Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Manuel Chavajay, “Saq Taq Achik’ (detail),” 2022, five photographs printed on paper, polyptych. Courtesy of the artist and Galería Extra
1. Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for Visual Arts (El Paso)
August 29, 2024 – April 12, 2025
From the UTEP Rubin Center:
“Told through a constellation of places and temporal back-and-forths, Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue traces stories of the entangled lands of the United States and Central America. The exhibition hinges on major conflicts that have scarred the region since the 1960s and how their histories are entwined with that of U.S. agriculture through the corn industry.
Across its long timeline, the exhibition centers on the years 1979-1981 to illustrate the overlap between the U.S. farming recession and the worst years of the armed conflicts in Central America, and how they are grounded in the same political and economic decisions around farming practices, ideas of land ownership and stewardship, migrant labor, and agricultural export.”
A still from Fred Schmidt-Arenales’s “IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT”
2. Fred Schmidt-Arenales: IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT
UT Visual Arts Center (Austin)
September 20 – December 7, 2024
From the Visual Art Center:
“For over a century, scientists, engineers, and government officials have been working to protect the Texas Gulf Coast from superstorm events that have damaged local ecosystems, displaced and killed coastal residents, and immobilized the region’s energy, shipping, and military operations. In the wake of catastrophic storms and hurricanes, including Katrina, Ike, and Harvey, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed the construction of a $57 billion floodgate and dike system in Galveston Bay called the Texas Coastal Barrier Project, or “Ike Dike” for short.
One of the largest proposed projects in the corps’ history, the Ike Dike has been vaunted not only as essential to protecting the Houston Ship Channel but also under the banner of environmental and community protection. Fred Schmidt–Arenales’s exhibition, IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT, examines the corps’ efforts to advocate for the Ike Dike using community- and environment-focused rhetoric in public forums while developing a plan that prioritizes industrial, political, and military concerns above all else.”
A work from “Benjamin Terry: Done Being Cool”
3. Benjamin Terry: Done Being Cool
Galleri Urbane (Dallas)
November 16 – December 28, 2024
From Galleri Urbane:
“As the title suggests, the exhibition centers around a rift, a shift, an evolution. What has come before provides a foundation, but the approach has shifted. This is, according to the artist, ‘not a midlife crisis show, but an anti-midlife crisis show.’ Its subtle repositioning represents, Terry says, ‘me meditating on getting older.’ For more than a decade, the artist has worked with plywood surfaces, but the language of construction has altered. What he may have built as ‘haphazard, clunky constructions’ — raw expressions of material, rough-hewn and almost clumsy — have become more refined and polished.”
Robert L. Straight, “Too Hot”
4. Time for Glass
Archway Gallery (Houston)
December 7, 2024 – January 2, 2025
From Archway Gallery:
“Archway Gallery artist, Robert L. Straight and guest artist, Eric DePan believe that it is Time for Glass to be brought to the forefront of the Houston art scene. Through this collaborative exhibition, the two artists, a half-century apart in age, offer a new lens through which to view this material that surrounds us every day. With their innovative approach to fusing, fabricating, and blowing glass, they show us what is possible.”
Maya Sokovic, “Lovely Day”
5. Maya Sokovic: Encounters
Un Grito Gallery (San Antonio)
December 5 – 19, 2024
“Encounters, an exhibition by Maya Sokovic, offers an exploration of memory and emotion through a combination of color composition and organic shapes. Over the past years, Sokovic has created a diverse body of work that reflects her personal experiences and connections she has forged with both people and nature. Each piece in the exhibition serves as a bridge, bringing memories from her past into the present moment, evoking a rich tapestry of emotions. Through this exhibition, Sokovic invites her audience to embark on a journey of exploration, where past encounters are not merely recollections but integral parts of our present identities.”
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