Andy Warhol, Guns, 1981-1982. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Founding Collection. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc.

There are plans in effect for a new double museum in downtown Katy, Texas: the Katy Contemporary Arts Museum (KCAM) and the Texas Gun Museum.

Local art enthusiast Ana Roman, chair of the Katy Culture and Arts Alliance, has recently signed a lease on what used to be the lumberyard in downtown Katy, and the international architecture firm Perkins+Will has already been hired to design the exterior and interior look for both museums.  According to the article in the Community Impact Newspaper, though, Roman does not want to make drastic alterations to the exterior in order to preserve its historical look. Current plans are to open KCAM by December and, in 2014, to purchase the remainder of the structure and open the Texas Gun Museum to showcase “the creative side of firearms.”

Courtesy Ana Roman

KCAM will focus on art from the 1950s to the present, concentrating on regional art. The planned inaugural show will a celebratory exhibition called “ALL ABOUT KATY!”

I met Metzler at a party where she told me she had sat several times with Marina Abramović during The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Always fascinated by the culture that surrounded this exhibition, I wanted to know more about Metzler’s experience. I met with her at my apartment and over wine we discussed performing meditation, nudity as risk-taking, and the importance of re-performing canonical works.

Leah Metzler “You Broke My Heart / I Wanna be Your Dog,” 2008

KG: How did you get interested in performance art?

LM: I went to a show at MoMA PS1 called Into Me / Out of Me and I had never seen anything like it before. The premise was related to going through and out of the body. So it was Robert Mapplethorpe’s fisting and Paul McCarthy in a bathtub looking like he was eating his shit. It was just really intense—I was simultaneously revolted, intrigued, and turned on.  That opened the door to wanting to do strange things. I also took a class that was based on going to Judson Church and viewing work and the second time I was there I thought to myself, “I’m going to perform here.”

KG: What drew you to visiting the Artist is Present?

LM: Actually one of the pieces in the P.S. 1 show was Marina’s Art Must be Beautiful when she’s brushing her hair and saying “art must be beautiful” over and over again. So I had been a fan for a while and when I heard it was happening at MoMA, I knew I’d be spending time there.

KG: When did you first go?

LM: Within the first month, I went at around 3pm and I sat with her for a couple of hours.

KG: What were you thinking about when you were sitting there, or did you think at all?

LM: The first time I was like, “My back hurts, I want to go pee!” Ultimately, I kept thinking, “What am I doing here?”

KG: Abramović calls it an “energy dialogue.” Did you feel like you were having some kind of conversation with her?

LM: I think that’s what I wanted. I think that’s what I thought would happen. At one point I imagined she could hear my thoughts! It was hard for me to figure out if she was really in it, if she was actually present. Or was she just in a meditative state where it doesn’t even matter where you are?

Leah Metzler in Flickr documentation of “The Artist is Present,” Day 43, Portrait 15

KG: Was there a lot of waiting?

LM: A lot! Sometimes six hours. It’s funny, though, it wasn’t that bad until Jerry Saltz wrote about the piece. Before that write-up, you didn’t have to get there before the museum opened. After, you had to get there maybe thirty minutes to an hour before the museum even opened if you wanted to sit. Also, near the end of the show, the museum would let VIPs in early, so when you got there, there could already be nine people in line. You know, the James Francos and Matthew Barneys.

KG: How often did you go?

LM: I sat and had my photo taken five or six times but I went triple that. Sometimes I would maybe just go and watch and then sometimes I didn’t get to sit. I spent so many hours there. Just waiting, watching.

KG: What compelled you to return so many times?

LM: So much of it had to do with creating a connection to the museum and creating kind of a community space. I guess I feel most comfortable in a museum and it felt like a space that I’m supposed to be in. With my Parsons ID, I could get in the museum for free. I would go to the theater once every two weeks or sometimes I would just go and take a nap there.

KG: Did you have an intention when you sat with her or did you just go sit and see what would happen?

LM: I think I wanted to have an intention. I remember thinking, “Oh I should cry,” but I couldn’t and then that just seemed silly. I would get tired sitting there and my eyes would get fuzzy and she would seem to melt and I’d feel like I was lying on my side. And then I’d get up.

Leah Metzler in Flickr documentation of “The Artist is Present,” Day 39, Portrait 12

KG: Did you feel like you needed to sit for a long time?

LM: Maybe. Well, I think the longest that I sat was two hours because at a certain time I just felt like I was done. I would go into a meditative space and felt calm and in deep concentration of being alive and then once I reached that and it passed, that was it.

KG: That sounds pretty profound. She taught you how to meditate?

LM: She definitely opened me up to it.

KG: How was waiting to sit with her and actually sitting across from her different? Or do both actions inform one another?

LM: They coincided and informed one another. I developed relationships with the people who were sitting. One infamous sitter, Paco, asked several of the sitters to write a paragraph about the experience. He put the writing into a book and gave it to Marina. That was special to be involved in.

KG: You’re currently performing some of Joan Jonas’ work for the Parallel Practices exhibition at the Contemporary Museum in Houston?

LM: Yes, they’re doing a reconstruction of Mirror Check.  Joan Jonas did the performance in the 1970s—she’s nude and she holds a hand mirror; she does this circular motion around her body in order to see all its facets in the mirror.

Joan Jonas, “Mirror Check,” 1970

KG: How did you end up getting involved in this re-performance?

LM: Well, I met the curator of the exhibition, Dean Daderko, at Clifford Owens’ performance at the CAMH. He approached me and asked if I might be interested in re-performing the Jonas piece and, yeah, of course I was. It’s happening every Saturday this month and will continue into June.

KG: And so you’re nude in the CAMH?

LM: Yeah, I’ve never done full head-to-toe nudity.

KG: So were you nervous about it?

LM: Yeah, hell yeah. Definitely. Well, in one of the first pieces I did was at the international curatorial center in Brooklyn, I cut a hole in my t-shirt where my tits would be and sang some pop song while signing the lyrics in sign language. “You Broke my Heart.” In another performance at Judson Church, I had two girls wearing only sheer tights. They were sitting intertwined and, weirdly enough, I was thinking about Joan Jonas’ Mirror Piece 1 photograph where her legs are in the glass and there’s another mirror.

Joan Jonas, “Mirror Piece 1,” 1969, chromogenic print, 101 x 55.6 cm

KG: Was it necessary for your performers to be nude? Or for you to be nude during a performance?

LM: I mean, well, they weren’t nude entirely. But it was definitely about fleshiness and skin and bodies, so I thought it was necessary. For me, I feel like nudity allows for catharsis or it encourages me, as a performer, to be more vulnerable. It creates a situation that feels more human. I kind of think, maybe, that if you do performance art at some point you have to put your nudity in it because it’s just part of the game.

KG: And so how does it feel to be re-performing another artist’s piece?

LM: Doing the Joan Jonas piece makes me feel more confident as a performer and like I’m building my repertoire. It’s an absolute dream to be involved in a project at a major contemporary museum and with an artist I have read about in school and admired. I couldn’t be more grateful. Even if it is just that I am standing naked in a room, it’s symbolic of a greater history.

Congratulations to:

Adela Andea (Conroe)
Skye Ashbrook (Austin)
David Aylsworth (Houston)
Debra Barrera (Houston)
Michael Bise (Houston)
Michael Blair (Denton)
Matthew Bourbon (Denton)
Margarita Cabrera (El Paso)
Bernardo Cantu (Denton)
Rebecca Carter (Dallas)
Teresa Cervantes (Austin)
Kristen Cochran (Dallas)
Joseph Cohen (Houston)
Shannon Crider (San Antonio)
Rachel Crist and Daedalus Hoffman (Austin)
Matthew Cusick (Dallas)
Gabriel Dawe (Dallas)
Claudio Dicochea (San Antonio)
Kent Dorn (Houston)
Trey Egan (Lewisville)
Cassandra Emswiler (McKinney)
Miriam Ellen Ewers (Denton)
Vincent Falsetta (Denton)
Danielle Georgiou (Dallas)
Jeff Gibbons (Arlington)
Sally Glass (Dallas)
Will Henry (Houston)
Hillerbrand + Magsamen (Houston)
Geoff Hippenstiel (Houston)
HOMECOMING! Committee (Fort Worth)
Letitia Huckaby (Fort Worth)
Tatiana Istomina (Houston)
Hiroko Kubo (Fort Worth)
Ann Johnson (Houston)
Angela Kallus (Fort Worth)

Lakes Were Rivers (Austin)
Julia Barbosa Landois (San Antonio)
Dion Laurent (Houston)
Jonathan Leach (Houston)
Natali Leduc (Houston)
Ysabel LeMay (Austin)
Daniel McFarlane (Spring)
Marcelyn McNeil (Houston)
Robert Melton and Robert Boland (Austin)
Abinadi Meza (Austin)
Madsen Minax (Houston)
Rahul Mitra (Pearland)
Seth Mittag (Houston)
Michael Morris (Irving)
Nancy Newberry (Dallas)
Kelly O’Connor (San Antonio)
Arthur Peña (Dallas)
Katie Rose Pipkin (Austin)
Jessica Pizaña-Roberts (El Paso)
Mark Ponder (Houston)
Anne Regan (Houston)
Liz Rodda (Austin)
Gregory Ruppe (Fort Worth)
Chris Sauter (San Antonio)
Carrie Schneider (Houston)
Kasey Short (Austin)
Gary Sweeney (San Antonio)
The Bridge Club Collaborative (Huntsville)
Prince Thomas (Houston)
Kevin Todora (Richardson)
Melissa Tran (Houston)
Brad Tucker (Austin)
Giovanni Valderas (Dallas)
Sara Vanderbeek (Austin)

Photo by Ave Bonar

Painter and photographer Jimmy Jalapeeno died peacefully yesterday afternoon, surrounded by friends and family.

Born Albert James Bonar in 1947, Jalapeeno was a lifetime Texas resident, where he made art for over 50 years. He was known for both his photography and his painting, notably his incandescent oil paintings of Texas Hill Country scenery. He was also a photographer for the Texas Historical Commission for more than 25 years. Jalapeeno attended the University of Houston from 1964-1966 and received a BFA in painting and photography from the University of Texas in 1969. He attended the University of California at Davis (his only two years away from Texas) where he received an MFA in painting and photography in 1973.

Jalapeeno received two National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships and a public art commission for the Robert Mueller Airport in Austin. His photography and paintings were featured in numerous exhibitions throughout his career, such as Southern Fictions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Fresh Paint at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the 1983 New Orleans Triennial, Jimmy Jalapeeno: New Works at Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin, and group and solo shows at d berman gallery, Austin.

Jalapeeno’s friends and family have been posting many photos from his life and long career on his Facebook page, where he is described as a “brilliant artist, trickster, raconteur, lover of kitties, excellent brother, amazing friend, splendid husband and beautiful soul.”

Photographers Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin during post-production of  The Little Fugitive

The low-budget, 1953 film follows seven-year-old Brooklyn kid, Joey, as he’s tricked by his older brother to flee and spends 24 hours alone in the strange world of New York’s Coney Island. Using non-actors and photographed by noted still photographer Morris Engel (using a modified, concealed 35mm camera strapped to his chest), The Little Fugitive beautifully documents 1950s Coney Island and introduced a new, natural style of filmmaking that greatly influenced cinema vérité and the French New Wave. In fact, director Francois Truffaut said that the New Wave “would never have come into being” if it hadn’t been for Engel’s film showing the way to independent film production.

These screenings are rare opportunities to see the film the way that it was intended to be seen, and the way that Truffaut and so many filmmakers and photographers saw the influential film 60 years ago.

But even more than the letter W, we think the line also represents a pulse, a beat – the heartbeat of New York, of the USA. It shows the Whitney as an institute that is breathing (in and out), an institute that is open and closed at the same time. An institute that goes back and forth between the past and the future, moving from one opposite to the other (history and present, the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New World’, between the industrial and the sublime, etc.), while still moving forward.

The firm displays the many possible permutations of the logo on their site. But the basic design looks suspiciously familiar to southerners. For more than six decades, folks from Arizona to Florida have been eating at the beloved Texas-based burger chain Whataburger, often in buildings architecturally designed to mimic the logo itself. The restaurant was introduced to outsiders through occasional references on the animated sitcom series King of the Hill.

The Whitney’s new logo, even its sleek minimalist version of the responsive W, is enough to induce immediate cravings in many southerners.

This man does not tweet.

The folks at the 2013 Texas Biennial have announced most of their selection of this year’s participating artists. The official press release is supposed to come out today, but they began releasing the selection yesterday via Twitter— one artist at a time. Beginning mid-afternoon, they posted a name every few minutes. After releasing the names of over 60 artists, the final message was posted close to midnight: “Thank you, Twitterverse! Hoping to confirm a few more artists, but for now — GOOD NIGHT!”

So, there should be a few more names added soon, but congratulations to all listed below:

Adela Andea (Conroe)

Skye Ashbrook (Austin)

David Aylsworth (Houston)

Debra Barrera (Houston)

Michael Bise (Houston)

Michael Blair (Denton)

The Bridge Club Collaborative (Huntsville)

Matthew Bourbon (Denton)

Bernardo Cantu (Denton)

Rebecca Carter (Dallas)

Kristen Cochran (Dallas)

Joseph Cohen (Houston)

Shannon Crider (San Antonio)

Rachel Crist and Daedalus Hoffman (Austin)

Matthew Cusick (Dallas)

Gabriel Dawe (Dallas)

Claudio Dicochea (San Antonio)

Kent Dorn (Houston)

Trey Egan (Lewisville)

Cassandra Emswiler (Denison)

Miriam Ellen Ewers (Denton)

Danielle Georgiou (Dallas)

Jeff Gibbons (Arlington)

Sally Glass (Dallas)

Will Henry (Houston)

Hillerbrand + Magsamen (Houston)

Geoff Hippenstiel (Houston)

HOMECOMING! Committee (Fort Worth)

Letitia Huckaby (Fort Worth)

Tatiana Istomina (Houston)

Angela Kallus (Fort Worth)

Hiroko Kubo (Fort Worth)

Lakes Were Rivers (Austin)

Julia Barbosa Landois (San Antonio)

Dion Laurent (Houston)

Jonathan Leach (Houston)

Ysabel LeMay (Austin)

Daniel McFarlane (Spring)

Marcelyn McNeil (Houston)

Robert Melton and Robert Boland (Austin)

Abinadi Meza (Austin)

Madsen Minax (Houston)

Rahul Mitra (Pearland)

Seth Mittag (Houston)

Michael Morris (Irving)

Nancy Newberry (Dallas)

Kelly O’Connor (San Antonio)

Arthur Pena (Dallas)

Katie Rose Pipkin (Austin)

Jessica Pizaña-Roberts (El Paso)

Mark Ponder (Houston)

Anne Regan (Houston)

Liz Rodda (Austin)

Gregory Ruppe (Fort Worth)

Chris Sauter (San Antonio)

Carrie Schneider (Houston)

Prince Thomas (Houston)

Kevin Todora (Richardson)

Brad Tucker (Austin)

Giovanni Valderas (Dallas)

Sara Vanderbeek (Austin)

File photo of Uriel Landeros provided by the Harris County, Texas, Sheriff’s Department. (Associated Press)

Houston art student Uriel Landeros, who faced up to ten years for felony graffiti and criminal mischief charges, was sentenced to two years on the graffiti charges. Landeros was accused of spray-painting Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair at the Menil Collection on June 13 of last year. The incident was captured on a bystander’s cell phone and posted on YouTube, which made its way into national news stories. Landeros, a US citizen, then fled to Mexico, but eventually turned himself into authorities near the US/Mexico border in early January.

After negotiating with prosecutors, Landeros agreed to plead guilty to the graffiti charge in exchange for a minimal prison sentence. The other charge was dropped because he believed “what he did to the painting was not criminal mischief, it was an artistic statement, an expression, much like graffiti art is,” said Landeros’ attorney, Emily Detoto in a Huffington Post article.

Taking into account the five months served, Detoto believes there is a good chance for parole very soon, if not immediately. Landeros plans to return to the University of Houston for his final semester and receive his bachelor’s degree.

To catch up on the Landeros saga, read the articles posted this past year by Bill Davenport, beginning with this one from June.

The Awesome

In “CHEE$E,” a door-less mini-fridge preserves a slab of fresh-made milk curd behind a plexiglass sheet, held in place by a stool and a large ratchet strap from a flatbed semi-trailer. This thing makes me feel at peace with the universe; it’s so simple—yet details like the hole drilled in the plexi for the thermocouple and the stool stolen from the artist’s alma mater make it really perfect.

“Chances Are” is at the opposite end of the gallery. A plexiglass box containing a cooked hot link and a lightly toasted bun sits on a pedestal. Periodically, a machine within the pedestal starts vibrating in a non-threatening way, causing the hot dog and bun to chase each other around in a Freudian re-enactment of tabletop football games from the 70s. When it shuts down, the machine lurches and clumps to a halt in a violent rage.

The Good

In “It Makes Me Cry Sometimes,” a cassette deck placed on a rickety shelf has been modified to wind a long loop of film that reaches down to a reel on the floor with a piece of paper underneath, meanwhile blaring a hauntingly modified version of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby.” The reel’s movements, along with the soundtrack, are hypnotic but it still seems to be missing something.

In “Mirror,” two classic tube TVs sit on the floor. Each has a small camera mounted in front of it and displays the other’s camera feed, giving a charming feedback effect. As people move about the room, the changes are reflected in the tubes and mixed into the feedback. This thing is fun to look at but I do not understand why it is on the floor; the decision seems arbitrary.

The Not So Much

The three mostly 2-D pieces in the show are all overpowered and feel unnecessary.  “Swiss on Table,” an embossed drawing of a hunk of swiss cheese on a plate, sits below a wall sconce borrowed from the artist’s apartment building. “Nothing is Real” is a pretty cool drawing of a refrigerator with a penis, next to some forgettable text. Finally, “Intermission,” a composite photograph of every frame of Gone With the Wind, has the word “Intermission” either superimposed on top or it has risen to the top of the composite, as it was the only thing sitting still.

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the open call for art remains the central feature of the Texas Biennial. The curated exhibition will take place September 5–November 9, 2013 at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in San Antonio, with selected performance works to be presented in Dallas, a commissioned artist project in Marfa, and (opening in late August in Houston) an exhibition of current work by selected past Biennial artists.

To all entrants: good work and good luck!