Public Art

Art
11/02/10 2:18pm

How You Can Help Large-Scale Graffiti in Midtown Get Off the Ground

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Buildlings for Sale, Graffiti, Land for Sale, Midtown, Public Art
22 Comments

Street artist Daniel Anguilu hopes to cover the entire surface of this 4-story Midtown building with his distinctive animal-friendly murals. Anguilu — also known by his nom-de-spray, weah — began painting the former Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority building at 2850 Fannin St. in June. But it’s not exactly a stealth project: Anguilu was invited to take on what he’s calling the Public Decor Project by commercial real-estate broker Adam Brackman, whose family owns the building. And Brackman’s been providing him with mistinted no-VOC paint from New Living, the Rice Village green-home-supplies store where Brackman’s a partner.

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Cinco Ranch
10/14/10 4:46pm

Seen on the Street: Restaurant Bites

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Lower Westheimer, Public Art, Restaurants
3 Comments

A few pix from around town, in our occasional photo feature: First, a reader sends in this view of the curious paint job now in progress on the original Ruggles Grill on Lower Westheimer.

Next, we discover the just-opened new home of I-10 refugee Las Alamedas, on the simulated Main Street of Katy’s LaCenterra shopping center in Cinco Ranch:

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Public Art
06/28/10 8:39am

Paint, Counterpaint: Realistic Graffiti Artists Cover Their Own Tracks

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23 Comments

“Why not cut out the middle man?” asks local stencil and wheatpaste artist Give Up, after noting one too many prized local works of graffiti unceremoniously painted over with dull gray paint by cleanup crews. His innovation: Spray cans set up to buff themselves.

Here’s his rig. On the right: your standard black can with a skinny cap, primed for graffiti expression. But it’s hooked up to a buff-gray can with a fat cap. Push the bar and the two spray at the same time — “so you can buff your own stuff as you go.”

Yep, that’s Give Up on graffiti. But didn’t he move on from freeform paint long ago? What about wheatpaste artists who want to get in on the zen action too? Ah . . . here’s another tool he’s got in in development:

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Comments
04/27/10 1:03pm

Comment of the Day: Bring Those TV Cameras Too Close and ZZZZAP!!!!

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Critters, IAH, Proposed Developments, Public Art, Quicklink
3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: BRING THOSE TV CAMERAS TOO CLOSE AND ZZZZAP!!!! “It’s actually a bug-zapper to bring Wayne [Dolcefino] … he is attracted to the glow of money being spent on anything other than polyester suits and Golden Corral.” [PaxMcKatz, commenting on IAH’s New Welcome to Houston Sign: We Hope Your Splashdown Was Pleasant]

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IAH
04/26/10 2:53pm

IAH’s New Welcome to Houston Sign: We Hope Your Splashdown Was Pleasant

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Proposed Developments, Public Art
18 Comments

Newly arrived visitors driving along JFK Blvd. at Rankin Rd. will soon encounter a landscape-appropriate welcome to our marshy city after they land at Bush Intercontinental Airport: three 60-ft. pipe assemblies festooned with animated LED light arrays on cables. New York artist Dennis Oppenheim sees the lights as

representing a giant twenty five foot tear drop falling into a pool, creating the upward sensation of a splash, which rises to sixty feet and consists of a multitude of colored lights cascading and sparkling toward the top and beyond, emerging in bright, spherical globes; representing giant droplets.

No stuck-in-the-muds here! Andrew Vrana of local architecture firm Metalab, who’s coordinating the installation, tells Swamplot the sculptures will have an 18-ft. diameter at the base and a 50-ft. diameter at the top. He says all 3 should be in place and complete “later this spring.”

Metalab’s blog has pix of a few of the pieces:

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Bayous and Waterways
04/14/10 12:47pm

Zero Tolerance for the New Buffalo Bayou Bridge

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Montrose, New Construction, North Montrose, Parks, Proposed Developments, Public Art
73 Comments

A number of readers have been asking what’s up with the new construction office set up on the former site of the Robinson’s Warehouse at the southeast corner of Montrose and Allen Parkway. The Aga Khan Foundation bought the low-lying property in 2006 with plans to build another of its Ismaili Centers on it — featuring lecture, conference, and recital facilities, a prayer hall and a social hall, and offices and gardens. Is that building ready to go up?

It doesn’t look like it. In the meantime, the construction office was parked on the property for a different project entirely, across the street: The new Rosemont Bridge, meant to connect the north and south sides of Buffalo Bayou Park. When Mayor White first announced the bridge project in late 2008, it had a different name and a different design. Called Tolerance Bridge, it a featured Moebius-strip-like superstructure that was meant to appear impassable from a distance:

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Art
03/19/10 2:30pm

Comment of the Day: Inner Loop Reunion of the Ex-Presidents’ Heads

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Cancellations and Delays, Comments, Lancaster Place, Parks, Pearland, Public Art, Quicklink
5 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: INNER LOOP REUNION OF THE EX-PRESIDENTS’ HEADS “I wish someone would get all of the presidents back together! They are very sad now. A kind donor, say perhaps the magnanimous Landed Gent who always boasts of his splendor here on Swamplot, should cut a deal for the Wilshire Village property and foster the development of a Presidential Park. I’m sure it’s like a buy 20 get one free sort of deal, so maybe we could get that nifty telephone too.” [Bobby Hadley, commenting on Pearland Heads Cut Off: The WaterLight District’s Giant Presidential Bust]

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Art
03/18/10 12:50pm

Pearland Heads Cut Off: The WaterLight District’s Giant Presidential Bust

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Cancellations and Delays, Financing, Foreclosures, Mixed Use, Parks, Pearland, Proposed Developments, Public Art
14 Comments

President Heads above Mud at Presidential Park and Gardens, Waterlights District, Pearland, Texas

The property intended to be home to the Waterlights District — the proposed mixed-use shopping and eating extravaganzorama in Pearland — has been posted for foreclosure by its main creditor, Amegy Bank. The 1.9 million-sq.-ft. development was to feature condos, luxury apartments, office buildings, retail space, restaurants, 2 hotels, a conference facility, a “water wall,” and a Venice-like “Grand Canal.”

The site, off the Shadow Creek Pkwy. exit on the west side of Hwy. 288, has been marked for more than 2 years now by a curious semicircle of David Adickes sculptures, a preview of the development’s Presidential Park and Gardens. That park was to feature giant white busts of all 38 U.S. Presidents. But unlike Adickes other presidential suite, I-45’s Mount Rush Hour just north of Downtown Houston — in which each of the sculptor’s busts rests on its own podium — in the Waterlights grouping the 7 Presidents moved to the site appear from the freeway to be buried in the earth up to their chests, somehow managing to keep their heads above the often-times-soggy land around them. Yes, it was the perfect marker for a freeway-side development buried in debt and treading quicksand just to keep itself afloat:

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Public Art
01/14/10 9:24am

Dance of the Austin Garbage Trucks

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No Comments

You’ll have to wait until later in the year before you can see the complete movie, but filmmaker Andrew Garrison has just released these excerpts from his new feature, called “Trash Dance.” The film documents the creation of last September’s performance of The Trash Project, organized by choreographer Allison Orr of Forklift Danceworks and performed by the nimble artists of Austin’s Solid Waste Services Department. (For full effect, we recommend viewing the HD version.)

Video: Andrew Garrison

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