Houston artist Bert Long passed away of pancreatic cancer earlier today. He was 72. This photo shows one of Long’s most recognizable pieces: “Field of Vision” is located across the street from Emancipation Park on the corner of Elgin and Bastrop, next door to the Eldorado Ballroom. Born in the Fifth Ward, Long worked as a Hyatt Regency executive chef before pursuing an arts career. “Bert would walk in anywhere. He’d do anything,” Long’s friend James Surls tells the Houston Chronicle. “He was unabashed and unafraid.”
- Biography [Bert Long]
- Houston artist Bert Long Jr. dies [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: Allyn West
One of Houstonia magazine’s writers, John Nova Lomax, says that Houston, not Austin, ought to be the state capital; “Austin lacks gravitas,” he writes in a Texas Monthly essay this week, laying out his case and making a modest proposal to deal with one of each city’s landmark eyesores: “Slap a statue of Willie Nelson in the Goddess of Liberty’s place atop the granite dome and repurpose it as the Texas Pantheon. Fill it with statues, plaques, and exhibits dedicated to all those exalted icons who were truly Texas cool, and presto: a world-class tourist attraction,” he writes: “
A Swamplot reader 
“It’s actually a field of sewer hookups that never grew into being the apartments (presumably) that they were meant to become. The Art Guys simply appropriated the site for an afternoon to be a sculpture. It’s what they do.” [
On the agenda for the next meeting of GRACE, the homeownership organization in charge of The Oaks housing development at 4300 Broadway in Galveston: A discussion of Earl Jones’s sculpture of former world heavyweight boxing champion and Galveston native Jack Johnson, carved out of the trunk of a subdivision oak tree killed by Hurricane Ike. Homeowners association President Frank Rivera has been campaigning to have the stature moved. His complaint: That the Johnson statue was bringing a stream of tourists and other visitors to the neighborhood, creating traffic and disrupting the peace. 
