Tag: Public Art

Public Art
08/20/09 4:34pm

Keep Houston Ugly: Are You Doing Your Part?

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Signage
17 Comments

A small local flurry on Twitter, after abc13 reporter Miya Shay spots one of these and posts a photo:

Anyone know anything about the “Keep Houston Ugly” stickers popping up around town?

They’ve been around for a while, haven’t they? You can buy one yourself — a different version — online. Find a place to stick it, and you can push the meme further!

Nobody notices all those tiny cracks on a windshield either, until somebody does, and somebody else does, and pretty soon cracks are showing up everywhere.

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Adaptive Reuse
08/20/09 10:46am

Art Deco Slaughter on Harrisburg: Is Metro Taking To the Cleaners?

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Art, Eastwood, Historic Preservation, Houston Architects, Public Art, Transportation
11 Comments

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:

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New Construction
06/22/09 4:14pm

Pumping the Pipeline, Flashing Lights in the Sky: New Skater Shower on Sabine St.

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Old Sixth Ward, Parks, Public Art
8 Comments

The foundation for Open Channel Flow — a 60-ft.-tall public artwork built from steel water pipe and featuring a pump-it-yourself outdoor shower — is now in the ground at the Sabine Water Pump Station. Over the fence to the south is the new Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark. When the structure is complete, sweaty skaters — or really, anyone on the north side of Buffalo Bayou Park who’s looking for a quick wet thrill — will be able to stand over the 6-ft.-diameter stainless steel drain cover, yank the rubber handle on the adjacent pump, and get doused by “the equivalent of a few cups” of water, released from the showerhead hanging 30 feet overhead.

But dude: Don’t forget about the blinking light! A strobe at the very top of the structure will flash with each pump. Which will cue bored office workers viewing from Downtown to mark another notch in their cubicles.

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Art
06/04/09 5:18pm

Comment of the Day: Third Ward Arts District

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Comments, Crime, Public Art, Quicklink, Third Ward
2 Comments

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]

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Art
06/04/09 12:58pm

Seen on the Street: How Hot Is It Out There, Really?

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Critters, Houston Heights, Museum District, Public Art, Streetscapes, Upper Kirby
6 Comments

Too hot for the squirrels, apparently.

This latest edition of Seen on the Street sticks close to the pavement. First up: Artist David Cook snaps this hot photo of . . . no, that’s not an egg frying on Kirby. Just a street button with . . . culinary aspirations?

What’s more to see around town when you keep your head down?

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Art
05/27/09 11:27am

Houston House and Lot Flipping: Conceptual Art Meets Sharpstown Deed Restrictions

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Development Restrictions, Public Art, Sharpstown
23 Comments

Sure, Mary Ellen Carroll is gonna pick up this Sharpstown lot across from Bayland Park and the house on it and rotate the whole thing 180 degrees. Oh, and then there’s gonna be that hydroponic curtain-wall fencing system and the solar and geothermal systems and the wi-fi cloud and the fancy door hardware and the bees and all. Still gotta meet the local deed restrictions.

Video: Douglas Britt

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Attractions
02/27/09 4:17pm

Comment of the Day: Home of the 150-Ft. Buddha

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Comments, Public Art, Quicklink, Religious Facilities, Restaurants
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOME OF THE 150-FT. BUDDHA “I don’t think there would be outrage over a Buddha. Everybody would think it was ‘cute’ and look for the adjacent Chinese restaurant.” [EMME, commenting on Sagemont Cross: New Higher Power Lines Beltway 8]

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Attractions
02/20/09 6:42pm

Sagemont Cross: New Higher Power Lines Beltway 8

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Ellington Field, Public Art, Religious Facilities, Utilities
54 Comments

What’s this? A new clean, modern design for the high-voltage power line structures along the Sam Houston Tollway, just west of I-45 South?

Naah — it’s Sagemont Church’s new 170-ft.-tall steel cross, viewed in its natural setting. Plus: It lights up at night!

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Lake Houston
02/02/09 1:40pm

The Art of Lake Houston Purification: As Clean As It Gets

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Proposed Developments, Public Art
13 Comments

A bouquet of bathtubs by sculptor Donald Lipski will be the centerpiece of a new Houston Water Museum and Education Center in northeast Houston called The WaterWorks. Named “Tubbs” — apparently after Texas country musician and frequent bather Ernest Tubb — Lipski’s sculpture appears to encourage the recycling of water from one bath to the next, although in a playful way perhaps at odds with the standard “short showers only” messages contained in most water-conservation public-information campaigns. The sculpture’s splashing will be controlled, however: That’s a water-recycling system hidden in the bathtub stems.

The museum, scheduled to open in August, will be adjacent to the Northeast Water Purification Plant at the southwest corner of Lake Houston, at 12121 North Sam Houston Parkway East, in Humble.

The bathtub sculpture is a considerable improvement over Lipski’s first proposal for the WaterWorks Museum, the “magic” overflowing water pitcher pictured here:

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Montrose
12/04/08 1:52pm

New Buffalo Bayou Bridge Will Encourage Tolerance of Houston

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North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Public Art
23 Comments

The newly revealed design for that $7 million pedestrian bridge over Buffalo Bayou near Montrose makes a brilliant metaphor for the appeal of this city, no? From a distance, it doesn’t seem like Houston is really . . . “passable,” either! But once you’re looking at it up close . . . sure, it’s all right: You can make it through. An excellent message to send prospective Houston tourists! Plus: Wasn’t that how the Houston Ship Channel got started too?

Official name of this Memorial Heights TIRZ project: The Tolerance Bridge. Perfect!

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Afton Village
08/26/08 9:16am

IKEA Checkout Gets Some Sexy

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Public Art, Restaurants, Retail
8 Comments

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmGp3rfOXNc 400 330]

After a summer-long silence, SexyATTACK is back, with this unbridled celebration of . . . uh, retail!

The IKEA on I-10 is a big store. Someone’s got to dance in it.

Sexy does salad bar, after the jump!

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Attractions
07/10/08 4:05pm

Grace Community Church and the Giant Crosses on I-45

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Ellington Field, Proposed Developments, The Woodlands
25 Comments

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=dkUjSpRr93Q 400 330]

The two “Marking Our City” billboards near Grace Community Church‘s north and south I-45 locations depict a plain white cross, an American flag, and the words “150 FT CROSS COMING SOON.” But they probably show only the top portion of the structures the church is planning — and the 150-ft. label may be selling the project short. The Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray says

. . . the pastor hopes both structures will be 200 feet tall, roughly the height of a 20-story building. The Federal Aviation Administration, he said, may limit the south campus’s cross to 150 feet because it’s near Ellington Field.

Five-and-a-half minutes into the Grace Community Church video above, Grace senior pastor Steve Riggle walks viewers through a drawing of a more elaborate structure. Riggle asks

What if there was one of these at every entrance to the city? And it was there for the prayer movement in the city, not just a church. You talk about marking our city for God.

After the jump: More crosses on the side of the highway!

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