COMMENT OF THE DAY: THIS TIME, SOME REAL GROUNDBREAKING AT TANIGUCHI’S ASIA SOCIETY HQ “Construction has begun! It’s been a while in the making but it appears that progress is now rapidly occurring. I first noticed activity on the site about a week ago and as of this morning there were at least two construction trailers and several earth-movers on the site. Much of the two plots have already been cleared.” [Ned Dodington, commenting on More Images of the Asia Society Headquarters Design]
Sign up for the Newsletter
Art
ISABELLA COURT’S ART PALACE MAKEOVER 
As of tonight’s grand opening opening, the ground-floor retail space of the Isabella Court Apartments will now be home to four functioning spaces for contemporary art: Inman Gallery, the new Inman Annex space, CTRL Gallery, and the just-moved-here-from-Austin Art Palace, run by the conveniently named Art Palacios. Art Palace has taken over the long-vacant space at 3913 Main St. last occupied by Finesilver Gallery. [Arts in Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Art Palace
Demolition artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck — sculptors of the storied Inversion project on Montrose Blvd. and last year’s householing Give and Take — are back at work hacking old houses again. Their next victim will be a cottage house they’re rescuing from the lot behind the Fifth Ward’s DeLuxe Theater at 3300 Lyons Ave. (The cat-like facade of that theater — pictured above — will be used to front a new music-history library and performing arts center for the Fifth Ward, but the rest of the building and the small farm of cottages behind it are being torn down to make way for the new building and a parking lot.)
Havel reports Drake House Moving is scheduled to tote the rescued house today 3 blocks east along Lyons Ave., to an empty lot on Capron St. That’s where Havel and Ruck will get to work building and carving a temporary sculpture out of it that’s due to debut in May.
And they have a special request for Swamplot readers: Got any used 117 siding you could contribute to the project?
The problem is that we are in dire need of old siding from any tear down houses out there. Just don’t know how to find ’em. Tear downs are all over the Fifth, but it’s hard to find the O.K. to go in and salvage without owner’s consent. Don’t want to get shot…
What do they want the siding for? Well, take a look at what they’re planning to do:
Immanuel Lutheran Church has a signed contract to demolish its original sanctuary structure at the corner of 15th St. and Cortlandt in the Heights this summer. But art gallery owner and structural engineer Gus Kopriva wants to turn the 1932 building into an art museum instead.
Kopriva, who was involved in the recent renovation of the Heights Theater and owns Redbud Gallery on 11th St., is scheduled to present his concept to the church today. It would involve a long-term lease and a new nonprofit organization to raise money for the renovation, writes Allan Turner in the Chronicle:
“It’s been my long-term dream to create a Texas arts mecca,†Kopriva said. The museum, which he would call the Heights Arts Museum (HAM), would also house art archives, he said.
Backing Kopriva’s proposal are the Houston Heights Association and the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, both of which have struggled to save the church, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Museum idea could save threatened Heights church [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: Immanuel Lutheran Church: Saved for Demolition Next Year, Can This Lutheran Church Be Saved?, This Week in Old Movie Theater Rehab
Photo of Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1448 Cortlandt St.: Flickr user dey37
ART PALACE GETS OFF THE POT Austin gallery owner Arturo Palacios, on why he’s moving his gallery, Art Palace, to the Midtown space formerly occupied by the Finesilver Gallery at 3913 S. Main St. this coming January: “I went to a fundraiser at the Menil Collection and a friend asked me how many people I thought I would know there. And I thought maybe five or six. The event was for the Menil ‘Contemporaries,’ a group that’s under the age of forty who support the Menil on an annual basis. There were four hundred people there! And the whole time, people kept coming up and asking when I was moving the gallery to Houston. Over and over and over again. We were taken aback. I was talking to a collector and he said, ‘looks like it’s time for you to shit or get off the pot.’ And that’s when I decided it was time. That was a month and a half ago. I knew the space [in the Isabella Courts building] had been empty for some time.” [Glasstire; photo]
Sprouted in the patio behind the Art League Houston building at 1953 Montrose, home of the Inversion Coffee House: 3 giant mushrooms, built out of rebar, soil, and moss by artists Nicola Parente and Divya Murthy.
And how are they doing? Not so well, reports the Chronicle‘s Molly Glentzer:
One is planted with herbs; one is planted with Texas natives; and the third is planted with non-native ornamentals. They’ve pretty much been left to survive or thrive on their own through next year, and the artists are perhaps expecting that only the native-planted mushroom will survive.
Just one catch. When we looked on Saturday, they all needed water.
Nothing lives in a black plastic pot for long without a little help from the gardener. And biodegradable brown pots would’ve been more environmentally friendly — not to mention better-looking.
Inside the Art League building: the second part of the installation, which Parente and Murthy put together from debris they collected from the surrounding eight-block area.
- Artists in the Garden [Arts in Houston]
- n.p. news brief November 2009 [Everyday Has Its Meaning]
Photos: Nicola Parente (top); Aaron Courtland (bottom)
Steering his bike carefully to avoid the thousands of caterpillars covering Maury St., just off the Elysian Viaduct north of Downtown, 2-wheeled wanderer and lawn-art enthusiast Robert Boyd stumbles across the Fifth Ward workshop of Blumenthal Sheet Metal:
The official address is 1710 Burnett St., but it appears that their facility takes up a whole block–Leona on the south, Burnett on the north, Hardy on the west and Elysian on the east. Blumenthal is a sheet metal fabrication plant, which makes them on the face of it no different from hundreds of small industrial firms in Houston (the secret engines of our city’s economy). Blumenthal has been in business for over a 100 years, which definitely distinguishes them, but what also distinguishes them is that a lot of the fabrication they do is for artists.
Boyd snaps photos of a few Blumenthal constructions in the area:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LANDING THE BRUCKER SURVIVOR CAPSULE “My grandfather, Milton Brucker – designer of the capsule, passed away in 2007 at the age of 94. He would have been delighted to see your innovative use for it!” [Michael Brucker, commenting on CLUI in Houston: Attack of the Pod People]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BEFORE RICHMOND HALL WENT LIGHT AND QUIET “. . . The building was the original Weingartens grocery store. Then in the 1960’s /1970’s it was the Texas Opry House. Then in the early 1980’s it was the Parade Disco (yes,the Parade Disco of New Orleans Bourbon Street, fame or infamy, depending on how one looks at it). The place rocked . . . Monday nights was punk rock night and it was real punk, not the poseur “punkâ€. But Friday & Saturday nights was gay disco. Some of the best music ever. Then the Menil converted it into [Richmond Hall] . . . it houses Dan Flavins awesome light sculpture.“ [Tim, commenting on Chipperfield Sculpts the New Menil: Goodbye, Richmont Square]
And now, a rare look at the Second Ward’s indigenous Ship Channel dance ceremony, performed along the gentle banks of Buffalo Bayou and celebrating the bountiful fall harvest of crushed concrete.
- Tetsujin [Vimeo]
Video: Freneticore
The Richmont Square apartments on Richmond Ave. get knocked down in the new master plan for the Menil Collection campus. Speaking at a public forum last night, British architect David Chipperfield referred to the Menil’s big multifamily property as “this thing getting in our way.”
Cite magazine’s Raj Mankad describes more details of the Chipperfield plan:
The car park along Alabama would be strengthened with the new bookshop, cafe, and auditorium nearby. The key change would be to connect West Main across the site [to Yupon] through the area occupied by the northern end of Richmont Square. The complete street grid would surround a new green space that would also be made possible by the clearing of the north side of the apartments. It would connect, slightly off axis, with the current Menil park between the main building and the Rothko. The Drawing Institute and Study Center and Single Artist Studios would be sited around the new green space. And along Richmond itself, the plan calls for dense residential and commercial development.
Eastwood clock-watcher Spencer Howard documents the end of the line for the 1935 Sterling Laundry & Cleaning Company building on Harrisburg. Metro doesn’t have any use for the bulk of the Streamline Moderne building in the way of the new light-rail East End Line. But how about grabbing that right-twice-a-day timepiece the building is wearing? The bulky fashion accessory might go with any of several new get-ups envisioned for Eastwood Park across the street.
METRO began the disassembly of the building last week. After several days of careful planning, joints were sawed into the steel frame, stucco clad facade. By the end of the week, a large crane was delivered to the site to assist with the removal of the facade.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE’S OUR TANIGUCHI? “What’s the hold up on this thing? It’s still a vacant lot. In the past few weeks, utility work on water/sewer has been done on the street, but not sure if it’s associated with the Asia Society construction. Groundbreaking was in Nov. 2008??? It’s already Sept. 2009 and no sign of construction.” [David Hollas, commenting on More Images of the Asia Society Headquarters Design]
This timely building at 4819 Harrisburg in Eastwood, built in 1935 for the Sterling Laundry & Cleaning Co., showed up in yesterday’s Daily Demolition Report. The architect was Sol R. Slaughter, who also designed a home on the bayou in Idylwood the same year.
The building faces Metro’s new East End Corridor light-rail line. Rice University project manager Spencer Howard writes in with a few details, but isn’t exactly sure what’s going on:
The building was renovated as an artist live/work/gallery just a few years ago.
METRO pledged to save the facade of the building with the clock on it, across from Eastwood Park. They preferred to have someone else buy it and move it, but if that didn’t happen, they were going to move it back on the property and reattach it behind the new setback. Yesterday they sent out the demolition list for next Monday and it was on it. The neighborhood has alerted their gov’t reps.
Another view:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THIRD WARD ARTS DISTRICT “‘So how dicey is it really and when will it become artsy and then trendy?’ Question of the day! As Montrose ex-pats now living on Dowling St. I can tell you that we have experienced NO crime in the year we have been here. As for artsy, you can walk to Rick Lowe’s Row House installation and the relocated Flower Man house, among several other art spaces, from our new home. Artsy, yes. Trendy, very thankfully no.” [Cranky Old Coot, commenting on Home Sweet Funeral Home: Washington Terrace Mortuary Seeks Residents]