A MUST READ....

So I'm constantly on the lookout for blogs that excite me, bloggers who love art, and bloggers who blog consistently. Well, my most recent discovery is Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then. Donna K, a movie star, or what I like to think of as the star of the film, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, has been blogging about filmmaker Brent Green and her adventures over the last year as they have taken the film and exhibition around the country. It's been entertaining to read about their last 2 weeks in Houston. It's a must read!

If you haven't seen the film, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, you can catch Brent Green and Donna K along with Drew Henkels, Brendan Canty and John Michael Swartz, performing tonight and tomorrow night as part of Cinema Arts Festival Houston at Frenetic Theater. It's your only chance to catch the film with a live soundtrack.

If you miss the performance, you can still catch the film at DiverseWorks. It will be running in it's entirety in the exhibition through Dec. 18.

Shawna

Queer Junction

Last week, Blake Smith, one of the coordinators for Come As You Are: HOUSTON, told you about the performance showcase coming up on September 17 & 18 at DiverseWorks. This week we have a video performance sketch from one of the artists in the show, Daaimah Mubashshir.

Daaimah's work combines spoken narratives, experimental sound, video images and culturally based movement rituals. She is passionate about telling stories that use humor and characters to explore culture and customs. Her own story as a young woman raised in a Sunni Muslim home and her subsequent coming out as a member of the queer community deeply inform the stories she feels need to be told. This artistic inquiry, utilized for Come As You Are: HOUSTON! deals with the movement of Salah (Islamic prayer) as Queer action (Queer as a verb) and the act of being Queer (adjective) as reaching towards spiritual purity or holiness..

Make sure to follow Daaimah's blog The Fixed Eye to see what she's up to and to learn more about her performance at DiverseWorks.

-Shawna

What the National Performance Network has meant to me

The National Performance Network celebrates 25 years this year. DiverseWorks is proud to be one of the 69 National Performance Network partners across the U.S. who are dedicated to connecting today's artists with contemporary artists of all ages and cultures.

Sixto Wagan, Co-Director and Performance Arts Curator of DiverseWorks, has a long history with NPN and tells you what it means to him...

Him. I nominate him. We always talk of bringing younger people to the table, and he’s an artist, of color, and you’re queer, too, right?

Olga Garay, then director of cultural programs at Miami-Dade Community College, stated those words during that Southern Caucus Regional breakout at the Seattle Annual Meeting in 1997, nominating me to what would soon become the NPN Board of Directors. At first I didn’t realize how much these words would change my life. I was supposed to be teaching high school English and doing this performance art thing as a cool side gig, right?

Prior to that Annual Meeting, the National Performance Network was just this cool group that helped to pay for my first gig as a performing artist in the School’s OUT: The Naming Project residency with Mary Ellen Strom and Barbara Bickart at DiverseWorks in Houston, Texas. So I had already experienced NPN’s ability to affect lives through art, and all of that personal transformative stuff.

Click HERE to keep reading...

Dang! Diane Barber gives us the scoop on Luck of the Draw 9: The Musical!

We know that you have been following the list of artists closely to see if one of your favorites is donating to to the auction this year. Well, here's your chance to get the inside scoop from Co-Director and Visual Arts Curator Diane Barber. She walks us through some of the art for the Blind Auction as well as some of the pieces for the Luck of the Draw 9: The Musical. Whoa!





Tickets are still available! If you haven't bought your tickets, go to www.diverseworks.org or call us at 713.223.8346.

Shawna Forney
Public Relations & Marketing Manager
DiverseWorks ArtSpace

Thinking Big & Planning Accordingly

We’re thinking big and planning accordingly. DiverseWorks has recently launched a strategic planning process that will chart the organization’s course for the next three to five years. With financial support from the Houston Arts Alliance and the Andy Warhol Foundation, DiverseWorks has hired Callahan Consulting for the Arts to facilitate a planning process that is national in scope. This process will involve input from staff, board, artists, funders, audience members, and collaborative partners in an effort to focus the organization’s energies around mission-driven goals and plans for managed future growth. What this really means is that we get to set aside time to really talk about what we do and why we do it. DiverseWorks was founded to serve artists. 27 years later, service to artists remains at the core of what we do. We’re excited about what the next 27 years holds for our organization, for the arts in Houston, and for our national cultural growth and evolution. We see this strategic planning process as a time for both introspection and serious brainstorming regarding DiverseWorks’ role in the national arts ecology. We’d love to hear from you regarding things you love about DiverseWorks, things you would like to see more of, or things you think we could do better. Let us know what you think. Believe me, we’re listening.

Diane Barber
Co-Executive Director & Visual Arts Curator
DiverseWorks ArtSpace

DW heads to NPN Annual Meeting

I'm thrilled that I'm headed off to Seattle for the National Performance Network's Annual Meeting. It's the one gathering of professionals that I constantly look forward to, even after 12 years.

For all those who don't realize what the National Performance Network is, you need to check out their website to find out all the amazing things that they accomplish. NPN is one of the reasons DW has been able to sustain and expand our performing arts programming over the past 15+ years. By raising funds to help subsidize our residencies, NPN has matched our fundraising efforts for certain performance programs. We're doubly excited that DiverseWorks has been selected as part of the Visual Arts Network of the NPN (supported by one of most favorite foundations: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts). This means we'll be able to enrich our visual arts residencies, extending the possibilities for community connection and further development.

The annual meeting means that I get to see some of my dearest friends and closest collaborators across the country. Not only will we be hanging out with our buddies at On The Boards, but I'll be hanging out with friends from REDCAT; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Maggie Allessee National Choreographic Center at FSU (who will be hosting Morgan Thorson in residency for Heaven, a work DW co-commissioned with PS122); Dance Theater Workshop who commissioned House of Mind with us; Walker Art Center who presented Claude Wampler right after we did last year; Miami Dade College Cultural Affairs the other co-commissioner of Michelle Ellsworth The Objectification of Things (coming to DW in March); 651 Arts who supported Jennylin Duany whom we presented last season; and loads of artists and other great people to share ideas with, think about "big issues," and (perhaps most importantly) realize that we're not the only ones facing these issues.

The most exciting thing, is that we (Diane, Jon, Shawna and I) will be able to see Pat Graney's House of Mind in Seattle. This will be the first time that all of the elements will come together, and we can't wait to be bringing this to Houston in January/February. (read about the process in seattle!) We'll also get to see Scott Turner Schofield, The Suicide Kings, Zoe Scofield/Juniper; Holcombe Waller; Carpetbag Theater and a host of other amazing artists.

and... one of our own will be performing in Seattle! The Wiggins perform Dec. 13th @ 8at the VERA Project. w/ HAWNAY TROOF and more! you've got to check it out!
stay tuned for pictures and updates!

Understanding

Howdy. Welcome to The Real Dirt, DiverseWorks’ weekly blog. You’ll get the skinny from a different staff member each week – sharing stories, ideas and opinions on the “inner workings” of DW.

This season is starting off not like we planned. The entire staff at DiverseWorks is pretty good at “going with the flow” and “enjoying the process,” but Hurricane Ike tested all of that. We’re lucky, don’t get me wrong - no one hurt, no particular damage to the space or to our respective homes – with only some of the staff suffering from the lack of electricity (happy to report that the entire staff has electricity, though it took 15 days for some).

Right before the hurricane, we hung Ben DeSoto’s Understanding Poverty exhibit on poverty and homelessness in Houston over the past 20 years. While we worked with Ben to make this exhibit happen, we knew it was a topic that is “of the moment,” little did we know how clear that moment was going to hit home.

Each day I come to work, I have the opportunity to look at the photographs and absorb the stories. It reminds me how completely lucky I am. I have my partner Matthew, my family and my friends who helped out throughout the 11 days without electricity. Our home had turned into a big, messy closet I didn’t want to go into. I admit that I was a wreck without that place I could call Home, without that sanctuary. It was hard for me to think beyond that day because of uncertainty, exhaustion and the dissolution of my routine. So many people I know – artists, administrators, creative types – all live on a paycheck -to-paycheck existence. We’re living on just this side of “not making it” – and “making it” is now completely redefined (I so live in a world of luxuries).

It’s exciting to be part of an exhibition that so fulfills our mission; Ben’s Understanding Poverty isn’t about politics, isn’t just about the striking photographs - it inspires questions, engages ideas and has changed my daily life. The exhibit tells many stories, but the one that continually comes home to me is about generosity.
-Sixto