| Project Row Houses founder speaks for Architecture Lecture Series
Artist Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses in Houston, will speak about his work at 6:30 p.m. April 13 in Room 458 of Louderman Hall as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts' spring Architecture Lecture Series. The talk, titled "Toward Social Sculpture," is free and open to the public. The Architecture Lecture Series is sponsored by the College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. Established in 1993, Project Row Houses is an arts and cultural community located in a historically significant inner-city neighborhood in Houston's Third Ward. Encompassing 22 now-renovated shotgun houses, the project is inspired by the work of African-American artist John Biggers — whose paintings celebrated the shotgun house — and combines aspects of neighborhood revitalization, low-income housing, education, historic preservation and community service.
Green fashions finding a following among designers
At the "aWear: An Eco Fashion Event," an all-day teach-in and celebration of sustainable style held recently at Green City Gallery in Berkeley, designer Kirsten Beneke showed off her dresses made from recycled fabric scraps. To conserve electricity, Beneke didn't use a sewing machine, instead making an elegant pink evening gown by simply cutting the fabric and securing it with a purple sash. Other attendees showed their support for ecological fashion by participating in a clothing swap that featured fuzzy scarves and lots of fluorescent caftans (it was in Berkeley, after all). "I made sure everything I was wearing tonight was sustainable" - as in purchased at thrift stores, said Abraham Kneisley, the gallery's spokesman. Even though "aWear," an event put together by Beneke, was sparsely attended, it points to a growing area of fashion interest among those who aren't just obsessed with having the latest looks from the hottest designers on the pages of glossy magazines.
Laurie Metcalf
Right out of college, she and a group of Chicago friends started Steppenwolf Theatre, which grew into one of America's most distinguished companies. (Her 20-minute monologue in Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead is an off-Broadway legend.) Later, she picked up a little sitcom called Roseanne, which rewrote the rules of television comedy with its unblinking look at blue collar life. Now Metcalf is exercising her gift for being up to the minute on Broadway, co-starring in David Mamet's new comedy November. It's a Mamet play unlike any other, with the structure of a classic comedy in the Kaufman & Hart vein but filled with scabrous jokes on such hot-button topics as the torture of prisoners, campaign fundraising, the Middle East and gay marriage. Nathan Lane stars as a U.S. President willing to shake down the national turkey lobby to save his faltering re-election campaign, with Metcalf as his lesbian speechwriter, who's not above a little blackmail to get married on national television.
PS2 Makes You Study, Sort Of
We've all heard the basic story of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 before: An unsuspecting orphan is pulled from the comfort of his boring life into an adventure that will eventually lead to saving the world from a vast source of evil. Been there, done that. But Persona 3, released on Aug. 14 for the PlayStation 2, is far from a run-of-the-mill PS2 role-playing game, and not just because of the techno and rap that make up its soundtrack. Despite the cliché story (albeit with a modern twist), the gameplay mechanics are so quirky and innovative that one can't help but overlook Persona 3's many similarities to every other RPG ever. Persona 3's originality stems from the fact that it doesn't fit comfortably into just one genre. Half of the game is composed of traditional dungeon-crawling RPG fare, but the other half is a high school simulation, complete with gossipy girls, extracurricular activities, dating, and tests.
Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery explores printmaking
"Printmaking NOW," an invitational exhibition featuring the work of nine regional artists, explores works made using a variety of print processes including lithography (traditional and offset), woodcut, screen-printing, collagraph and letterpress. The nine artists to exhibit include Grace Bentley-Scheck, Stephen Fisher, Jennifer Hughes, Barbara Pagh, Elias Roustom, Anne Tait, Kurt Wisneski, Dan Wood and Pippi Zornoza. Grace Bentley-Scheck Bentley-Scheck's collagraphs are held in a number of public and private collections including Knoxville Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; and Bristol Community College. Recent exhibitions include SAGA Exhibition, Prague; a solo exhibition at Hunter Gallery, Middletown, R.I.; and the 20th Parkside National Small Print Exhibition, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha, WI.
|
