The Blog Turns Two!

A little late but just in time...but just wanted to say that today, Wednesday, November 30th, The Art of Brownsville celebrates its 2nd birthday! Yay! Two years...wow! Who knew it would come this far? Usually, blogs and consistency are not the best pair of qualities, so I am happy to say the this blog has kept up. I am also happy to have Lucy and Al on team and to have more responses from the community. I heard the attendance to Stunning Strokes was wonderful (I was in Mexico City) and I hope that you all may join us again on December 16th for the 2nd reception. The Herald also covered the exhibition in their Friday edition. Many thanks go out to The Herald for coverage and support they have given to the blog these past months!

Many wonderful things have occurred and will continue to escalate! My wish for the next year is for the blog to help foster more development in the Brownsville art community through unity and collaboration and to also look to and support our neighbors in Matamoros, Reynosa and all over the Valley! We are sitting on a well-spring of cultural and artistic wealth and inspiration! It just needs to be tapped! There is so much potential for local culture and art to be developed in a major tourist and entertainment industry through which we can substantially improve our quality of life. So like fellow Art of Brownsville blogger Al Garza Jr. said, "Let's work on it! Get inspired!"

* Work by Carmen Lomas Garza
Cumpleaños de Lala y Tudi (Lala and Tudi’s birthday), 1989, Lithograph, 22" x 30"

Brownsville Hertiage Museum Art Events

Mexican Folk Retablos: From the Jones Collection Exhibition opens at the Brownsville Heritage Complex on December 4th

Brownsville- The Brownsville Heritage Museum, located in the Brownsville Heritage Complex in historic downtown Brownsville, invites the public to the opening of Mexican Folk Retablos: From the Jones Collection, an exhibition of historic Retablos. The exhibition opens on Sunday, December 4th at 2pm. The exhibition is from the private collection of Joan Jones, who is an accredited member of the International Society of Appraisers and is a recognized expert in the field of 18th-19th century Mexican Colonial Art. Mexican Retablos are devotional paintings of various saints on tin and copper. A presentation on "The History of Mexican Retablos" by Joan Jones is scheduled for 2 p.m., with books on Mexican Folk Retablos available for purchase in the museum gift shop. A reception for the exhibition follows the presentation and is scheduled for 3 p.m. The presentation and reception are free and open to the public. Mexican Folk Retablos: From the Jones Collection will be on view at the Brownsville Heritage Museum through January 6, 2005 and is included with the cost of general admission to the Brownsville Heritage Museum. Admission is free for Brownsville Historical Association members.

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The Brownsville Heritage Complex to host Artful Holidays Exhibition as part of Artful Holidays Weekend

Brownsville- The Brownsville Heritage Museum, located in the Brownsville Heritage Complex in historic downtown Brownsville, invites the public the opening reception for Artful Holidays Exhibition on Sunday, December 4 at 3 pm. Admission is free to the public. Artful Holidays Exhibition will feature various artworks by local artists and is a unique opportunity to buy ceramic and steel sculptures, as well as paintings and prints. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the art will benefit the Brownsville Historical Association. Some of the artists participating in the exhibition are Cande Aguilar, Aleida Garcia, Jessica Salazar-McBride, Benjamin Varela, Brian Wedgworth, Beth Fedigan, Chris Leonard, and Dainty Lewis. Artful Holidays Exhibition is part of the Artful Holidays Weekend 2005 at the Brownsville Heritage Complex. Artful Holidays Weekend 2005 will feature various activities throughout the weekend at the Brownsville Heritage Complex. Some of the activities include Sabores del Valle workshop on "Citrus," Art Market, and Mexican Folk Retablos lecture and exhibition reception.

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The mission of the Brownsville Historical Association is to preserve and promote all things relating to the rich history of Brownsville, Texas, and its environs. The Brownsville Heritage Complex, located at 1325 E. Washington St. in historic downtown Brownsville, includes the Stillman House Museum, the Brownsville Heritage Museum and the Heritage Resource Center. Museum hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. For more information on Brownsville Heritage Complex exhibitions and programs, please call 956-541-5560 or email info@brownsvillehistory.org.

Los Artistas de Brownsville

The Art of Brownsville is pumping up for its 2nd cumpleaños (coming up Nov. 30th) and one main objective for this upcoming year is to support our local artists through more advocacy and promotion! To the right you can see local artists (left to right) Antonio Antinori Jr., Anahi Navarro, Dina Saldaña, Christina Salazar, Toni Hudson, Gabriel Treviño, Al Garza Jr. and Lucy Quezada showcasing their work at the Paseo de la Resaca Park Inauguration at the Brownsville Events Center on Sunday, November 13th 2005. For more pictures of the event and the artwork on display click here. You can also personally view most of these artist's artwork and meet them at the "Stunning Strokes" Exhibition this Friday, Nov. 25th from 7pm-9pm at Paseo Plaza.

You can also see photos of UTB graduate Sandesh Kadur's solo exhibit of photographs from his book Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats – A Vanishing Heritage, currently on display at the beautiful and historic UTB/TSC Alonso Building. The photographs on display were taken by Kadur while he was filming the documentary "Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon" for the Gorgas Science Foundation which was also broadcast on the Discovery Channel. To read Herald coverage on Kadur's exhibit click here. Visit Sandesh Kadur.com to learn more about his work in conservation, documentary film and photography.

Keep an eye out for more art and information about local artists and please feel free to give feedback on what you see and read on The Art of Brownsville.

McAllen Artwalk

Artists in McAllen, Texas are really doing their part when it comes to art. The Art Walk in McAllen is a great outlet for artists to convey their talents and help raise the importance of appreciation for the arts in their city. It not only benefits McAllen artists, but it benefits the entire art world. It was wonderful to feel a great sense of unity in the art community. There were several galleries, studios and restaurants collaborating efforts into one artistically diverse event. Seeing everything from bronze cast sculptures, in one part of town, to designer furniture in another part proved just how free and expressive art is in McAllen. Variety is the spice of life and the freedom expressed at the Art Walk allows people to become more observant and appreciative of the unrestricted diversity that the art world has to offer. I think It would be a wonderful idea to have something like this in Brownsville... so let’s work on it. Get inspired.

Brownsville Graffiti Artist Arrested

The Herald recently covered this story on the arrest of Brownsville graffiti artist Jose Guadalupe Gutierrez, whom was credited for the tag aliases "Slick", "slic", "Dose" and "2 1/2 K". If Gutierrez embodies all of these aliases or if the tags are of different artists or of a crew was not confirmed. While graffiti has been posted about in The Art of Brownsville, interestingly in the past week, I have received two contacts from readers in concern to Brownsvillle graffiti. While the graffiti scene has not hit big in Brownville in comparison to Hidalgo County, there has been a rise in higher forms of the style, ranging from aerosol, to stickers, to stencil mediums. While I do not condone acts of vandalism, the recent rise has been an aesthetic relief from the eye sore of gang graffiti.

What is neat about the article are the interesting comments by Gutierrez which signal an obvious need for artist support in the community :

“I’ve always wanted people’s attention by doing big stuff, and every time I would ask for permission, I would never get it,” he said. Give me a set of paint brushes, or give me a bucket of paint and I’ll be doing murals. I just don’t have the money or the paint.”

One of the readers asked for my thoughts on this recent event. I have plenty of thoughts on the complex and controversial subject and to read up on them check out the links below. Yet, what I would really like is for you to give your own thoughts on the matter. Share your thoughts and observations Brownsville! Graffiti, is it art? Is if right? Is it wrong? Where does it fit in Brownsville? What can be done? What needs to be done? Lover or hater, artist or critic, here is your forum to speak out!

TAOB Graffiti Posts:
Audrey Hepburn Tag
The Gates Vandalized
Some Early Observations
An Early Post

The Art of Brownsville Team

The Art of Brownsville welcomes two new bloggers to its team! Brownsville artists and muralists Lucy Quezada and Al Garza Jr. will be contributing to the blog by giving more insight and promotion on the Brownsville, Valley/Frontera art scene by sharing their experiences and viewpoints on art. You can currently view their murals at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Brownsville on St. Charles and 14th st and at the UTB ITEC center (formerly Amigoland Mall). Al and Lucy have proven themselves to be dedicated artists and supporters of the Brownsville art scene through their activism and insights so keep an eye out for more posts. Welcome to The Art of Brownsville Lucy and Al!
*Picture shows Greyhound mural behind muralists Al Garza, Lucy Quezada and UTB Art Professor Carlos Gomez

Support The Art of Brownsville

The Art of Brownsville is itching to grow and needs your support! You can help expand the already free resources and information the blog provides through monetary donations. All donations, big and small, would only be used towards the costs of creating, maintaining and marketing an online arts and culture resource that will help put our local communties on the map! Donations, big and small are welcomed. All donors will be recognized on the blog and the completed website. The Art of Brownsville is a complete volunteer effort. We work on this blog because we are passionate about art and we are passionate about our corner of the world which we feel deserves more credit! So become a part of el movimiento today and donate, or better yet, activate!

Learn About Jeremy Blake

My first impressions of Jeremy Blake’s work came from within a dark make shift theatre at the Blanton Museum of Art. I sat, bored and yet visually fixated on Jeremy Blake’s “time-based painting” Winchester, a digital video montage of images of the Winchester House, the mysterious Gothic mansion Heiress Sarah Winchester built to defend herself from the ghosts of people who were killed by the rifle. I was transfixed by the morphing images of the mansion, rifles, huntsmen, ink blots and abstracted colors ranges, but after 20 minutes I felt frustrated by the lack of any climatic release. I found the piece to be dreary and slow and likened it to a glorified screensaver.

Then a few weeks later, Jeremy Blake gave a lecture about his piece and his upcoming work on the film Punch-Drunk Love, in which his “time-based paintings” would be used through out the film as “hallucination sequences to represent the main character’s whirl of emotions at key points in the plot.” His explanation of abstraction as a technique of narrative caught my interest since it is not often used in sequential media such mainstream film. He also stated that he preferred to be a called a painter because he feels his paintings have “the sensitivity to form and color that one associates with traditional painting - even if he uses pixels and programs instead of oil paint.” After hearing the artist himself, I decided to approach his art with a different attitude. Unlike film, his time-based paintings have no imposed limitations of a plot or time frame because they are played in a continuous loop and they even transcend the limitations of traditional abstract painting. It is best described by Bill Davenport of Glasstire.com: "In a way, Blake's videos do what abstract painting always wanted to, but better. Relieved of the weight of history and the hackneyed romanticism of high art, they are the realization of Kandinsky's dream: stories told in an abstract language of shapes and colors, free to express mystical, spiritual forces and feelings directly, without the mundane literalness of representation."

Blake’s Punch-Drunk Love abstractions are more than representational imagery; it is an active character in the film, helping set the atmosphere and interacting with the narrative of the film. I came to appreciate Blake’s work by breaking down the limitations of my own expectations of sequential media. It is still a challenge to put those expectations aside from which I can understand why Jeremy Blake would prefer to be called a painter. He wants his work to be seen as an evolution of painting and not to be instantly categorized as another video art piece because then it will be judged as such, disregarding the actual context of his time-based painting style.

Research Sources:
Punch-Drunk Love and Jeremy Blake
Creative Time, Essay by Jeremy Blake
Acrylic: Contemporary Art Criticism
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Personal Note: I wrote this small essay up for my current art course. I thought you all might like to learn about Jeremy Blake. He is not a Valley artist but I think it's also important to keep ourselves informed of what's going on outside the community and step outside the box. I also hope that as I become more acquainted with the Valley art scene, I may be able to write more posts about local artists and their work. If you are an artist and want to see something about you on The Art of Brownsville send a few pictures, a statement and bio my way via email and voila! Until then, I will also continue to share as much information that I can provide about art.

Matamoros.com

The Art of Brownsville would like to extend gratitude to www.Matamoros.com for it's generous support of the blog through its outgoing links to the blog and recent news coverage. Matamoros has been and will always be an important component of what makes Brownsville so special, and vice versa...one without the other makes no sense because the interaction and exchanges between both cities is so synonymous. For someone to say otherwise has been living in a box and needs to visit Matamoros more often. My favorite draw to Matamoros...cafe lecheros at Cafe Paris, El Mejor Taco con Chicho next to Domino's, El Mercado, Thursday nights cultural events at the Main Plaza and El Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Tamaulipas..and more!

So in view of this, I gave Matamoros.com a more indepth exploration and I was outstanded with the resources the site has available. Check out their webcams that keep a constant vigilance over the state of traffic on the Mexican side of the Bridges. They also have an awesome page dedicated to Matamoros artists with pictures, bios and statements about the artists. This site is just packed! I encourage you to give Matamoros.com a visit and to explore its many nooks and crannies that bring you an array of information on Matamoros.