Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Lauren Cross, “Oh Sweet Chariot…Carry Me Home,” 2022, print on digitally fabricated fabric, 20 x 24 inches.
1. Lauren Cross: Come Sunday
Galveston Art Center
June 4 – August 21, 2022
From the Galveston Art Center:
“Come Sunday is an exhibition featuring the works of interdisciplinary artist Lauren Cross, which are inspired by narratives of Black migration, emancipation, and freedom. Heavily influenced by the lyrics of spirituals, jazz, and others songs of freedom, Cross uses her multi-dimensional practice in this series as a solemn prayer of liberation for one’s community. Through the use of digitally fabricated fibers, installations, videos, and prints, Cross’ work connects to stories of the historic journey to Juneteenth that occurred on June 19, 1865– the day that General Gordon Granger issued General Order No 3 and informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were free.
As a native Texan, Cross reimagines these historic images and scenes through the lens of her own ancestors who existed across five generations in the state. While her tracings of their steps to freedom are intentionally imaginary, she proposes these memories and images as the circulation of celebrations past, present, and future.”
Linda Blackburn, “Montana Territory,” 2018, watercolor and gouache on paper, 18 x 24 inches.
2. Tales of the Unknown: A Retrospective of Linda Blackburn’s Work
Tyler Museum of Art
June 12 – September 11, 2022
From the Tyler Museum of Art:
“Originally slated to exclusively feature Blackburn’s recent Western paintings, the exhibition was expanded to include work from throughout her career upon the artist’s passing in January.
Tales of the Unknown highlights the artist’s hallmark of combining elements from a variety of sources, including art historical movements and popular culture, to create intriguing visual stories. Ultimately abandoning linear narratives, each piece exists as a straightforward work of art, packed with gestural marks and vivid colors.”
Joseph E. Yoakum, “Mt Atzmon on Border of Lebanon and Palestine SE. A.,” stamped 1968, purple and black ballpoint pen, pastel, and colored pencil on paper, 19 1/8 × 24 1/8 inches.
3. Joseph Yoakum: What I Saw
Menil Drawing Institute (Houston)
April 22 – August 7, 2022
Read Matthew Bourbon’s article about the show here.
From the Menil Collection:
“This exhibition is the first major museum retrospective in more than twenty-five years to focus on the dream-like landscape drawings of Joseph Elmer Yoakum, a self-taught, visionary American artist. The exhibition illuminates Yoakum’s vivid creativity, imaginative vision of the land, and deep spirituality and also explores his rich, complex biography as an African American man who claimed Navajo heritage. Co-organized by the Menil Collection, Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the exhibition offers the most comprehensive study to date of the artist, who made a significant and highly original contribution to American art.
The Menil Drawing Institute presentation will feature more than 80 drawings by Yoakum, most from the collections of Chicago-based artists affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who deeply admired the singularity of Yoakum’s creativity. His collectors, supporters, and friends include Roger Brown, Cynthia Carlson, Whitney Halstead, Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg and Philip Hanson, Karl Wirsum and Lorri Gunn, and Ray Yoshida, all of whom helped promote the artist’s work during and after his lifetime. Highlights of the exhibition’s themes include: Memory, Landscape, Portraits, and Technique.”
4. Reynaldo Santiago: In Retrospect
Puente Art Studio (Brownsville)
June 18 – July 30, 2022
From Puente Art Studio:
“This exhibition is made up of samples of works of art on various media and with different themes in a creative process of two decades developed by the artist Reynaldo Santiago between the demands of a society rich in culture and history of the diversity of idiosyncrasies that make up the Rio Grande Valley.
Reynaldo Santiago’s work reflects the multicultural background of his descent as a German citizen of Puerto Rican parents, and the background of his residence in Germany, Panama, Puerto Rico, and various entities of the United States.”
Diedrick Brackens, “brotherhood is fragile,” 2022, woven cotton and acrylic yarn, fabric trim 103 x 104 inches.
5. Texan: Part II
Various Small Fires Texas (Dallas)
May 26 – June 25, 2022
From Various Small Fires:
“Various Small Fires proudly presents Part II of its inaugural exhibition at VSF Texas. Texan celebrates the rich contributions Texas-born artists offer to the contemporary art landscape and provides a homecoming for many of the exhibition’s diasporic Texans. While claiming one’s Texan heritage can incite complicated feelings, the exhibition presents an opportunity for these artists to proclaim their ties to the state through a sense of expanded community. Texan: Part II brings together work by Diedrick Brackens, Xavier Cha, Hayden Dunham, Baseera Khan, Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), and Sarah Zapata.”
