There’s More to Conroe than a Big Lake

Maggie Gutierrez’s Art Talk column in Your Houston News brings out some unsuspected arts activity in the north Houston suburb:

The Conroe Art League has a new gallery at the Madeley Building (127 Simonton St.) which had it’s inaugural show on Nov 17, with 500 attendees, and a new team-based sytem for running it, but still needs help naming it’s exhibitions: their latest, “Exhibit 4,” opens on January 20th. On the 26th, wildlife artist and CAL member Vickie McMillan will be spotlighted at CAL’s gallery at the Woodlands Mall. As an “artist with a conscience” she believes that “art is a universal languge” and has overseen collaborative murals at Junior High Schools and Juvenile Detention Centers.

In Conroe gallery news, Linda Watson Gallery (204 N. Main Street) plans to host monthly open shows, each with a theme around which artists are invited to submit work. The January show, which opens on the 23rd’s theme is “This N’ That.” The Gallery Off the Square (202 N. Main Street)/Chelsea’s Tea Room is bringing in some new paintings: in addition to Thomas Kinkade, the gallery will feature work by Jon McNaughton and Andy Thomas, and refreshments: in the back, the gallery owners “found that we had enough space for a tea room.”

The Louis E. Wheeler Gallery (227 N. Main St.) is showing photographer Robert Berryman in addition to Mr. Wheeler’s stock of painterly-style digital photographic prints.

The lake may be half-empty, (I prefer to think of it as half full) but efforts proceed toward fulfilling the “greater Conroe area’s goal is to be a culturally rich tourist destination.”