Howdy party people! GONZO247 in the DW House! I'm excited to partner up with DiverseWorks this coming season for GRANDALISM, an 8-week long art exhibiton series.
Starting this September, DiverseWorks dock will be the backdrop for a rotating series of large-scale works by some of Houston’s most accomplished and sought after street artists. Every 8 weeks, a new artist reveals Grandalism, showcasing the raw talent and innovation of the city’s freshest and most prolific urban artists, selected by GONZO247, one of Houston’s most notable street art legends.
Grandalism explores the combination of street art’s traditional large scale format, its “grand” reaction from the public, and sometimes its unappreciated label of vandalism.
Attention all Texas-based artists: The time has come to bring on the ideas! The Idea Fund is gearing up for its third round.
Just in case you don't know, The Idea Fund is a re-granting program administered through Aurora Picture Show, DiverseWorks ArtSpace and Project Row Houses, and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, that provides cash awards to Texas-based, artist-generated or artist-centered projects that exemplify the unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices that occur outside of the traditional frameworks of support. Each round, TIF awards 10 projects $4,000 ($3,500 for the awarded project, plus $500 seed money for future work) and this year one of the grants could be yours.
To learn more about the grant, including where to get an application and how to apply, please visit The Idea Fund's Web page or attend one of the following information sessions:
Wednesday, August 25 at 6:30p.m. DiverseWorks ArtSpace, 1117 East Freeway, 77002
Wednesday, September 8 at 1p.m. Aurora Picture Show, 1524 Sul Ross, 77006
Wednesday, September 15 at 1p.m. Project Row Houses, 2521 Holman, 77004
Thursday, September 30 at 4p.m. Information session webinar
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.
Hi! I'm Blake and I have had the awesome experience of working as a production intern at DiverseWorks since September '09. Currently, I am working as Coordinator for the upcoming performing arts show, Come As You Are: HOUSTON!
Come As You Are was a show originally created and produced by The Theater Offensive in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Inspired by the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Come As You Are aims to investigate and celebrate queer sex, the diverse range of queer sexuality and the moral values underneath. The movement is not just about gay rights, but about inspiring queer people to express themselves and come together as a diverse community. Come As You Are is now a national project that gives grants to theaters so that they may create their own local, original production about queer sex.
Sixto and I talked about goals for Come As You Are: HOUSTON! He knew that he wanted to showcase short original works about queer sex and identity by Houston artists. He also wanted the show to be representative of our diverse queer community, particularly for it to be multi-gendered and multi-generational. With these goals in mind, Curators Chuck Jackson, Grayson Jacobs, and myself began searching for artists. Chuck, an English professor at University of Houston downtown, wrote an awesome open call to artists and we did our best to get the word out. We were so thrilled to find that we had an overwhelming response from Houston artists!
Check out the Come As You Are: HOUSTON! artists:
Chicago's Daaimah Mubashshir and Brooklyn's Michael Harren, both highly involved in Houston's queer community in the '90s, return now as established artists for Come As You Are: HOUSTON! Mubashshir utilizes traditional Muslim movement to identify queer sex as a holy experience; Harren couples Brahms on keyboard with a stories of how sex changes as he matures. Together, Daniel-Kayne and Michael Clay also take on highly-contrasting themes, placing the subject of queer sex with war and the country music medium.
The young Gendermyn utilize acrobatics and comedy to delve deep into the rarely spoken of sex lives within the genderqueer community, while Joe Watts of the pre-AIDS generation wrote a heart-felt traditional monologue about the unique experience of one transsexual woman.
The works of Julia Wallace and Jonatan Lopez are highly interactive, allowing the audience to actively participate as part of their performances.
Nancy Douthey as well as DumpTruck explore brief moments that highlight the quirkiness and fun within queer sex.
It has been so cool to be a part of this project from the very beginning and have the chance to work so closely with the DiverseWorks staff. As a transgendered person who has not lived in Houston very long, DiverseWorks has been a fantastic place to work! After working with the artists and Curators in this show, as well as Houston community organizations like the Transgender Foundation of America and HATCH youth, I feel more and more like I am finding my place in Houston and becoming part of an amazing community. I hope that everyone that comes to this show leaves with that same feeling!
Join us for a provocative exploration of queer sex through performance art! Each performance will be followed by a Q & A with the artists and a reception.
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.
Well, the Luck of the Draw has come and gone and what a party. With the support from our awesome chairs (Doug Parker and Karen Niemeier); our super host committee (Fernando Aramburo, Tara Conley, Michael Coppens, Shauna Curtis, Monica Danna, Trevor Eade & Stephen Hill, Jeremy Keas, Marshal & Victoria Lightman, Alex Martinez, Lan Norwood & Brian Vezey, Christina Solis, Kim Stoilis, Mark Sullivan, Amy Tanner, Sarah Walters, Josh & Tina Zulu); our rockin’ sponsors (13 Celsius; Barr/Hill Studios; BoyarMiller; The Chocolate Bar / CANDYLICIOUS; CultureMap; Darke Gallery; Dolce Vita Day Spa; Rodney Honerkamp; Kent & Sussex Enterprises LLC; Lake House Waterside Cafe; Portia Leyendecker; Morris Architects; NX Media; Poparazzi's Gourmet Popcorn; Pivot Point Advisors; Real Ale Brewing Co.; Russo Services Inc.; Kellye Sanford & Fritz Lanham; Bob & Lane Schultz/ RHS Interests; Sign-O-Rama; Sprinkles Cupcakes; Terrazas Investments/AskChuy.com; vitaminwater; Lillian & Bob Warren; Tria & Winston Wood; Zulu Creative); artists; volunteers and patrons, DiverseWork was able to raise more than $30,000 for programming.
I just can’t say if enough: Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Couldn’t make the event, you can browse event photos on our Flickr page, and read all around it on PaperCity's and CultureMap's Web sites.
Right now, DiverseWorkers are getting ready for our 2010-2011 season with a members only Sneak Peek on Tuesday, July 13 from 5:30-7p.m. Want to see? Well you need to be a current member (Not sure about your membership status, check with me – tracey@diverseworks.org.) or you can come the day of the event and sign up for a DW membership.
Thanks for all your support and I hope to see you next season
Luck. We're all envious of it. But a wise man once said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
Well friends, I'm preparing you for your opportunity.
Diverseworks 9th Annual Luck of the Draw is upon us, and it's your chance to be lucky. Two hundred Art Chance ticket holders will go home with a piece of contemporary art created by locally and nationally known artists, some of whom have exhibited at DiverseWorks ArtSpace over the past several years. And the best part? You'll get these one of a kind art pieces at a fraction of the price. Why? Because Diverseworks believes in art BY the people, FOR the people. (Pssst. That's you, people.)
By purchasing an art chance ticket, you'll be entered into a random numbered drawing to make a mad dash for your one of a kind art piece. So put on your fastest kicks, and line up, because when you're number's called, you're up. Make it a good one.
Option one is sold out. Damn my luck. Well, your luck. And only a few Option 2 tickets remain, which will inch you up in the line between #6-#20. All other art chance tickets 21-200 are available now. What's your lucky number?
If you aren't up to the challenge of the art scramble, no worries. You're invited to watch as your friends claw each other's...um...politely select their works of art. Party only tickets are available for $25.
Act quick, or your luck my run out.
Good LUCK, and see you at Luck of the Draw on June 16th!
Monica
Monica Danna (Also known as Cosmopolitician) is on the Luck of the Draw 9: The Musical! Host Committee.
