Art blooms in our world class museums but also on our city streets this July. From exhibitions featuring traditional paintings and sculptures to high tech immersive and interactive shows, we\u2019re weaving art into the best of summertime fun and dreaming up beautiful new artistic creations all over Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cTown Meeting 1978-2028\u201d at Art League Houston<\/a> (now through July 20) \u201cFragmentos de un sue\u00f1o que yo tambi\u00e9n so\u00f1\u00e9 (Fragments of a Dream I Also Dreamed)” at Art League Houston<\/a> (now through July 20) \u201cEvery Fiber of Their Bodies\u201d at Art League Houston<\/a> (now through July 20) \u201cAnnual Juried Exhibition\u201d at Archway Gallery<\/a> (now through July 31) \u201cFoyer Installation: Ren\u00e9 Magritte\u201d at Menil Collection<\/a> (now through August 3) \u201cBlooming Wonders\u201d at Artechouse<\/a> (now through September) \u201cWeci | Koninut\u201d at Avenida Houston<\/a> (now through September 1) New Murals in the East End and Midtown (ongoing) \u201cThe Weight of Place\u201d at Anya Tish Gallery<\/a> (July 11-August 23)
<\/strong>Pioneering Houston-based interdisciplinary artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin continue their decades-long project to create new and sometimes monumental artworks in response to little-known pre-Stonewall queer histories. For this latest exhibition, the duo explore a more recent and influential piece of Houston history, \u201cTown Meeting I,\u201d the pivotal convening of 4,000 LGBTQIA+ Houstonians at the Astro Arena in 1978. For this show at Art League, they\u2019ve used their \u201cwind drawing\u201d technique of stenciling unfixed charcoal powder on paper and blowing it away, leaving a ghost-image. Using archival images of \u201cTown Meeting I\u201d as the bases of their stenciling, the finished \u201cwind drawings\u201d highlight the ephemerality, beauty, and loss of queer histories. In addition to these new works, Vaughan and Margolin hope to inspire, facilitate, and develop programming in 2028 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of \u201cTown Meeting 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/strong>\u201cEvery house is a body, and every individual body is a house full of memories and hopes,\u201d says award-winning Venezuela born, Chicago-based artist, Jeffly Gabriela Molina, of her artistic focus. Molina\u2019s fragmented, layered, and figural compositions explore that idea of home and memories. Delving into memories and stories, these figurative compositions, depicting people and relationships, fluctuate between stories of the present, past, and future. Taken together, the works in \u201cFragmentos de un sue\u00f1o\u201d aim to visually capture the feelings of vulnerability, nostalgia, and hope embedded in the experience of many immigrants. Art League notes that Molina\u2019s pieces emphasize optimism over hardship, specifically addressing the longing for a home that no longer exists while striving to create a new one.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Working with natural fibers such as linen, paper collage, and hand-spun paper yarn made from calligraphy paper and book pages, textile artist Lin Qiqing weaves stories ofhuman relationships, gender, immigration, and language. As the title hints, the labor-intensive weaving process brings thematic depth to the images of bodies depicted in the pieces. The woven pieces also make connections to the natural world, as when Lin crumples then smooths handmade mulberry paper to resemble human skin, or when she uses handwoven fiber to mimic the body\u2019s movement. Lin process includes research and experimenting with natural materials to explore themes of the internal human struggle for existence and our interactions with the world around us.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>For the 17th year, the artist owned Archway Gallery celebrates Houston artists with its juried exhibition of area artists who are not members of the space. This year\u2019s exhibition is juried by Project Row Houses founder and MacArthur “genius” fellow, Rick Lowe. The acclaimed artist and social activist has selected work from over 35 area artists representing a diversity of medium and styles. Sales from the exhibition will go to Houston\u2019s Brave Little Company, the theater company for Houston\u2019s kids and their gown ups.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>After a critically acclaimed trip to Australia, some of our favorite Belgian-born Houstonians are back home. Yes, the Magritte paintings have returned to the Menil Collection after taking a star turn in a monumental Magritte retrospective at Sydney\u2019s Art Gallery of New South Wales. Now the Menil is celebrating their return with a special installation in the main building foyer. The Menil Collection owns the largest collection of work by Ren\u00e9 Magritte outside the artist\u2019s native Belgium, and this display focuses on a core group of paintings from the 1950s and \u201960s that truly represent Magritte\u2019s status as a master creator of impossible painted worlds and an icon of the Surrealist movement. The paintings were purchased within a couple years of their making by the museum\u2019s founders, John and Dominique de Menil. They represent and important part of 20th century art history, as the de Menils became Magritte\u2019s biggest champions in the United States, helping to shape the artist\u2019s reception and reputation in the postwar American art world. Stop by to welcome them home and slip into their enigmatic wonder.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>The latest immersive exhibition from the Houston venue that brings art, science, and technology home together, Artechouse, lets the flowers blossom. The exhibition contains several dynamic installations, including \u201cTimeless Butterflies,\u201d a 270 degrees projection space that puts visitors in the middle of a butterfly cloud. Audiences journey with a flock of butterflies into an immense garden of flowers. Another immersive piece, \u201cInfinite Blooms\u201d takes audiences on a journey through an endless digital forest of cherry blossoms. The installation, \u201cAkousmaflore et Lux\u201d creates a very different type of garden where plants transform into musical instruments. \u201cClay Pillar\u201d by Interactive Items \/ Vadim Mirgorodskii invites visitors to sculpt new forms using clay and a little help from an AI program. Note that \u201cBlooming Wonders\u201d runs simultaneously with the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll exhibition, \u201cAmplified\u201d with \u201cWonders\u201d open during the daytime.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Houston is a place for big dreams, and this wondrous outdoor exhibition near George R. Brown Convention Center gives us the space to do so. Created by First Nations artists Julie-Christina Picher and Dave Jenniss, this interactive installation weaves together visual arts, Indigenous storytelling and sensory technologies in the form of six immense sculptural dreamcatchers. Each of these dreamcatchers are unique and represent one of the six seasons from the Atikamekw culture, an Indigenous people in Canada. Activated by people passing by, the dreamcatchers come to life with lights, sounds, and story, making the whole installation truly interactive. \u201cWeci | Koninut\u201d creators say that they want the installation to offer a total immersion experience for visitors, to create a moment where nature and dreams converge. Each piece offers a place for the public to slow down, sit, reflect, and yes, dream.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>We could spend days viewing all the new murals painted across town, just in the last few years. But in honor of summer outdoor art viewing, we thought we\u2019d spotlight two noteworthy new additions to our city-wide gallery of murals. As part of his major exhibition last spring at the CAMH, Vincent Valdez worked with San Antonio muralist Rubio and local students to create \u201cMemoria, Memory<\/a>.\u201d Dedicated to his mother Theresa Santana Valdez (1947\u20132020), the vivid mural on historic Navigation Boulevard features her favorite bird and flower. Over in Midtown, check out \u201cStellar Illumination,\u201d<\/a> the latest installation in the city\u2019s Big Walls Big Dreams mural series. Created by Robin Munro, also known as Dread, the seven stories high \u201cIllumination\u201d depicts a celestial scene of an astronaut gazing at Earth from space.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>This group exhibition will explore themes of memory and the emotional, psychological, and physical landscapes memories can evoke. The will showcase three contemporary Texas-based female artists: Megan Harrison, Marisol Valencia, and Lillian Warren. While these artists work in different mediums\u2013including large-scale paintings, mixed media works, and elegant porcelain sculptures\u2013they are inspired by personal reflection and nature to create artworks that reflect on the ways we hold onto the past through sensory experience.<\/p>\n