In The News

Iconic Art Space Goes Costume Crazy With a WitchCraft Twist

By Catilin Hsu. Additional reporting Catherine D. Anspon.

Perry Price, Rosemary Price, and Mary Headrick at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft Martini Madness (Photo by Katy Anderson)

This is the first story in a series detailing outrageous, inventive and important art parties. It’s time to anoint the most sizzling soirées of the season.

The Big Event: Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s Martini Madness! fundraiser

Mise en Scène: The Craft Center’s festive “Witches Den” (party tent) and “Garden of Fortunes” (HCCC’s Craft Garden) in the heart of the Houston Museum District.

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Parents everywhere know the value of crafts to keep children occupied, but can have difficulty coming up with new ideas. The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft has an ongoing monthly resource for that called Hands On Houston. Broadcast November 11th, 2022 on Stafford METV.

Our thanks to Matt Manalo for including Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in his 365 Things to Do in Houston “My Top 5” feature! We are very excited for Matt’s solo exhibition here at HCCC in early 2023.

In our My Top 5 series, we turn to the Houstonians who create and shape Houston’s character and ask them to share their own favorite things that make H-Town home. This week, we’re delighted to feature artist Matt Manalo, who also founded alternative art space, Alief Art House.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

By Justin Jerkins

Photo: Michael Starghill Photography; courtesy of the artist.

“I’ve lived here for 19 years; my family and I moved here [from Manila, Philippines],” says artist Matt Manalo, founder of Alief Art House and Filipinx Artists of Houston. “I was already in college when I left, pursuing computer engineering and then when I came here, I felt like it wasn’t a thing I wanted to pursue anymore. At that time, people were really hiring nurses at a fast rate and so I thought that was something I would be doing for the rest of my life, and it turned out it wasn’t [laughs]. I quickly realized that I can’t really imagine spending the rest of my life working at a hospital and that’s when I did some self-searching…I’ve always been interested in art growing up and that’s when I realized that art is something I wanted to do full-time for the rest of my life.”

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How does craft tell stories differently than other visual arts media? I posed this question to Texas-raised, Los Angeles-based artist and curator Andres Payan Estrada, juror for CraftTexas 2022, the biennial juried exhibition presented by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC), now in its 11th edition. “We always highlight the material, how it’s made, and the labor behind it,” says Estrada, “but most importantly we aim to highlight the individual who is making it.”

By Sherry Cheng

Individual narratives and histories are embedded through and through in this conceptually expansive yet thematically cohesive exhibition, on view Oct. 1, 2022 through Jan. 28, 2023 at HCCC. 40 pieces by 27 artists, selected from a pool of more than 250 applicants, enter into nuanced conversations with each other and with the viewer, connecting through explorations of identity, social history, and communal experiences, while pushing the boundaries of contemporary craft. “Artists are dismantling the perception of what a craft object is,” observes Estrada. “It’s often thought of as either solely living in the domestic or something being painstakingly created by hand. A lot of these artists are taking these preconceptions and blowing them up.”

Olaniyi Rasheed Akindiya, “OSU MEJILA ATI ODUN KAN – 12 MOON IS ONE COMPLETE CALENDAR YEAR,” 2020. Mixed-media tapestry sculpture installation. 100 x 26 x 100 inches. Photo by ARTWITHAKIRASH STUDIO LLC.

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By Becca Hensley

While mourning the death of my grandmother recently, I made my first visit to the Rothko Chapel in Houston. The octagonal, minimalistic sanctum, anchored by a reflective pool, looked nothing like a conventional house of worship, yet it drew me in immediately. Something healing flowed out.

In 1964, art collectors John and Dominique de Menil commissioned abstract expressionist Mark Rothko to design this ecumenical structure. Completed in 1971, a year after Rothko’s suicide, the chapel showcases 14 of this master’s paintings, each featuring a series of mysteriously dark, subtle hues: grays, purples, even greens. They took me inside myself in a grounding way — centering me on that first visit, as well as on subsequent ones.

DAVID WARREN / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Houston reigns as an arts and curiosities mecca, as evidenced by its prized Museum District, home to not only this chapel but 18 other institutions grouped into four walkable zones about 4 miles south of downtown. Displaying objects as varied as the largest emerald crystal found in North America, Byzantine icons and Jackson Pollock paintings, the district offers something for every mood. There’s even a 55-acre zoological park.

You can’t experience the entire district in one trip, but here’s a doable plan for a three-day museumfest.

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The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s Spring Luncheon at River Oaks Country Club toasted 20 years of cutting edge exhibitions from artists working in today’s important craft media. Artist Catherine Morgan, the inspiration behind HCCC’s founding, was honored at the event along with the organization’s original board of directors. who were tapped as honorary chairs.

By Vivian Phillips and Catherine D. Anspon

Yvonne Garcia, David Gooding & Edward Lane McCartney (Photo by Katy Anderson)

The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s Spring Luncheon at River Oaks Country Club toasted 20 years of cutting edge exhibitions from artists working in today’s important craft media. Artist Catherine Morgan, the inspiration behind HCCC’s founding, was honored at the event along with the organization’s original board of directors. who were tapped as honorary chairs.

Chrissi Morgan, Bill Morgan, honoree Catherine Morgan, honorary chair Sara Morgan, honorary chair Mike Morgan (Photo by Katy Anderson)

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Exploration and insight require time and commitment. The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Awards in Craft seek to make both possible for devoted craftspeople and artists from around the country who strive to express what we see and experience in our world through engagement with material. The award recognizes practitioners committed to material mastery and exploration with practices encompassing the stewardship of living cultural traditions, unique insight in material study, and the advancement of craft at the intersection of other fields including science. We recognize that arts funding, especially for craftspeople, is lacking in the US, and we encourage others to commit to these fields.

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The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) recently announced the forthcoming departure of longtime Curator Kathryn Hall, and its subsequent national search for a new curator.

By Jessica Fuentes

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Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s exhibition is filled with the haunting, rhythmic sounds of gently clattering porcelain.

By Lauren Moya Ford

Jennifer Ling Datchuk, still from “Tame” (2021), video (photo by Walley Films, courtesy Jennifer Ling Datchuk)

HOUSTON — While conducting research at the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center in 2018, Jennifer Ling Datchuk came upon a poster that caught her attention. “Chinese Carry Out Family Planning for the Revolution” by the Shanghai People’s Publishing House features a smiling, smocked woman who holds a bottle of birth control pills and is surrounded by cartoons of a woman and a child engaging in lively activities. The slogan below reads, “Later, Longer, Fewer,” encouraging women to have later marriages, longer periods between births, and fewer children. The 1974 poster is a precursor to China’s one-child policy that was instituted five years later to slow the country’s climbing birth rates.

As empowering as the poster’s message may seem, it also draws certain parallels with the most recent restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in Texas, where Datchuk has lived and worked for the past 13 years. In response to the poster, Datchuk wrote, “This message suggests that women have the power and access to resources in order to make these decisions in the first place.” Now as then, from Shanghai to San Antonio, women’s bodies are subject to state control.

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By Nancy Zastudil

Creative expression is often responsive to, or even dictated by, circumstance. German playwright Berthold Brecht recognized as much with his 1939 poem “Motto.” In dark times, he wrote, there will be singing. But, the singing will be about the dark times.

San Antonio-based artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk reminded me of Brecht’s riddle-like assurance while discussing her current exhibition Later, Longer, Fewer: The Work of Jennifer Ling Datchuk, on view at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft until Jan. 8, 2022. The works in the show include the artist’s signature blue and white porcelain sculptures, multimedia installations, and video, all of which “directly address viewers by critiquing the realities and contemporary perceptions of women’s access and liberation.”

“Later, Longer, Fewer: The Work of Jennifer Ling Datchuk” at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Installation photo by Katy Anderson.

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