DAVID ADICKES
David Adickes' career as a painter and more recently as a
sculptor, spans many years. After receiving a bachelors degree
in math/physics, Adickes went to France and studied from 1948
to 1950 with modern French master Fernand Leger. He returned
to Houston and began a painting career which led to dozens
of one-man shows in the U.S. and France. Several museums and
many corporate and private collections own his work.
In the 50's he traveled extensively, circling the globe,
painting in Tahiti, Japan, Spain and living six years in
France. In 1983, Adickes was commissioned to make his first
monumental sculpture in Downtown Houston, "Virtuoso"
at the Lyric Center, then in 1994 he completed the 76 foot
figure of Sam Houston in Huntsville, Texas.
In 1996 he began a seven year project, buiilding two Presidents
Parks, one near Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, August 2003,
and the other at Williamsburg, Virginia, March 2004. Each
Park contains 18' to 20' tall busts of all the U.S. presidents.
Since December 2003 Adickes has resumed painting full time
and is currently very productive. His subjects, as always,
are groups of figures, landscapes, and still lifes. His
signature figures, dubbed "the Adickes men" by
biographer A. Cautey were later described as "stunning
canvases that are painted with virtuosity that is compelling"
by author James A. Michener in his monograph/critique "Adickes"
1968, published in Barcelona.
David Adickes lives and paints in Houston and has paintings
in collections all across America.
DEAN RUCK
Dean Ruck lives in Houston,Texas. He is originally from Hamden,
Connecticut, and received a BFA from the University of Colorado
and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art before relocating
to Houston to be Core Artist-in-Residence at the Glassell
School of Art in 1987. He has created distinctive and ambitious
objects and installations across Texas and the U.S, and internationally,
including a recent project for Estudio Abierto in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, "Inversion" at Art League of Houston
(both in collaboration with Dan Havel), at Devin Borden Hiram
Butler Gallery in Houston, Neuberger Museum at Purchase College,
New York, City Gallery of Atlanta, Old Jail Art Center, Albany,
Texas, Indianapolis Arts Center, Sesquicentennial Park, Houston,
Connemara Conservancy in Plano, Texas.
Typically working in the public realm, Ruck's work has
a direct interface with the viewer creating a symbiotic
relationship via common and uncommon sensory experience.
Virtually without material limitations he has crafted art
from light, sound, water, human hair, wood, glass, food,
rubber, pine needles, wax, cardboard, motors, computers,
etc. Often kinetic, always tactile, sometimes sensual, inherently
interactive, Ruck's work has been inhabited, worn, swam
in, pushed, pulled, thrown, heard, smelled, spun, traversed
and more. Sometime solid, often elusive and ephemeral, most
work has existed temporarily in places such as galleries,
museums, college campus', rooftops, mountaintops, riverbeds,
gardens, under freeways, roadsides, public restrooms, abandoned
buildings, libraries, bayous, etc.
Dean Ruck has received grants and awards from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Texas
Commission on the Arts, Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris
County, Houston International Festival, Connemara Conservancy
and Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has had countless mentions
in numerous publications such as the New Art Examiner, Art
in America, Sculpture Magazine, Texas Architecture, CITE
Magazine, Gulf Coast, Artlies, the Dallas Morning News,
Houston Chronicle, Clarin, and the Atlanta Journal - Constitution.
Most notably, Ruck's work was featured in the book Designing
the World's Best Public Art, by Garrison Roots / Images
Publishing Group.
ELENA CUSI WORTHAM
Elena Cusi Wortham was born and raised in Mexico City. Born
to Italian parents, her heritage is rich and interesting,
a melding of two cultures, both ancient and saturated with
art history and imagination. She came to the United States
because she married an American, many years ago. In the eighties,
Elena received a Fine Arts Certificate from the Glassell School
of Art.
Since then, she has been involved in art, both through
painting and sculpture. These last years she has been involved
in Public Art, which she consider very important for Houston.
Elena says, "I will continue to do or make or imagine
art until the day I die. It is essential to me. I love color,
vitality and imagination in art. I want to make people react
to the objects to make life an adventure through art."
FLOYD NEWSUM
Floyd Newsum was born in 1950 in Memphis, Tennessee. He received
his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Memphis College of Art in 1973.
In 1975 Floyd received his Masters in Fine Arts from the Tyler
School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Floyd is a painter but he also makes prints, both lithographs
and silk-screens. He has worked on several public art projects.
His work can be found in many private collections around
the country and six museum collections, including the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Art
Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi. His work can be
seen in the collection at Xavier University in New Orleans,
at Texas Southern University in Houston, the Atlanta Life
Insurance Company in Atlanta, Georgia and at The University
of Houston-Downtown where Floyd has been a professor of
art for the last 30 years.
JAMES SURLS
James Surls is one of America's foremost living sculptors
and one of the most fascinating creative forces on the international
art scene in the last several decades. His works have been
shown in
both national and international solo and group exhibitions
and are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern
Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum
of
Art in New York; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C.; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Modern Art Museum of
Fort Worth; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the Dallas
Museum of Art.
No artist of his generation has had a greater impact upon
the development of Texas as a locus of vibrant creativity
than James Surls. Sculptor, teacher, and independent producer,
he encouraged young artists to push the boundaries of social
and aesthetic expectations. From 1976 to 1982, he was an
influential teacher at the University of Houston, and as
founding director of Lawndale Art and Performance Center,
Surls set the tone that shaped the maverick alternative
space, welcoming new artists and new ideas and offering
Houston an early look at significant work by emerging artists.
But Surls is not simply a regional artist. His unique blend
of natural forms and sophisticated, sometimes edgy imagery
and content places him securely within the international
contemporary community. Surls' evocative wood sculpture
is widely respected for its inventive expressive forms,
while his enigmatic, engaging drawings are praised for their
expressive, expansive lines and for the stories they tell.
MEL CHIN
Mel Chin was born in Houston to Chinese parents in 1951, the
first of his family born in the United States, and was reared
in the predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhood
of Kashmere Gardens. He worked in his family's grocery store,
and began making art at an early age. Though he is classically
trained, Chin's art, which is both analytical and poetic,
evades easy classification. Alchemy, botany, and ecology are
but a few of the disciplines that intersect in his work. He
insinuates art into unlikely places, including destroyed homes,
toxic landfills, and even popular television, investigating
how art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility.
Unconventional and politically engaged, his projects also
challenge the idea of the artist as the exclusive creative
force behind an artwork. "The survival of my own ideas
may not be as important as a condition I might create for
others' ideas to be realized," says Chin, who often enlists
entire neighborhoods or groups of students in creative partnerships.
In "KNOWMAD," Chin worked with software engineers
to create a video game based on rug patterns of nomadic peoples
facing persecution. Chin also promotes "works of art"
that have the ultimate effect of benefiting science or rejuvenating
the economies of inner-city neighborhoods. In "Revival
Field," Chin worked with scientists to create sculpted
gardens of hyperaccumulators-plants that can draw heavy metals
from contaminated areas-in some of the most polluted sites
in the world. Chin received a BA from Peabody College in Nashville,
Tennessee, in 1975, and fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts in 1988 and 1990.
PAUL HESTER
Paul Hester wasn´t born yesterday; he can remember the
algebra class he was sitting in when John F. Kennedy was assasinated.
He remembers how much he resented adults saying: "You´ll
understand when you´re older."
In 1963 he made a pilgrimage to the top of Mount Fujiama
in Japan. He began his quest in photography when he realized
that in his family of origin, the patriarch held the power
AND the camera.
He was president of the Little Rock Conference Methodist
Youth Fellowship in
1966 and was the founding president of the Houston Center
for Photography in 1982.
He decends from a long line of Methodist ministers, and
grew up in the illusion that God spoke in his father's tone
of voice.
His path of spiritual enlightenment took a detour through
the secular humanism of the School of Architecture at Rice
University, but regained its direction on a visit to the
northern coast of California in 1969, listening to the surf
and watching the earth rise over the moon.
His awareness of photography´s potential for spiritual
guidance has been illuminated by many experiences with his
creative partner Lisa Hardaway, in their wanderings in the
deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and hot springs.
He has been encouraged by grants from the National Endowment
for the Arts and the Thomas J. Watson Foundation; exhibitions
at the Menil Collection, Rice University, University of
Houston College of Architecture, Williams Tower, the Houston
Public Library, and Congregation Emanu El, among others;
he has been published extensively in books and magazines.
He enjoys photographing churches and other buildings in
his day job as an architectural photographer. Assignments
from the Rice Design Alliance´s Cite Magazine, pro
bono work for Voices Breaking Boundaries, and photographing
the work of artists encourages him to poke his camera in
lots of places that he wouldn´t visit along his usual
habits.
He is currently enjoying a return to his roots, teaching
a beginning photography course in the Department of Visual
Arts, Rice University.
PAUL KITTELSON
Paul Kittelson is one of Houston's most prolific public
artists. A veteran of numerous art car parades and a handful
of SPARK parks, Kittelson has carved a niche for himself in
the city of Houston as both a studio based and a civic artist.
His interest in working in the community has led to an array
of projects in schools, parks and public setting throughout
the city. Mr. Kittelson's work has been exhibited in galleries
and museums both regionally and nationally. For the past ten
years he has been the head of the sculpture program at the
University of Houston.
Since 1983, Professor Kittelson has shown his work regionally
and nationally in numerous one-person and group exhibitions.
His work was selected for "The First Texas Triennial"
at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and for the 1996
exhibition "A Feast for the Eyes" at the Austin
Museum of Art.
Kittelson participates in both traditional exhibits and
public projects. Using a variety of materials ranging from
concrete and steel to discarded items like foam rubber and
carpet, Kittelson has created large-scale works of whimsical
nature. A 35' stegosaurus lurking beneath a freeway underpass
and a series of monumental headless body builders posing
in front of the Contemporary Arts Museum are among his more
notable public works. Kittelson's expressive use of materials
and witty sense of subject matter have carried over into
his gallery exhibitions: "Double Delicious" at
Hiram Butler Gallery in 1996 and "Too Good To Be True"
at Barbara Davis Gallery in 1998. Both series of work dealt
with images of food rendered in an absurd and evocative
fashion that is characteristically Kittelson.
THE ART GUYS
"The Art Guys" who began working together
at the University of Houston in 1983, have carefully crafted
a presence and wacky notoriety that places them at the heart
of the Houston art scene and has captured the attention
of a national audience. Driven by an insatiable curiosity,
they employ a variety of media for the exploration of their
ideas including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation,
performance and video. The Art Guys create diverse works
designed to engage, amuse and challenge viewers by seducing
them with a playful sense of humor.
Described in the New York Times as "a cross between
Dada, David Letterman, John Cage and the Smothers Brothers,"
The Art Guys are the court jesters of the postmodern age.
The Art Guys present a blend of performance, conceptual
and visual art that explores the absurdities of contemporary
life and pokes fun at the art world.
All told, The Art Guys defy categorization, they represent
a kink in the art historical continuum - a hiccup, a scratch
that can't be itched. They have amused, irritated, enchanted
and befuddled viewers with their deadpan humor and irreverent
antics. Regardless of how they are remembered in the annals
of American art, their audience will never be the same."
