Author’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of articles about my travels related to a series of articles I am writing that are funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant.
Last month, I traveled to Huntsville and Houston with a few different goals in mind. The Houston trip was directly related to a series I am working on about culturally specific institutions in Texas, but my day in Huntsville was centered around Sam Houston State University students. I spent a few hours speaking with MFA students about their Social Practice projects. The three-year program sees a remarkable range of students engaged with social practice in various ways. From exploring community-building through tattoo culture to building a food truck as a space to share creativity and culinary practice, it was invigorating to hear from students at various stages of the program speak about their practice and the concepts propelling their work.
Project Row Houses, February 2025
The next day, I was off to Houston, with my main focus being to interview Danielle Burns Wilson, Executive Director at Project Row Houses. The interview was the first step in preparing to write about PRH, as part of a series about art spaces in Texas founded by artists of color to support communities of color. Established in 1993, PRH is one of the oldest still-running institutions of this kind in our state.
Danielle Burns Wilson. Photo: Emile C. Browne
Though Wilson was appointed Executive Director last year, her experience with the organization spans a much longer time period. Through our conversation, I learned how her early experiences attending programs and talks at PRH shaped her professional interests and goals. We spoke about the past, present, and future of the organization, and Wilson shared some of the successes and challenges PRH has faced. At the end of our time, Wilson suggested that I speak with Trinity Pasco-Stardust, the Community Engagement Coordinator, who was managing the front desk at the time.
Trinity Pasco-Stardust
Pasco-Stardust shared her story of coming from New York City to Houston because of the opportunities available at PRH. She spoke about how the organization has been a major source of community over the years, and that she has played multiple roles at PRH, including as a tenant and working in various capacities. I plan to revisit PRH this summer and spend time in the archives, as well as attend events and speak with more community members.
Vincent Valdez, “The City I and II”
Following my PRH visit, I made my way to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) to see Vincent Valdez’s Just a Dream… While I had a chance to see Valdez’s People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today, I had never seen a solo show of his work before. His portraits filled both floors of the CAMH in a powerful way. Of course, the overtly political pieces, like paintings featuring the Supreme Court Justices, the Ku Klux Klan, and Presidents, were poignant given the state of the Union at the moment. But I also spent a fair amount of time considering his 2002 series Made Men.
Vincent Valdez, “Made Men”
The services of four large pastel drawings on paper depict archetypes of masculinity — the boxer, the martyr, the soldier — alongside a contemporary image of a tattooed man. I suppose it struck a chord with me because I often think about how toxic masculinity affects men in our society. These pieces read as a starting point for the exhibition, but also for the cascading downfall of our patriarchal society. The pressures and expectations put on men to work tirelessly, to emote nothing other than anger, and to sacrifice, cannot be the bedrock of a healthy society. And across the show, we see the reality behind “the American dream” that it was never intended for everyone, that it is a fallacy.
Vincent Valdez, “Rise” and “People of the Sun (Grandma & Grandpa Santana)”
Perhaps the most uplifting moment in the exhibition is a single wall that pairs a landscape painting of a sunrise over a pile of rocks or bricks alongside Valdez’s portrait of his grandparents. The bright sun rising over a dull heap of rubble is hopeful in and of itself, but with Valdez’s People of the Sun beside it, the works speak to love, equality, solidarity, devotion, and defiance.
Installation view of “Eli Ruhala: Significant Otherness”
Another stop during my time in Houston was at Art League Houston. While all three shows were strong, I was taken by Eli Ruhala’s exhibition, Significant Otherness. Ruhala is currently based in my hometown of Fort Worth and is completing his MFA at Texas Christian University. All to say, I’ve seen Ruhala’s work in North Texas, including installations he created as part of Refract, the 2024 MFA candidacy exhibition, and the Dallas Contemporary’s (DC) Open University. Ruhala is clearly a talented painter, so it has been nice to watch his experiments with sculptural work. The installation at DC embraced painting quite a bit more than his earlier installation, where paintings were done on translucent material and filled some, but not all, of the structural spaces. In Open University, paintings made up the full walls of a much sturdier structure.
A work from “Eli Ruhala: Significant Otherness”
The works in Significant Otherness are more straightforward paintings, in the physical sense. They are large panels that are hung on walls, rather than being part of a sculptural installation. However, the pieces fill the small gallery creating an immersive effect. These paintings feel like sketches or dreams. The tall panels, constructed of drywall and lumber, contain imagery of people and pets, at various stages of completion. Some areas seem like preliminary studies, while others have been worked more densely. Some components feel like paintings of photographs, and others are like grasping at memories. Through the depictions of male figures in these intimate domestic scenes and the reference to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Perfect Lovers), the work is a reflection on queer love. It is beautiful and vulnerable, it at once feels fragile and enduring.
Installation view of “Dario S. Bucheli: Not Without a Cost.” Image courtesy of Lawndale
My last Houston stop was Lawndale for the opening night of Dario S. Bucheli’s Not Without a Cost, Farima Fooladi’s The Fever, and Carlos Vielma’s An Infinite Picnic. Bucheli’s site-specific painting draws on imagery of pre-colonial Mexican codices to consider the concept of self-sacrifice. However, it isn’t in the sense that we often think of, rather than sacrificing yourself for others, Bucheli’s mural is about the things we give up to have the life that we want. In speaking with the artist, he talked about other potential paths that laid ahead of him at earlier points in his life, but let go of to pursue being an artist and arts professional.
A work by Farima Fooladi
Fooladi’s The Fever presents a new series of paintings by the artist, created during her 2024 MacDowell residency in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The surreal paintings that combine mountainous landscapes, architectural forms, forests, and pools feel reminiscent of William Kentridge’s charcoal scenes. Like Kentridge’s work, there are familiar elements but overall the pieces have a post-apocalyptic sense, however, Fooladi’s paintings maintain an eerie quietness.
Carlos Vielma: An Infinite Picnic. Image courtesy of Lawndale.
In the upstairs gallery, Vielma’s video work is accompanied by found objects arranged in shadow boxes. Vielma told me that the video was inspired by the Mars rover’s last message. Received on June, 10, 2018, Opportunity’s last communication was “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” The artist used this as a jumping off point for the creation of An Infinite Picnic. The words appear at the beginning of the film, which then goes into a dystopian story, adapted from Ray Bradbury’s The Million Year Picnic. Filmed in the ghost town of Marte (Mars) in the Mexican state of Coahuila de Zaragoza, the work is strange and compelling. As I watched the story unfold, I considered my place in the world and humanity’s place in the timeline of life on Earth. The display of found objects added to the reflective experience — contemplating the objects we leave behind and what sense, if any, might be made from it in the future.
