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 work is pretty. To be pretty is to be trivial, to be agreeable, to be shallow. But the declaration of beauty is far more complicated. In Left Hand First, an exhibition at Beefhaus opening this weekend, two complex questions are posed: "If there is beauty in the profane is there profane in beauty? Do you head straight for the pleasure and save the hard stuff for last?" The the work of three artists are shown in conjuction to explore this multi-faceted idea. Austin-based Raymond Uhlir exhibits alongside Dallas-based Randy Guthmiller (the man behind the local Zine SHAPES), as well as the duo The Color Condition, who are known for their colorful streamer installations. See it at Beefhaus (885 Exposition Ave.) from 7-10 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.
Sewing the Line You could say the thread running through this exhibition is the artists' use of sewing in their art. The work of five Latina artists, curated by Leslie Moody Castro, demonstrates the contemporary use of the Mexican-American tradition of using the needle as a tool in art. They weave rich histories into the work on display. The artists included are Austin-based Candace M. Briceño, El Paso-based Margarita Cabrera, San Jose, CA- based Consuelo J. Underwood, and Dallas-based Emily Donjuan and Rosemary Meza-DesPlas. The exhibition opens at the H. Paxton Moore Fine Art Gallery on the El Centro College campus (801 Main St.) at 4 p.m. Thursday.
Render by Patrick Romeo Dallas-based artist Patrick Romeo creates a site-specific show at the Dallas Public Library in the Lillian Bradshaw Gallery. Existing both in real life (IRL) as well as in digital form, Romeo crafts road signs and traffic cones that lead to nowhere, while a computer-generated voice reads poetry. Stop by the opening reception from 6-8 p.m. Thursday. Entry is free.
Jeff Parrott's Noise Performance and exhibition, Psyexpression Downtown gallery, RO2 Art, currently shows Jeff Parrott's frenetic drawings and color-laden paintings. It's a journey into his mind that is both wonderful and bizarre. On Friday night, Parrott will play a soundtrack to the exhibition that recreates aural inspiration for the show. See the noise performance in the gallery from 7-10 p.m. Friday. More information at ro2art.com.
Place Pavilion: Sound Booth at Davis Foundry Gallery I'm just going to steal from the event description here: "Place Pavilion: Sound Booth is an individually scaled construction built as map and mapping device, simultaneously. Affording inhabitants the opportunity to experience their environment freshly by framing the sensory perception of their surroundings, the pavilion reveals through regulation, stimulates through stipulation. By restricting the customarily pervasive experience of a place, the pavilion allows one to focus on specific elements around them in order to notice that which is usually ignored. Thus allowing the map to be experiential and the reader to be informed." See it from 6-10 p.m. Saturday at Davis Foundry Gallery (509 W. Davis St.).
