ACTION!

It’s never too late to hear a director yell “Cut.”

He sits just beyond the bright lights of a movie set. The director has just called “Cut,” and he’s dripping in sweat, thinking, What have I gotten myself into?!

But to understand how he got here, the story needs to rewind.

Years earlier, in his late thirties Charlie Winfree had a simple thought cross his mind: What if I auditioned for a musical? He had no experience—only a deep love of attending theater and a curiosity about what it might feel like to be on stage. So, just before turning 40, he auditioned for Man of La Mancha at Country Playhouse in Houston.

The audition required a song and a monologue. A few days later, the director called to offer him a role in the ensemble. The first step was looking up what “ensemble” meant: background prisoner, group numbers, lots of stage time. Perfect.

Opening night is forever etched in his memory. Standing behind the curtain as the orchestra began “To Dream the Impossible Dream,” tears welled up. As the curtain prepared to rise and the music filled his bones, one thought echoed: This is real. I actually did it.

He was hooked.

The director went on to cast him in two more productions—The Man Who Came to Dinner and She Loves Me. In She Loves Me, Winfree landed a co-starring role complete with solo musical numbers—the whole deal. But theater is demanding: months of rehearsals followed by an intense show week. Eventually, life stepped in, time moved on, and that chapter quietly closed. Still, it was a great one.

Then came the fast forward.

Now 62, that familiar urge returned—the need to do something creative. Why not commercials, movies, or television? There were no fantasies of stardom, just the idea of a fun, engaging hobby in his golden years.

Winfree began searching online and discovered a website called Backstage. Listings ranged from background work on Yellowstone and Landman to Broadway features and local commercials. Then he spotted it: a short film shooting not far from him, looking for talent.

Just like 23 years earlier, the thought returned: Why not?

Click. Click. Boom. He submitted his information—no résumé, no professional headshot. Just a few phone photos and a short list of theater credits from two decades earlier.

Two weeks passed. Then an email arrived from the producer, inviting him to audition on location the following week. Dialogue was attached. When the day came, nerves were high—but the producer was gracious. The audition was brief, and he was told he did great.

A few days later, another email arrived. He didn’t get the part—but maybe something down the road.

Bummer.

Then, a week later, another message appeared. He opened it to find that another actor had dropped out, and they wanted him for a role central to the plot.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

The Setting

Rocin High School. Home of the Fighting Brahma Bulls.

The film is set in a fictional Texas high school in the 1970s and centers on the coaching staff—their triumphs, struggles, and lives both on and off campus. He plays the agriculture teacher who does not get along with the coaches. At all.

Think Ted Lasso—but 1970s small-town Texas.

Day One

His first day on set was both eye-opening and exhilarating. The scene took place in the school parking lot. His character had hit one of the coaches—and his car. The confrontation unfolded at the hood, surrounded by staff and faculty.

Looking around, he felt the same realization he had years earlier when the theater curtain first rose: I did it.

A director calling “Action!” and “Cut!” Boom mics overhead. Cameras everywhere. Makeup artists rushing in for touch-ups. This was real movie-making.

Day Two

That’s where he is now—dripping in sweat.

He has just finished 13 takes in a boxing ring with stunt coordinators, throwing punches, taking hits, and falling onto mats hidden from the camera. It’s a true art form—and exhausting.

There’s no time to reflect. He has to change costumes immediately for the next scene: singing and playing guitar in the faculty talent show.

Time is money. Movie-making, baby—and he loves every minute of it.

What’s Next

The project will appear in film festivals this spring, with hopes of being shopped to major streaming platforms as a series. He appears in Season 1, Episode 2. If it isn’t picked up, it will live online somewhere.

Either way, his résumé grows.

He worked alongside SAG actors, many with management agencies. He made friends. He made connections. And he took another step into a world he never imagined entering at this stage of life.

So what’s next?

“Wherever the journey leads.

It’s never too late. The time is now. All it takes is that first step”, according to the aspiring actor.

 The production company is Good On Ya Mate Productions and the writer is Mac  McStravick.

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German artist Thomas Demand has spent three decades exploring the intersections of history, photography, and memory. His large-scale photographic works investigate the way images embed themselves in a society’s collective memory. Through September 15, 2024, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Thomas Demand: The Stutter of History, a landmark retrospective of the artist’s work, with more than 70 images; the MFAH is the only U.S. venue for this internationally touring exhibition.

In much of his work, Demand depicts places loaded with historical meaning – the abandoned control room of the Fukushima plant following the March 2011 nuclear disaster; the site of the Florida recount of the 2000 American presidential election; or Bill Gates’s dorm room at Harvard. While his images appear at first to depict the real world, upon closer inspection they seem at once familiar and decidedly strange. They are in fact photographs of impermanent sculptural recreations. Demand selects his source imagery from the media, recreates those often-banal images as life-size models using colored paper and cardboard, photographs them, and prints them at a monumental scale. Ultimately, his works are as much about the circulation of images and the politics of memory as they are about the specific moments depicted.

“The exhibition Thomas Demand: Stutter of History marks the first time in nearly 20 years that Demand’s work has been shown in the U.S. in such depth,” said Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “I am delighted that the Museum has been given the singular opportunity to show the extraordinary and challenging photographs that result from Demand’s unsettling explorations of how photography both reveals and deceives, prompting visitors to question their perceptions and fundamental truths.”

“The uncanny nature of Thomas Demand’s work lies in its ability to trick our perception and our assumptions,” commented Malcolm Daniel, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH. “We are lured in because we think we have seen this before, only to discover that what we are looking at is just a stage set. And that moment of recognition in turn leads us to think about the veracity of the images we receive endlessly, every day.”

Thomas Demand: The Stutter of History presents a career-wide survey of four important areas of Demand’s work: large-scale photographs of unidentified yet historically significant scenarios; smaller-scale “Dailies,” recreating everyday epiphanies recorded with his iPhone; “Model Studies” that document the paper maquettes created by architects and dress patterns cut by fashion designers; and mesmerizing stop-motion films including Pacific Sun, inspired by YouTube footage of a cruise ship’s interior as fixtures and furniture are tossed by rough seas. In addition, the installation includes site-specific photographic wallpapers at key points in the exhibition.

Demand initially took up photography in order to document the ephemeral paper reconstructions of everyday objects that he was making as part of his sculpture practice at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the early 1990s. But he soon began making these constructions for the sole purpose of photographing them, establishing the basis of his artistic practice. After Demand photographs his models, he destroys them, leaving behind only their ghostly photographic doubles. The “stutter of history” evoked by the exhibition’s title lies in that strange gap between the world we inhabit and the recreated world of paper and cardboard that the artist conjures in his studio. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.

About Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand (b. 1964) studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he initially studied with sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of models, and later at Goldsmiths, University of London. Demand has had one-person exhibitions at museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Fundacíon Botín in Santander, Spain, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblæk, DK (2003), Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2006) and most recently at the Jeu de Paume (2023) in Paris. In 2004 he represented Germany at the São Paulo Biennial. Demand lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles.

Organization and Funding

This exhibition has been co-organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/Paris/Lausanne, and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing/Shanghai, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Major support is provided by Bobbie Nau

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Spanning 14 acres in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the Fayez S. Sarofim Campus of the MFAH comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, the Caroline Wiess Law Building, the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, and the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden. Nearby, two house museums—Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, and Rienzi—present collections of American and European decorative arts. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art, with its Core Residency Program and Junior and Studio schools; and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.

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Let’s begin with information of the Houston Civic Symphony.   

HCS was formed 57 years ago in 1967.  A group of musicians ran an advertisement in one of the Houston newspapers stating that they wanted to form a volunteer symphony orchestra.  They received numerous responses from musicians in the area and the Houston Civic Symphony Orchestra was formed as a Texas not-for-profit corporation.  

The HCS by-laws’ mission statement reads, “to create and maintain a non-profit orchestra dedicated to the performance of music, to provide the public with good live music, to offer qualified instrumentalists of the community an opportunity to play fine symphonic music, and to encourage and educate talented individuals to appear as vocal, instrumental,  and choreographic soloists.”  In my opinion, the organization has lived up to its mission statement.

HCS performs 5 to 6 concerts per season in various local venues.  These include Houston Christian University (formerly Houston Baptist University), the Moores Opera House at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, St Martin’s Episcopal Church, and Sugar Land Baptist Church. 

The orchestra has nearly 100 volunteer musicians from various walks of life.  There are a large number of educators – high school, middle school and elementary school orchestral and band directors, even university professors.  Also there are several  attorneys (including a Texas Supreme Court Justice) and accountants as well as  IT professionals, real estate agents, oil and gas engineers and financial planners. 

HCS is led by a very active Board of Directors – attorney Al Thomas, President (since 2006), Ken Henderson, Vice President, who is Director of Bands at Alief Middle School, Duncan Monsurud, Treasurer, who has many years experience in several orchestras and works as a co-op owner of Electric Violin Shop, Matthew Chan, Secretary, violinist, along with Monica Hanna, and Martin Kastenbaum, both violinists.

Brian Runnels has served as Music Director and Conductor of the Houston Civic Symphony since 2006. He first conducted the Houston Civic Symphony in 1979 when he served as Apprentice Conductor with the orchestra under Robert Linder. Since that time, he has conducted orchestras, musical theater, oratorio, and opera in Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, and Kentucky. After earning a degree in music education at Houston Baptist University he went on to earn a masters degree in church music and choral conducting at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestra conducting from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has had additional conducting training at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and in the United States with Max Rudolf and Herbert Blomstedt.

Michael Alan Isadore, Associate Conductor, came to Houston after graduating with Masters Degrees in conducting and clarinet performance from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Conservatory of Music. Since moving to Houston, Isadore has built an important career teaching and conducting while maintaining his recognized performance ability on the clarinet. As a conductor, Isadore was appointed the Associate Conductor of the Houston Civic Symphony starting with the 2007 season, was guest conductor of the Brazosport Symphony Orchestra in 2003, The Houston Civic Symphony in 2004 and the Houston Sinfonietta on two occasions in 2004 and 2005. Recently, Isadore joined the staff of the Houston Youth Symphony as one of their conductors. Isadore has been director of the Dulles High School Orchestra since 1999. Under his leadership, the Dulles Orchestra was chosen to play at the Midwest Convention in Chicago in December 2004 and was chosen as the Runner up for TMEA Honor Orchestra in 2005.

The Houston Civic Symphony has, since its beginning, provided our community with some very serious music concerts on its yearly schedule.  Here is its schedule for 2024-2025:

Daniel Zajicek – Overture to The Pit – PREMIERE PERFORMANCE
Aaron Copland – Lincoln PortraitJohannes Brahms – Symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98
Additional work – TBD

Friday, September 27, 2024, 7:30pm
Houston Christian University, Dunham Theater
Morris Cultural Arts Center, 7502 Fondren, 77074

Samuel Barber – Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance
Lili Boulanger – D’un Matin de PrintempsAntonin Dvorak – Symphony no. 6 in D major, op. 60

Thursday, November 7, 2024, 7:30pm
Houston Christian University 

Christmas Concert with Houston Christian University Choirs
Program TBA

Friday, December 6, 2024, Houston Christian University 

J. S. Bach – Orchestral Suite no. 4 in D major, BWV 1069
Georges Bizet – Symphony no. 1 in C major
Ottorino Respighi – Pines of Rome

Friday, January 24, 2025, 7:00pm
St Martin’s Episcopal Church, 717 Sage Road, Houston, 77056

Shostakovich – Symphony no. 1
2025 Young Artist Competition Winners
Additional works TBA

Friday, March 7, 2025, 7:30pm
Houston Christian University 

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Dona Nobis Pacem
Johannes Brahms – Schicksalslied, op. 54
Additional work – TBD

With choirs from Houston Christian University and the Houston Choral Society

Friday, May 2, 2025, 7:39pm
Houston Christian University

Finally, here is a bit of information that should please everyone.  I asked the HSC President, Al Thomas, about ticket prices.  He responded, “All of our concerts are free.  Show up, pick your favorite seat, and enjoy!”

I will be back with the next issue highlighting the 2024-2025 classical music events of the “Big Three”. 

Let me continue to hear from you – classicalmusicberquist@gmail.com

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The funds were awarded through City’s Initiative, a competitive grant program that is administered by the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) and funded by a portion of the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax.

The program opens four times a year and offers grants in the following three categories: neighborhood cultural destinations, conference tourism, and resilience awareness. In addition to these funding categories, MOCA awards a small number of special community initiatives each year.

“The City’s Initiative program allows local artists and organizations to showcase their work to our residents and visitors,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner. “I commend the award recipients for their dedication to the arts and cultural vitality of Houston.”

The following are the latest City’s Initiative grantees:

• Da Camera Society of Texas:  DACAMERA hosts Houston SUMMERJAZZ, a two-day event activating the downtown Theater District featuring national jazz artists Jazzmeia Horn, Grammy-nominated, Texas-born vocalist; Pedrito Martinez, Latin Grammy-nominated Cuban-born percussionist, and bandleader; and Joshua Redman, Grammy-nominated saxophonist. Representing local jazz talent is the up-and-coming Jalen Baker Trio, the first resident jazz group of DACAMERA’s Young Artist Program, and José-Miguel Yamal, Houston-based Chilean-American jazz pianist. The festival is a mix of concerts and jazz events. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

• Diaz Music Institute: Diaz Music Institute presents programs at various venues throughout the city to provide community engagement for the arts and to develop audiences in areas that are under-represented and underserved in the arts. This grant provided support to expand public concerts in neighborhoods across the city. (This grant was awarded directly by the Mayor of Houston as a special community initiative.)

• Houston Latino Film Festival: Houston Latino Film Festival’s Dia De Los Muertos will be an all-day event at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston (MATCH) which will host short and feature film screenings centering Dia De Los Muertos from local and international filmmakers. Other programming includes an art market inside of the MATCH Gallery from local artists and vendors to promote their artwork alongside the Dia De Los Muertos theme as well as panels, Q&As, and workshops. (This grant was awarded under the Conference Tourism category.)

• Jesus Medel: Medel wishes to provide four, living-history bus tours focused on the cultural collaboratives of Chicano-Native Americans, by highlighting their art spaces (murals, community centers, art incubators, etc.), especially those that had humble beginnings in the 60s and 70s in Houston. Medel’s goal is to engage cultural tourists and residents in the experience of Houston’s cultural identity. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

• Thomas Tran: Tran will create a cultural Vietnamese mural (or triptych) to be unveiled at NRG Park during Viet Cultural Fest 2022. The ideas and concepts will explore what it means to be Vietnamese American today through extensive conversation and interviews with the local community in Houston. (This grant was awarded under the Conference Tourism category.)

• My Connect Community: Building on the very successful Gulfton Story Trail of larger than life murals, their project will employ artists to create a series of murals on the METRO retaining walls that will enhance the newly created bus stops and bike lanes, provide visual safety reminders, and also artistically represent the diversity of the Gulfton neighborhood. My Connect Community hopes a series of vibrant PSAs along Hillcroft will create attention and give drivers pause as they contemplate the many users of the road. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

• South Asian Folk Arts Council: “Kabir in Qawwali – Concert and Discourse” is a concert and community dialogue series aimed to honor the Desi community (also known as South Asian Americans). Kabir Das, a 15th century poet, is beloved by many, especially the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities. Riyaaz Qawwali, comprising of local South Asian musicians, were commissioned for a short pilot of this program by the Society of Performing Arts in 2021. This will be a full 90 minute show, followed by a community discourse. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

• The STEM Foundation: “STEAMtheBlock” in Sunnyside event will be held on 1.5 acres of land owned by STEM directly across from the 240-acre landfill where STEM is constructing a 50MW solar farm. Their goal is to bring awareness about the developments coming to the community and to engage visitors in the educational, workforce and economic development aspects of STEM’s work. Their vision is to bring the community together to embrace the future with a shipping container mural showcase and musical performances. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

• Young Audiences INC of Houston: Healing Through Community Art is a social and emotional learning program that combines the uses of sand tray therapy and Chinese watercolor painting to teach youth creative expression, collaborative planning, and cultural awareness. During this program, participants will use therapeutic sand art as the planning and design process to inform a collaborative community mural that will be created using Chinese watercolor painting. This program will take place in the Fall of 2022 at the Chinese Community Center located in Alief Houston with local YAH Teaching Artist Dr. Junrui Garcia. (This grant was awarded under the Neighborhood Cultural Destinations category.)

For more information on past grantees, click here. To see upcoming events from previous or the latest 2022 grantees, visit the frequently updated Cultural Events Calendar.

Artists and creatives interested in applying to City’s Initiative to support their arts and cultural work should apply to the 2022 Grant Cycle launching on August 2nd. For more information, please visit: https://www.houstonartsalliance.com/funding-and-services/grant-opportunities.

About the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
The City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs guides the City’s cultural investments with policies and initiatives that expand access to arts and cultural programs in the community, attract visitors and leverage private investment. Learn more at www.houstontx.gov/culturalaffairs and follow us on Facebook & Instagram @HoustonMOCA.

About Houston Arts Alliance
Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) is a local arts and culture organization whose principal work is to implement the City of Houston’s vision, values, and goals for its arts grantmaking and civic art investments. HAA’s work is conducted through contracts with the City of Houston, overseen by the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. HAA also executes privately funded special projects to meet the needs of the arts community, such as disaster preparation, research on the state of the arts in Houston, and temporary public art projects that energize neighborhoods.  In short, HAA helps artists and nonprofits be bold, productive, and strong.

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The Menil Collection opened Samuel Fosso: African Spirits on Friday, August 5, 2022. The exhibition of fourteen large-scale gelatin silver prints from Samuel Fosso’s African Spirits series will be on view at the Menil through January 15, 2023. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the 2022 FotoFest Biennial and African Cosmologies Redux, a new presentation of photography originally curated by Dr. Mark Sealy OBE, Director of Autograph, London, and Professor at University of the Arts London.

In this series of self-portraits, completed in 2008, Fosso pictures himself as Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Malcolm X, and other prominent figures from 20th-century Black liberation movements. Fosso’s images reference iconic photographs, such as Carl Fischer’s portrait of Muhammad Ali that was published on the cover of Esquire in 1968 and the police mugshot taken of King after his arrest during the 1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Fosso’s reinterpretations of these historic photographs pay homage to the figures in the original images and raise questions about individuality, celebrity, the media, and the complicated history of representation.

Paul R. Davis, Curator of Collections at the Menil Collection, said, “The African Spirits series points to transformative moments in the lives of luminary figures. Fosso’s subjects represent the cultural and spiritual tissue connecting liberation movements in the U.S. and those on the African continent. We are honored to collaborate with FotoFest and host this exhibition of Fosso’s photography at the Menil in concert with the biennial’s African Cosmologies Redux project.”

Regarding his exhibition at the Menil, Samuel Fosso said, “I am proud to see the African Spirits series exhibited at the Menil Collection. I have a deep respect for the actions of Dominique and John de Menil, discovered in the Menil’s publication Art and Activism. I made this series so that more people can understand the history of these important figures and to share the thirst for democratization, which is also at the foundation of the Menil’s fabulous collection.”

Born in Cameroon, Samuel Fosso lived in Nigeria until the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–70), when he and his uncle moved to Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic. It was there that Fosso apprenticed with a local studio photographer. In 1975, when he was just thirteen years old, Fosso opened his own commercial portrait studio, Studio Photo National. He routinely finished off unused rolls of film by taking self-portraits that he displayed to promote his studio business or he sent to his family living in Nigeria. Exhibited for the first time in 1994 at the inaugural biennial exhibition Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako, Mali, these early images brought Fosso immediate international recognition. His work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Tate Modern. Fosso continues to produce compelling work using the visual format of portraiture to explore social history, personal and shared memories, humor, and the psychology of personhood.

Samuel Fosso: African Spirits is curated by Menil Curator of Collections Paul R. Davis.

Public Programs

The Menil will present public programs related to the exhibition. As always, museum programs are free and open to all. Additional details are available at menil.org/events.

Exhibition Reception
Friday, September 30, 6 p.m.

Artist Talk: Samuel Fosso in conversation with Mark Sealy
Copresented with FotoFest
Thursday, October 6, 7 p.m.

Screening of Al Santana’s Voices of the Gods
Copresented with Houston Cinema Arts Festival and FotoFest
Friday, November 11, 7 p.m.

Stop, Look, and Listen! Concert
DACAMERA Young Artists respond to the exhibition
Saturday, November 12, 3 p.m.

Curator Talk
Sunday, November 13, 3 p.m.

About the Menil Collection

Philanthropists and art patrons John and Dominique de Menil established the Menil Foundation in 1954 to foster greater public understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, culture, religion, and philosophy. In 1987, the Menil Collection’s main museum building opened to the public. Today, the Menil Collection consists of a group of five art buildings and green spaces located within a residential neighborhood in central Houston. The Menil remains committed to its founders’ belief that art is essential to human experience and fosters direct personal encounters with works of art. The museum welcomes all visitors free of charge to its buildings and surrounding green spaces. menil.org

Funding

Major funding for this exhibition is provided by The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation. Additional support comes from Anne Levy Charitable Trust; Mark Wawro and Melanie Gray; Franci Neely; and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

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Intown readers are running out of time to see “Three Centuries of American Art – Antiquities, European, and American Masterpieces from the Fayez S. Sarofim Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This marvelous exhibition ends September 6, 2021.

Cairo-born, Harvard-educated Houston collector and philanthropist Fayez S. Sarofim began purchasing art in 1961. Today his collection ranks as one of the most significant in private hands.

Its breath and depth are startling. You will see Egyptian antiquities, Coptic textiles, Navajo blankets, and works by artists as diverse as Lucas Cranach, El Greco, Eugène Delacroix, Pablo Picasso, Joaquín Torres-García, John Singleton Copley, Mary Cassatt, Arshile Gorky, Lucian Freud, Winslow Homer, Robert Motherwell, John Singer Sargent, Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg. There are many more.

At the end of fiscal year 2020, MFAH had assets totaling $1.83 billion, despite the pandemic losses that inspired the museum to term its dismal fiscal year an “annus horribilis,” borrowing the regal manner of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and other bigwigs who endure significant losses. Mr. Sarofim is partially responsible for the whopping endowment that sustained these losses due to the fact that Sarofim’s investment firm Sarofim & Co. oversees “growing” the museum’s money. Sarofim also manages the portfolios of Rice University, University of Houston, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital, the Menil Foundation, the Brown Foundation and the Houston Endowment. And, naturally he forks over large amounts of money to the museum.

Director Gary Tinterow said the scope, scale and quality of this collection makes it almost unique. He believes the discipline that characterizes Sarofim’s investment strategy also colors his art collecting. Sarofim chooses brilliantly and holds for the long term.

Accompanying this exhibition of over 200 works is a fully illustrated catalogue, “Masterpieces from the Fayez S. Sarofim Collection: From Antiquity to Abstraction,” written by the Museum’s curatorial staff. It includes an informative introduction by Tinterow. Tinterow’s narrative provides a revealing peek into a collector compelled to “convert some of his personal profits into an art collection.”

Quoted by Tinterow, gallerist Fredericka Hunter who sometimes sold to Sarofim offered a glimpse of the man’s cultured and sensitive nature. “He had a cultured passion for things. He was a deep humanist. And he was relaxed about art, he liked the energy of it: it was part of his life, something to be enjoyed, and a break from his work.”

The curators’ work helps catalogue readers understand a lot of which inspired Sarofim to snatch these artworks. How could he resist the exquisite colors in the abstract painting “Then, Last Time, I” (1985) by American artist Joan Mitchell (1925-1992). Mitchell painted it while living in Vétheuil, where Monet lived from 1878 to 1881. The paintings Mitchell made in Vétheuil were inspired by the same landscape elements that excited Monet. In between boozing, Mitchell incorporated the colors of the sky and water and poppy fields into her painting. Sarofim responded to this.

Of for that matter, how could Sarofim not rope in John Singer Sargent’s exquisite portrait “Madame Ramón Subercaseaux,” (c. 1880–81.) “At the time of this portrait, Amalia Subercaseaux was twenty years old and recently married. Sargent portrayed her seated in an ebonized chair in front of a black piano inside her fashionable Parisian apartments on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. The clothing and furnishings, notably her elegant black and white organza dress and the blue and white porcelain jardinière, reflect her refined taste,” the catalogue informs you.

Years ago, I had the chance to tour some of Sarofim’s collection with a small group of people. We saw only a portion of his art, but I knew I had seen something very fine. This guy is grinding, I thought, maybe he can help me grow my money. Stupidly, I called Sarofim’s office to enquire about that. The person who answered was kind enough not to laugh at me while explaining my portfolio was way too puny.

www.mfah.org

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The sculptures at Station gave me a handle on why Jesse Lott associates the term “urban frontier” with his art. His sculptural components are discarded objects and pieces of trash he finds around his home in Houston’s Fifth Ward. They come directly out of the urban environment. He combines the objects however in a way that’s eye catching and memorable, and causes you to forget you’re looking at trash. This is particularly true of his figurative metal pieces. Lott told an audience at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston that his artistic materials make sense because of his Louisiana birthplace. “The logic of the material is from being raised in the country. The rural parts of Louisiana. If you needed something you couldn’t go to the store and buy it. You had to find it or make it.”

Lott’s interest in fluid linear patterns is evident at Station, in his three-dimensional metal figures and in his elegant ink drawings. Station’s outstanding presentation of curly-metal sculptural figures in proximity to curly-line ink drawings demonstrates this. Lott said, “Line moves around, crosses back on itself, becomes shape and starts to resemble something called image, or the illusion of form.”

Apart from being grounded in the urban environment, Lott frames his art as community-building. He said when he hires a kid to dismantle a discarded bedspring, one less kid becomes a juvenile delinquent that day. Lott’s community involvement however goes beyond his own art making. He teaches and mentors, and was one of the original co-founders of Project Row Houses.

In a high-gloss representation of the urban environment, a downtown Houston high rise office building, Lott experienced an absurd moment. Artist Cressandra Thibodeaux caught on video Lott being refused admission to the building’s lobby in which his art was displayed. The building’s security people, it seems, mistook the dude wearing blue overalls who asked where the food was, for a street person. While art show organizers scrambled to address the fracas, video captured the building manager’s mortified expression.

Jesse Lott (b. 1943) was born in Simmesport, Louisiana, a place he calls “swamp country.” He was raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward. He sold his first painting when he was 14 years old, and went on to study at the Hampton Institute and Otis College of Art. The artist has numerous solo and group exhibitions of sculptures, collages and drawings under his belt. In 2016 Art League Houston honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Lott was recently named the Texas State Three-dimensional Artist for 2022.

Born and raised in rural northeast Texas in “primitive conditions,” a real country boy, Travis Whitfield (b. 1945) completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Houston in 1968, studied lithography at Tamarind Institute in New Mexico, and practiced studio art in Louisiana, specializing in watercolors. In 1969 while driving through tiny Keachi Louisiana, Whitfield befriended “the porch crew,” a group of retired share croppers who hung out on the porch of a shuttered 1840s store. Through the years he photographed, painted and audio recorded these guys. They are dead, their houses are gone, their world wiped out. There is no one left who lived through the 1920s and 1930s, hauled water from an outside well, never learned to read and write, grew all the food they ate. At Station, Whitfield presents a shotgun house with furnishings, clothes line, string mop, fly swatter, as well as photos and audio recordings that document what he considers to be an important lost culture.

He took hundreds of photographs. Some photographic prints are displayed inside the shotgun house. Most images though appear on a video, which includes the recorded audio, Whitfield’s narration and a musical sound track, “got mah mojo workin.” The camera captures frost covered grass in the morning, cows, you see a watermelon harvest, a horse being shoed, wood chopping, a chicken yard, even a holy roller dunking-type baptism in a Caddo Parish lake. And the men’s faces. Whitfield said it took a few years before they trusted him enough to pose. He said he was trying to preserve their memory, and pay homage. He believes God brought him to that place in 1969.

In 1972 Whitfield began to audio-record the guys. Their carryings-on are priceless. They argue and berate. “You ain’t never gonna amount to nothing,” and he “acted da fool.” They reminisce about events they lived through, with historical interpretations, like the reason the white people elected Huey P. Long. More rattled assertions, Huey Long built a gold bridge, are challenged. “Shee-it.” Gold bridge? “Shee-it.”

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Brice Marden is as handsome as he was decades ago when he was plagued by female predators. Decked out in an expensive black sports coat and his black wool cap, he looked especially bad-ass at the dinner for his Menil drawing exhibition. It was a high-fallutin dinner. Papercity mag published a picture of the linen covered banquet table with lovely floral arrangements and gold gala-style banquet chairs. Marden sat next to Menil Board of Trustees Chair Emerita, Louisa Stude Sarofim.

The big daddy of the modernist tradition spoke about his art at the Menil. Here are a few notes on Marden’s drawings and his paintings.

One thing he said argued well for ranking an artist’s words over mouthy art critical analysis. Architectural details from antiquity, Marden clarified, did not directly inspire the “Post and Lintel” drawing series, one of six series in the exhibition. “People have said they relate to, you know, I go to Greece every summer, so they made it as though it’s based on ancient Greek architecture, and these things are around, these kind of influences are around, and maybe, they were based on, ha ha, ancient Greece, but I wasn’t thinking about that.”

Marden gave his Menil talk on February 21. A few weeks later the bloody virus slammed the doors on his drawing exhibition. Fortunately, the Menil re-opened in mid-September. You have until October 11, 2020 to see “Think of Them as Spaces: Brice Marden’s Drawings” at the Menil Drawing Institute.

The virus didn’t stop collectors from hankering after his stuff. Less than two months after the Menil locked-down, Marden’s “Window Study No. 4” (1985) fetched $1.1 million at Sotheby’s New York, in the auction house’s first ever online day sale of Contemporary Art. Comparatively, it was a puny amount. “Window Study No. 4” was a preparatory study for the commission to design the windows that lined the apse of Basel Cathedral, and doesn’t seem to be one of his “major” paintings. On July 10, however, Christie’s Auction sold the two panel “Complements” (2004-2007) for $30.9 million in their virtual sale. Try to imagine a record breaking auction sale without the verbal antics of the auctioneer, or the squirming, sputtering, occasional yelling like drunks in a sports bar, of the rich collectors and their proxies.

“I work a lot that way, uh, one after another after another after another, they (drawings) stay together, they come from a certain time or place.” Assistant Curator Kelly Montana who organized the exhibition is projecting slides of the “Mirabelle Addendum” drawing series, another series in the exhibition. Marden is essentially describing his career long practice of making drawings. He told a background story. When his first daughter Mirabelle was born, he handled her two a.m. feedings. He placed a rocking chair, a step ladder and a drawing pad (Indian ink paper) in a closet. “I would hold her, you know, like the football grip, and I drew these drawings.”

Marden revealed an unexpected aspect of commercial strategy. His gallery people produce facsimile reproductions of the drawings, just like a Leonardo, or the Book of Kells.

He will be 82 in October. In that it can take years to bring a painting series from the preliminary drawing stage to completion, one could say he’s running out of time. He said this in 2017 when he left the Matthew Marks Gallery to sign with Gagosian. “I’m running out of time.” Even before he underwent chemotherapy treatment for cancer, he admitted to hunkering down when his brother’s unexpected death brought home his own mortality. “You got to get serious, it’s harder to work when you’re old, you know what I mean, you gotta climb up a ladder all the time.” At the Menil, Marden announced he is beginning new work. “I’m still sort of hacking away at it, I mean I’ve got 4 paintings I’m just starting and I keep thinking I want more intuition, I want to get some human thing out there, uh, you know, you gotta do it, ha ha, gotta give it a try.”

He first discussed the graphite and beeswax series created as studies for “The Seasons” (1975), a multi panel painting in the Menil’s permanent collection. It was interesting to learn how directly nature inspired the colors. In 1975, Mrs. de Menil put “The Seasons” in a Rice University show that included paintings by David Novros and Rothko. Just before opening, Marden told her he was unhappy with its colors. No problem, she assured him, he could re-paint them after the show. Following the opening, Marden and Novros high-tailed it through the Southwest, “a driving trip,” to visit places like Chaco Canyon, where he encountered unfamiliar colors in nature, cottonwood trees for instance. When he returned to Houston to re-paint, they entered his palette. This wasn’t the first time Marden told this story, in a previous telling, Mrs. de Menil disliked the revised painting. “But she kept it.”

His story brings home the fact that close observation of landscape plays an integral role. Consider “Grove Group I” (1972-73) in MOMA’s collection. Abstraction captures the essence of the blueish greenish grayish tones of olive trees he knew in Greece.

Arguably, this period of the 1970s cemented Marden’s commitment to the Abstract Expressionist tradition. He looked closely at Rothko’s expanses of color, handling of luminosity, scale and grouping. He floated monochromatic oil paint into wax for luminescence. Beauty mattered.

In about 1941, Henry Miller wrote that the Greek island of Hydra is a rock which rises out of the sea like a huge loaf of petrified bread. It is a living rock, Miller said, a divine wave of energy suspended in time and space. Whichever god created Hydra, he added, was an expert calligrapher. How interesting that Marden, who has owned a home on Hydra since 1973, told a Tate Modern lecture audience that energies move through the earth. “The energy of how Hydra just came up out of the earth, those energies are so exciting and powerful.” Marden said he tries to capture that energy in his painting, although it is easier to get the energy into a drawing, because drawing is more immediate.

“When I did the Cold Mountain paintings, I was reading the Cold Mountain poems.” The Menil talk now focuses on the “Cold Mountain Studies” which curator Montana said represent “a seismic shift” in Marden’s career. He changed from monochromatic painting to fluid calligraphic mark-making. People wondered if it was dumb to change direction away from a commercially successful style. Reinvent?

Legend holds the 8th or 9th century Tang Dynasty poet Han Shan, whose name translates to “Cold Mountain” wrote the “Cold Mountain” poems. American poet and Zen scholar Gary Snyder, who has a fondness for boil-makers, translated the poems. Inspired by their poetic associations – mountain trails, boulders, trees, moss, clouds – as well as Japanese calligraphy exhibitions, Marden laid down ink glyph-like markings in the spaced-apart columnar format of ancient calligraphy. From these frameworks, he intuitively overlapped squiggly lines. Where dense areas needed “correcting,” he applied white, to erase and reduce, suggest depth, then re-entered to build up. After a year or two, he felt confident he could make paintings with the same complexity and fluidity as these gestural drawings

The first painting completed from the Cold Mountain studies was essentially black and white in the manner of a calligraphic hand scroll, except for gray areas where black paint was thinned or mixed with white primer. Others had sinuous lines looped over the columnar underpinning. All too soon there was color. Marden ultimately abandoned the grid for spontaneous all-over loops. Pollock territory! In the style of Pollock, his image emerged from the painting, floated out of it as if discovered instead of applied to the surface.

Changing directions wasn’t dumb. Collectors and major museums pounced on the lyrical abstractions. There were insane auction sales. He even dipped back into shimmering monochromes. In 2006 Peter Schjeldahl (New Yorker mag) called Marden the most profound abstract painter of the past four decades.

The Menil exhibited some of the Cold Mountain drawings in 1992-93.

More than any other series in the exhibition, “15 x 15 (1-15)” (2015-2017) demonstrates the benefit of listening to an artist’s words. He began these drawings by making 15 marks across the sheet. Their entangled black skeins and vibrantly colored ribbons over patches of translucent white are so dense, though, it’s impossible to discern their compositional substructure. Exuberant gestural flourishes eviscerated it. Programmatic and intuitive in equal measure, the drawings seem to have perfect compositional balance. If Marden doesn’t run out of time, the 15 x 15 series will become paintings. “These are basically studies for the paintings that I’m just about ready to start in the studio.”

Marden sketches while traveling, China, wherever. And he sketches at his homes, in Greece, New York, the Hudson River Valley, the Caribbean. He doesn’t try to duplicate, he tries to capture an essence.

Not every drawing is a preparatory study for a painting. Marden believes every drawing is finished, and holds its own as an artwork.

What’s the best way to view a drawing? Intimately. Get as close as possible, get right on top of it, “which gets you back to the experience of it being made. People say, you know about my stuff, I don’t know what to look for, and I say, just pick a line and follow it and hopefully, you begin to disappear, or you begin to, uh, you know. So that’s my suggestion about looking at drawings.”

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Bond joins CAMH’s leadership team—alongside Executive Director Hesse McGraw—to guide the institution into an exciting period of growth and systemic change. In addition to providing oversight of all museum operations, Bond will work cross-departmentally to uphold new strategic directions that build internal collaborations and expand CAMH’s external partnerships. Bond will further advance the Museum’s commitment to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion for a healthy internal and external culture.

“CAMH is thrilled to welcome Janice to our team—as a native Houstonian, Janice’s new role represents both a homecoming and pivotal moment for the Museum,” said Hesse McGraw, Executive Director. “Janice brings a remarkable record to CAMH, grounded both in belief and trust in artists, and strategic operational acumen that will serve CAMH well. We look forward to the positive influence her thoughtful leadership and cultural insight will infuse into the Museum.”

Although born and raised in Houston, Bond comes to CAMH from Chicago where she was not only an accomplished artist, curator, and gallerist but she also founded Bond Creative Advisors—a consulting practice that has led collectives of artists and institutions in realizing large-scale projects and programs across the city and beyond. These diverse initiatives included new artist-in-residence programs, public art planning and project development, and The Art Allies, which educated and developed visual art collectors and arts entrepreneurs. In this same period, Bond also served as a member of both the Chicago Cultural Plan Advisory Council and the Navy Pier Arts Working Group.

From 2013 to 2015, Bond served as Director of Arts and Culture at Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), a not-for-profit—founded and led by MacArthur Fellow Dr. Rami Nashashibi—with a focus of using art as a foundation and pathway for social justice and restorative healing within the city’s southwest side and in similarly marginalized communities. In addition, she has launched an enterprise of transformative workshops facilitated across the world, from the Brooklyn Museum to Malaysia.

Bond’s experience as an artist extends beyond the United States. In 2014, she traveled to Dakar, Senegal where she became a supporter of Association Colombin, a nonprofit artist-founded organization that remains artist-led and artist-run, while teaching pottery and sculpture to deaf and mute Senegalese so that they can gain independence and visibility while making a positive impact in their community. In 2016, Bond was an artist-in-residence and lecturer at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, Latvia, where her work remains as part of the permanent collection.

“It is a true joy to join the leadership to evolve CAMH’s historic and renowned institutional legacy.” Bond said. “For a museum to sustainably realize its vision, the endeavor must be rooted in the spirit of aligned conscience, service, and investment. As CAMH continues to travel this path, it is imperative that we recalibrate our internal and external operational models to purposefully foster equity and expanded vision. I look forward to CAMH addressing long-standing inequities through re-imagining how we listen, how we engage our communities, and how we aspire to greatness. Alongside the Houston community, artists, cultural workers, staff, and Board of Trustees, I am eager to co-create spaces that inform, inspire, and influence the experience of contemporary art in Houston and beyond.”

Bond’s administrative prowess, contemporary art knowledge, and community engagement will integrate seamlessly with CAMH’s ongoing strategic efforts to position artists as catalysts for cultural and civic transformation. Bond assumed her role at CAMH on June 23, 2020.

Images:

Janice Bond Deputy Director Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH)

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston facade

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