ART OF THE DOWNTOWN HOTEL SUITE FURNITURE 
Blogger Robert Boyd’s upstart Pan Art Fair — now touting itself as “Houston’s smallest art fair” — has been digging deep into the furniture of its Embassy Suites hotel room venue (Suite 307) to find space for more exhibitors. Added to the showing space for the fair, which runs at the same time as the much larger Texas Contemporary Art Fair across Discovery Green in the GRB beginning this Thursday: exhibits in the end-table and dresser drawers. Four of the six sliding spaces, dubbed “micro-booths,” have already been snatched up by artists and galleries, according to the fair’s website. Still available: the south end-table drawer, listed as the former location of “the installation Gideon Bible Piece.” [Pan Art Fair; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Embassy Suites
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Tag: Furniture
A MEADOWCREEK VILLAGE HELP-YOU-SELL 
“SELLER WILL DO NO REPAIRS,” shouts the listing. But . . . um, visitors to this past Sunday’s open house did bring their own period furniture to dress up a brick flat-roofed Modern 4-bedroom in Meadowcreek Village celebrating its 49th birthday — as a foreclosure. That was for Houston Mod’s hastily announced Mod of the Month event. The instant living room arrangement from Heights vintage shop The Mod Pod is gone now, but the 2,558-sq.-ft. vinyl-over-terrazzo home at 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. is still on the market at $99,900. [HAIF; listing] Photo: Mod Pod/Karen Moyers
- 4308 Clay St. [HAR]
IT’LL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE TO ASSEMBLE THAT NEW IKEA ROOFTOP FURNITURE 
All the pieces are there, but now here comes the hard part. A scene familiar to many IKEA customers is now taking place on a large scale on top of the Houston IKEA store’s roof, where workers from contractor REC Solar are assembling flat-packed stacks of 3,962 solar panels into a 116,400-sq.-ft. PV array. The panels arrived on site at the end of last year, but construction won’t be complete until sometime this summer. When it’s done, the company says, the installation will generate enough energy to power 113 homes — or a larger number of in-store room displays. [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot] Photo: IKEA Houston
HOW TO REDECORATE IN SECRET 
West U design blogger Joni Webb confesses to the plan she had been pursuing all along: “How do you redecorate without your husband really noticing? If I had told Ben I was going to redo the entire downstairs, he would have had a heart attack. In order to save his life, I never told him. Instead, the changes were done a little bit at a time over the course of a few years. Slowly, slowly, and quietly. Once the countertops had been paid for and forgotten about, I had the walls painted. Well, they needed it anyway!! Once the walls were gray, I lived with the old yellow silk ticking curtains for a while before I changed them out for the grayish taffeta. And who would ever notice a few new slipcovers anyway? Certainly Ben didn’t. He pays so little attention to what I’m doing around the house, he is still oblivious that I have been redecorating for the past couple of years all with a grand scheme in mind.” [Cote de Texas] Photo: Joni Webb
- 2010 Hewitt Dr. [HAR]
Cutting through some 2×6 pine boards he was using to build a table yesterday at the Potetz Home Center in Cleveland, Texas, carpenter Eddie Fregia found Jesus. Or at least what appeared to be an image of Jesus. A long-haired, bearded figure was revealed in a knot Fregia cut through in the hardware supply store’s woodshop, 50 miles north of Houston. “It looked a lot like J.C.,†Fregia tells the Cleveland Advocate. “Either J.C. or my brother.†Fregia notified a coworker and his boss, and they agreed with Fregia’s assessment, though manager Kenny Rogers later told reporter Cassie Gregory that someone else who examined the knot said it looked more like musician and movie director Rob Zombie.
Hey, wasn’t there one of those first annual art fairs at the George R. Brown just last month? Art retailer and barkeep Bill Davenport teases out the differences between that one and the smaller Texas Contemporary Art Fair that took place over this past weekend:
Glasstire correspondent Beth Secor tries to get a handle on the first-ever Houston Fine Art Fair, held over the weekend at the George R. Brown Convention Center: “One of the oddest places I visited on Friday was LewAllen Galleries of New Mexico, where strangely enough, its booth was manned by a chair, which seemed to be selling other kinds of chairs to what I assume was a clientele consisting solely of tables. I was too intimidated to clear up what may have been a complete misunderstanding of the situation, having once been severely berated by an Eames Chaise Lounge, after accidentally referring to its Ottoman as a Suleiman Turk.”
More than 10,000 visitors and sales in the millions (one gallery sold 2 pieces for a total of $1.7 million, according to one report) mean the event will return next year.
- The Houston Art Fair [Glasstire]
- Houston Fine Art Fair Live Blog [Glasstire]
- Houston Fine Art Fair meets 10K visitor goal [Houston Chronicle]
- Saturday Art Fair Peoples and Friday Afternoon at the Houston Fine Arts Fair [The Great God Pan Is Dead]
Photos: Bill Davenport and Kelly Klaasmeyer (soup)
When he isn’t busy rebuilding the entire block of Colquitt between Greenbriar and Morningside, Houston architect Scott Ballard puts his mind to work solving difficult domestic problems. F’rinstance: how to enjoy indoor sports in the comfort of your home more . . . oh, unobtrusively? Ballard’s wife “wasn’t thrilled” about the ping-pong table he and his kids parked in the family’s living room a couple years ago, he tells the Chronicle‘s Ken Hoffman. A few sketches, hired guns, and failed prototypes later, and — presto! Ballard came up with the solution: The Ping Pong Coffee Table. And it’s for sale!
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSE POOR OR FURNITURE POOR “Roche Bobois designs are a still a little too blobby (i.e., French) for my taste, but it makes [more] sense to me to buy a $400k mid century mod and fill it with nice Bobois furniture than to buy a $800k faux Tuscan Villa and fill it with Pottery Barn.” [Patrick, commenting on Internum Takes Over Where Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Took Off]
HARTS GOING, GOING, GOING . . . TO PRISON 
Auctioneers and swindlers Jerry and Wynonne Hart will begin serving their 14-year prison sentences “within days,” after an appeals court reversed a decision that would have given the former owners of the Hart Galleries on South Voss a new trial. The Harts pled guilty to “misapplication of fiduciary property” 2 years ago, in return for prosecutors dropping theft and money-laundering charges against them. Prosecutors claim the Harts sold customers’ goods at auction but regularly underpaid or otherwise finagled their way out of distributing the proceeds. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Hart Galleries
Found relaxing in the Waugh Dr. median over the weekend, just north of Peden.
- Street Art of the Week: Tittering Also Banned [The Loop Scoop]
Photo: Paul Viscontini
One of the most regal furniture store larks in southwest Houston: this 9-ft.-high plush red, gold-trim throne outside Queens Furniture (selling the “Antiques of Tomorrowâ€) at 7426 Harwin. Asking price: about $3,000. Just part of its pedigree: It’s been taken out to the store’s grassy streetside front yard every dry day for about 10 years (though the store moved a few blocks to its current location about a year ago, so it’s had a slight change of scenery). Also, claims a store rep: the sit piece has starred in some of the ceremonies at the PGA’s Shell Houston Open in the Woodlands. Inside Queens Furniture: an entire set of gold 6-ft.-tall versions with accompanying table, for north of $6,000.
Photo: Aaron Carpenter
