Artist Ken Mazzu’s been back at the easel and back on the Houston demolition beat lately, finishing up some new works to be featured in next month’s building-themed art show at the William Reaves / Sarah Foltz Fine Art Gallery at 2143 Westheimer Rd.. The show will feature some of Mazzu’s paintings of ’round-town teardowns, along with works of 2 other Houston-focused artists (late photographer Jim Culberson and living painter Richard Stout). The gallery will even host Houston archi-historian Dr. Stephen Fox for a talk about The Changing City on the 14th.
Mazzu’s had a lot of subjects to choose from since a set of his demo-themed canvases went on display back in 2013; he sends over some previews of new pieces, including the scene above commemorating the disassembly of the former Downtown headquarters of the Houston Chronicle. Other recent works feature newly-parking-lotified 509 Louisiana St., the dissolution of the octagonal Solvay mid-rise, a pile of post-blow-up downtown Foley’s debris, and more:
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That’s a suspenseful moment from the 509 Louisiana takedown above. Here’s the now-gone Solvay building after a few blows to the face by that wrecking ball:Â
A view of the old downtown Foley’s, after the dust settled:
Here’s Kirby at Colquitt, right after those funeral parlor bars were cleared out of the way for the Kirby Collection:
Another canvas shows the last bits of the old 3400 Montrose Blvd. reaching for the sky:
Here’s Mazzu’s impression of the Texas Tower take-apart, at the downtown spot now occupied by 609 Main:
And finally, here’s a painted view of the rubble of the old Houston Club building, which has since made way for a Skanska tower foundation:
- Event info for Transient Views: The Places of our Lives [William Reaves Sarah Foltz Gallery]
- Previously on Swamplot: A Decade of Houston Demolitions, in Oil and Watercolor
Images: Ken Mazzu