite so abstract, Gina Orlando’s starburst-tinged exhibition opening at Circuit 12 Contemporary asks you stop, look and stay awhile. Orlando, a graduate Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, practices multidisciplinary techniques with the common denominators of time — past, present and future — and an almost limitless access to technology.

Lucy Kirkman Allen — When a Man’s House Is Finished
Galleri Urbane
2277 Monitor St.
6 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday
Every piece of art has a backstory, but Lucy Kirkman Allen’s is one for the books. She and her husband bought an 1800s farmhouse in rural Virginia from a man named James. Not long after they moved in, James showed the couple his most prized photograph. In it, three women are standing in front of the farmhouse. Two are holding cats and the third is holding a handwritten placard with a message: We are here in the past, come visit in your time machine. James had a whole album of black and white photographs, mostly of women and young children, and agreed to loan it to Allen. When a Man’s House Is Finished is a collection of acrylic and oil painted replicas of photos from the album.


Fahamu Pecou — The People Could Fly
Conduit Gallery
1626 Hi Line Drive, Suite C
6 to 8 p.m. Saturday
In cities around the world, the sight of shoes hanging from powerlines evokes a host of reactions and has become the stuff of urban legends that range from hilarious to scary. Atlanta-based artist Fahamu Pecou uses the art of “shoefiti” (the act of throwing a pair of shoes onto telephone wires or powerlines) as a metaphor for overcoming and escaping one’s limitations — those real and those imagined.
The People Could Fly, Pecou’s exhibition of large-scale drawings, opens this weekend at Conduit Gallery. In addition to the drawings, traversing the gallery space will be a mishmash of wires Pecou will throw shoes over. Each will have embedded speakers playing a sound collage he created for the exhibit.

2017 College Expo
500X Gallery
500 Exposition Ave.
7 to 10 p.m. Saturday
It’s that time of year again. 500X Gallery is gearing up to host its annual College Expo, which brings together student artists from colleges around Texas. The expo promotes dialogue, healthy competition and exposure to the myriad young talent residing across this rather large state.