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ART INSTALLATIONS

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Throughout the year, the Orange Show curates site-specific art installations designed to integrate contemporary works of art from emerging and established artists within the context of our folk art environments.

Current
CURRENT INSTALLATIONS

DAVID BEST: THE HOUSTON TEMPLE

On View April 12 - November 9, 2024

Public Vigils every Thursday from 6-9pm starting May 9

The Orange Show World HQ

Parking located at 5330 Gulf Freeway, Houston, TX 77023

The Orange Show Center seeks to transform lives through the power of art and community. No artist better represents this mission than our 2024 artist-in-residence, California sculptor David BestBest is renowned for the immense “temples” he creates from elaborately pattered salvaged wood. Constructed all over the globe (including many of the world-famous Burning Man Festivals), these monumental public art projects are non-denominational sacred spaces that allow communities to express their deepest emotions: love, grief, joy, sorrow, celebration, and remembrance.

PAUL KITTELSON: WIND FIELD

Opening Reception: March 24, 2024, 2-5pm

On View March 24 - November 6

The Orange Show World HQ

Parking located at 2334 Gulf Terminal Drive, Houston, TX 77023

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Paul Kittelson’s sculptures invite the viewer to look and look again. They have a sense of humor. You’d probably like to have a beer with them. Oversized lawn chairs, impossibly complicated wayfinding signs, plants made from shiny aluminum—Kittelson always puts an unexpected spin on otherwise familiar objects, figures, and forms.

Wind Field comprises twenty-three kinetic sculptures that dazzle the eye and lampoon the contemporary art canon. Animating the Orange Show Center’s campus through the fall, Kittelson’s collection of pinwheels and whirligigs riff on the legacies of Andy Warhol, Eadweard Muybridge, Jasper Johns, and most of all, Marcel Duchamp in a playful swirl of color and motion. They acknowledge the traditions of op art and vernacular yard art, and they echo the Orange Show’s perpetually-spinning wind vanes.

Kittelson was part of the original cadre of artists at the University of Houston’s legendary Lawndale Annex that helped define the character of the city’s developing art scene. He received his MFA from UH in 1985 and joined the faculty of the UH School of Art in 1992. His work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries, but it’s been most frequently seen on esplanades, parks, and airports. He’s currently associate professor at University of Houston.

Upcoming
UPCOMING INSTALLATIONS
Past
PAST INSTALLATIONS

MARIA CHAVEZ: SOUND ABSORPTION SERIES

On view through May 2023 | Orange Show World HQ

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Experience abstract turntablism artist Maria Chavez's original sound absorbent, site-specific sculptural environment made from repurposed fabrics and building materials that were otherwise headed for the landfill. Chavez is The Orange Show's Spring 2023 artist-in-residence, and marks her return to public performance following a four-year sabbatical after brain surgery. Her residency comprises an immersive, monumental sound-absorbing sculptural installation made from found and recycled fabrics; artist-led tours; two youth workshops; an both an opening-night DJ set and durational performance and a closing recital with workshops participants and other special guests.

 

About Maria Chavez:

Coincidence, chance, and failure are themes that unite Maria Chavez’ book objects, sound sculptures, multi-media installations, and other works produced within her improvised solo turntable performance practice. Born in Lima, Peru, Chavez grew up in Houston and developed a self-taught and completely original approach as a DJ and turntablist that favors vinyl records’ unique defects and idiosyncrasies. She is heavily influenced by Pauline Oliveros’ “Deep Listening” concept that “fosters creative innovation across boundaries and abilities, among artists and audience, musicians and non-musicians, healers and the physically or cognitively challenged, and children of all ages.”

GROUNDED: AN EXPLORATION BY HOUSTON ARTISTS OF THE SOIL WE CALL HOME 

On View through May 2023 | Orange Show World HQ & Smither Park

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Grounded is an exploration by emerging Houston artists of the soil we call home. This show will be an interpretation of what it means to be grounded sustainably, culturally and socially in Houston. The artists find ways to grow, connect, and reflect on personal experiences and narratives through the arrangement of soil, plants and found materials. Embedded in the works created are aspects of rest, grief, hope, and play.

 

Curated by Matt Manalo and Cecilia Norman

 

Featuring outdoor works by Brandon Tho Harris, Ceci Norman, Maria Jacinta Majithia, Marcos Hernandez Chavez, Matt Manalo. 

Brandon Tho Harris examines his family’s relationship to this foreign landscape with a collection of earth from sites of his family homes, archival photographs, immigration documents, and found clothing and objects. No Room on Water, No Home on Land proposes that the land is a living archive concealing intimate histories, memories, and the trauma of who once called this land home in the past, pres- ent and future.

 

Ceci Norman is an artist focused on play, image making, storytelling and wellness. Comfort Obscura is a six foot tall circular room, with a lens at the top that lets in light from the outside world. Designed as a space of quiet contem- plation, this camera obscura reflects the Orange Show and provides space for peace and meditation.

 

Maria Jacinta Majithia‘s practice is inspired by collaging and the assembly of found objects, Situated in Smith- er Park, the Flower Bed is a metal queen size bed frame repurposed as a mobile garden, with species common to the artist’s hometown of Medellin, Colombia. Green onions, plantains, and some ornamental flowers are grown to fulfill needs both aesthetic and culinary.

 

Marcos Hernandez Chavez explores themes of labor, craft authorship, and environmental issues. A memorial of sorts, Parent’s Path Piece is a mulch pathway through a small grassy field which ends at a fence shared with the neighboring freight truck yard. The path recreates the map of labor sites where the artist’s mother and father toiled as young migrant workers in the 1960s and ‘70s.

 

Matt Manalo’s environmentally conscious work incorpo- rates raw materials and found objects and tackles ideas surrounding his own immigrant identity, displacement, and how “home” is defined. Hoop Dreamzzz is a DIY Basket- ball goal made from natural materials and an ode to those found on the streets of his hometown in Manila, Philippines. 

Opening reception September 17 from 2-5pm. Programming dates TBA.

CAROL SANDIN COOLEY: WORMCLOPS AND SANDHANDS

September 3 - 23, 2022 | Orange Show Study Center

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"Almost to my Cave" by Carol Sandin Cooley, 2022, 8"x8", acrylic.

The Orange Show Study Center contains its curatorial office, library, and a micro-gallery designed for small exhibitions of unusual fancy and particular potency, accessible during events and by appointment. We are thrilled to introduce this series of shows with the work of Carol Sandin Cooley, an active participant in Houston’s creative community at least as far back as her involvement with the 1990s-era psychedelic noise outfit Sad Pygmy. This is her first solo exhibition and it features works on canvas, cardboard, and ceramic. Artist-curated performances take place on opening night and most Saturdays throughout the month in the Orange Show World HQ dock space. 

 

“I have drawn, painted and played music since I was a child, starting to play in bands at age 15.  I started getting serious about visual art when I studied photography at the Glassell School in 2003. I have been drawing a world inhabited by wormclops and sandhands that has existed in my mind for years.  During Hurricane Harvey I did my first painting that started this collection. The wormclops are trying to navigate their world and get safely home and not get caught in a spoiler cloud. They are sweet little generous worms just trying to get by while the sandhands spin through the air. The spoiler clouds are always creeping up behind trying to rain on their day but they stay one link ahead. I love to create my own little worlds in both paint and ceramics and I’m grateful to have the chance to share them with you.”

 

Associated Performances

Experience the World of Wormclops through a series of Saturday night concerts on the Orange Show docks curated by featured artist Carol Sandin Cooley. 

 

September 3, 2022 (opening reception)

Astrogenic Hallucinauting | Illicit Relationship | Scott Ayers

 

September 17, 2022

Frog Hair | Jo Bird the Fiddlewitch

 

September 24, 2022

Muzak John | Jane Woe | The Wiggins

June 9-30, 2022

The Orange Show World Headquarters

2334 Gulf Terminal Drive

Special performances every Thursday throughout the month of June, from 8pm-10:30pm

SONIA FLORES: ASCENDANTS FROM THE FUTURE

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Visual and performing artist Sonia Flores and team present a new sculptural installation, an other-worldly realm created through the use of macramé. The macramé pieces, reminiscent of DNA strands, hang from the ceiling, cascading to the floor, combined with  airy tulle, dried flowers and iridescent vinyl cuttings, to create an interstellar ambiance in magenta, purple, teal, dark blue, sea green, hot pink, and chartreuse. At the center of the structure is an open clearing in which performances take place on Thursday nights throughout the run of the exhibition. Opening night performances by Sonia Flores (double bass and vocals)  / Emmanuel Guajardo (electric bass)  / David Dove (trombone)  / Gabriel Martinez (percussion and drums) and by Una Behdi with soundscapes and textures by Megan Easley. Free and open to the public. Bring mats/chairs to sit on. This event is funded in part by the City of Houston, Houston Arts Alliance.

RE: TEMPT CONTEMPT
May 8 - May 28 at The Orange Show Monument
2401 Munger St., Houston, TX 77023

Opening Reception: May 8, 3-6PM

On view Saturdays & Sundays from 10am-5pm through May 28
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Re: Tempt Contempt is the newest variant of an exhibition model developed through the exhibition Temporary/Contemporary from 2004. In 2004, I was interested in art in uncustomary spaces, developing new contexts, and exploring the expanded field. I was curious how artworks responded to heterogenous situations in which they were dis-played. I organized and curated an exhibition of exceptional artworks embedded within and responding to the Orange Show monument. Temporary/Contemporary of 2004 was an extraordinary art exhibition in which many contemporary artists engaged with the Orange Show through temporary artworks embedded within the folk art environment. The Curator of Programming at the Orange Show, Pete Gershon, invited me back to curate a new exhibition. For this new iteration Re: Tempt Contempt in 2022, I have chosen extraordinary artists that emit vibrancy and intensity, the variety of art you won’t find anywhere else. These six outstanding artists will respond to the Orange Show monument through temporary site-specific artworks. There is no other place to find such an experience. Ciriza is a multidisciplinary artist who explores transformative form in relation to transmuting and composting experiences of pain, molting processes, body as vessel of multiplicity and impermanence. Ciriza's works are exploration of states of fluidity and transmutation; the slippery, elusive, and anomalistic spaces materializing in tactile and visceral forms. The result is otherworldly, a connection to the infinite where phantasmagoria becomes tangible, familiar, and feral. Rooted in the medicinal, Ciriza's sculptural works illuminate the possibilities of healing and metamorphoses within the opacity of shadow and murk.  Jean Daye is an artist and reformed influencer. Originally from Houston, they now operate worldwide. Led by the twin stars of "The Far Side" and the Zucker brothers, they've long worked in the media of post-content content. They have DJ'd and VJ'd museum openings, art spaces, music and performing arts festivals, and private events. Since the outbreak of global plague they have relapsed into a practice of making physical, visual art. For this exhibition, they are preparing a series of site-specific installations about reactionaries, Davos refugees, animal cosmonauts, and other space pilgrims. These works will combine #paintings #screenprints #survival kits #relics from Potempkin launch sites and other #cosmic jetsam. D O M O K O S / S T A R C H I L D E 7 develops audio/visual/sculptural works concentrating on white light and anti-war energy / future Armbageddon realities + the F A N T A S Y 1 international underground network. Alexandra Isabel Lechin is a Venezuelan-American sculptor whose work expands on modes of pacification and self-soothing through repetitive motions. She's explores this primarily through the use of the Morié optical illusion in various forms. Lechin's piece "Immortality" gives a physicality to the spirits that protect the Orange Show, a place intended for gathering, joy, and community. Immortality is accomplished so long as the stories and memories live on. The piece consists of oranges frozen in time with amber shellac surrounded by plaster angels. Working as a member of the conservation efforts for the Orange Show, Lechin has felt the spirits that linger in the space and is paying homage to the time and care that artists of past generations have poured into the monument. The oranges were eaten amongst friends and charged with happiness and laughter. Phillip Pyle, II is a visual artist, graphic designer, photographer, and agitator based in Houston, Texas whose primary interests are race, humor, advertising, sports and popular culture. Mining imagery from sources diverse as mass consumer culture, contemporary advertising, to ephemera, historical imagery, and hip-hop, Pyle introduces a complex vision that derives from a robust comedic foundation while also looking at the abstraction and transience of our values and beliefs. Jon Read's work is a day-glo dystopia full of bootleg animatronic hybrids, cryptids, and mutant ghouls, masquerading infantilism which obscures imminent catastrophe. Reverie and discord are both addictive pleasures, vividly hued disaster is always around the corner. Abandon all rational senses, savor the shambles.

Photos by Morris Malakoff

ENTRY POINTS: SITE SPECIFIC WORK FROM SIX CONTEMPORARY HOUSTON ARTISTS
March 19 - May 29, 2022
The Orange Show World Headquarters

2334 Gulf Terminal Drive, Houston, TX 77023

Opening Reception: March 19, 2-5PM

On view Saturdays & Sundays from 10am-5pm through May 29
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“Entry Points” features large-scale environmental pieces by six contemporary Houston artists working with creative reuse and community engagement: Jonathan Paul Jackson, Ronald L. Jones, Gabriel Martinez, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, Patrick Renner, and Emily Sloan. In each case, visitors enter a site-specific environment, as defined by the artist, that in some way intersects with the aesthetic or spirit of the Orange Show and its expanding campus.  Jonathan Paul Jackson  Jonathan Paul Jackson is an African American Visual Artist working across various disciplines including painting, sculpture, and illustration. He has some formal education in art but is mostly self-taught. He interrupted his own practice for several years to focus on presenting the work of others, and in 2011, he returned fulltime to artmaking with a series of oil pastel works depicting jazz greats, political figures, and everyday objects. Successive waves of productivity have yielded Neo-Expressionism and action painting; color studies informed by Matisse, Warhol and Gauguin; and works inspired by Jackson’s interest in African, Latin and Native North American indigenous sculpture and culture.  Ronald L. Jones  Ronald Llewellyn Jones is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose artwork explores barriers between creatives and audiences and encouraging conversations about the relationship between individuals and their communities. Originally a filmmaker and photographer, he’s become best-known for his site-specific string and wire installations in gallery spaces and public outdoor areas that reference both the connections that build community and the barriers that impede progress. Jones challenges individual perceptions in relation to the availability of access and agency within normative societal structures.  Gabriel Martinez Gabriel Martinez is an artist, writer, and performer who takes the urban environment as a frame within which to examine concerns both local and global. Installations, discrete artworks, and even performative works may be made from the recontextualized detritus of city life--traffic barriers, shattered auto glass, empty cans, found fabric scraps. Martinez graduated with an MFA from Columbia University and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program before moving to Houston as a Core Program fellow and as an artist-in-residence at Project Row Houses. He is the founder of Alabama Song, an experimental arts space in Houston, and an active participant in Houston’s creative music community.   Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud  Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud is a native Houstonian, a fourth-generation artist, and a community leader. Inspired by mapping and geography; the natural environment; and diaspora, memory, and loss, she works across disciplines including site-specific land installations, studio-based work, and writing. She has led interdisciplinary community initiatives throughout the U.S. connecting arts, culture and the environment; and she frames new ways of imagining and advocating for natural resources and environmental justice. Currently, she is Executive Director of Bayou City Waterkeeper, where she works on wetland protection and urban water management, promotes watershed resiliency efforts that center equity and nature-based solutions, and supports community efforts to improve water quality in greater Houston.  Patrick Renner  Sculptor Patrick Renner explores refuse as a vehicle for memory and a way of exploring the human condition. He is best-known for his first large scale public sculpture, Funnel Tunnel, a 180’ woven wood and metal construction commissioned by Art League Houston and placed for over a year on Montrose Boulevard. During his decade of teaching at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts and at Sharpstown International High School, Renner led four student art car projects, winning three prizes including the Mayor’s Cup in 2011. He’s also among the founding members of El Rincon Social and of the {exurb} projects collective. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004 and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2006. Emily Sloan Social sculptor Emily Sloan’s “recreational aesthetics” encompass performance, education, and visual arts. She works with a variety of materials including wood, clay, humor and dreams. Projects have included a faux burning house, funeral wakes for the undead, baptisms out of a pick-up truck, an art gallery in a refrigerator. She is the founding reverend of the controversial Southern Naptist Convention and Co-Director for Houston International Performance Art Biennale. In 2009, Sloan received her MFA in sculpture at the University of Houston, and in 2013 she established the Mystic Lyon art space in the Fifth Ward.

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