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Archive for the ‘Arts’ Category

Megan FeldmanTeri Lueders, Toxicity​On Friday evening, dozens of nature lovers and art fans converged on Fair Park's Texas Discovery Gardens for the opening of Global Swarming, a show of oil and encaustic artwork that explores Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that's destroying bee colonies worldwide and has farmers in a panic. The collection of local artists -- who will be conducting educational workshops in the gardens' classroom during the State Fair -- used beeswax, pigment and collage to make points about the problem, whose cause remains unclear but is thought to be tied to pesticides and genetically modified foods. "I'm a naturalist, but I'm also an artist, and those things go together really well," said Janet Reynolds, the show's curator and a painting teacher who gives classes out of her Little Forest Hills home and Deep Ellum studio. "We want to raise awareness and get the word out about Colony Collapse Disorder."

​The official press release arrived early this morning, along with the official newspaper: The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is now the AT&T Performing Arts Center. (Or both, per the Web site.) Nobody's saying how much AT&T's spending on the naming rights, only that the package includes "cutting edge communications technology," or "Wi-Fi" for short. Naturally, Mark Nerenhausen, president and CEO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, is tickled by the partnership."AT&T not only provides vital support that advances the Center's educational, cultural and civic mission, but also frees us to focus our energies on programming, raising capital funds, building our endowment and raising funds toward programming and operations," he says in the Official Statement. "AT&T's involvement ensures that when the AT&T Performing Arts Center opens in October it will become a cornerstone of our cultural community and an economic and cultural catalyst for the region." He then added, "AT&T, AT&T, AT&T, AT&T, AT&T."The full release, full of fun facts concerning Opening Week in October, is after the jump. I've since forwarded it to Schutze, a true believer in the Dallas arts community.

​I'm a big fan of illustrator Jack Unruh's -- you probably are too if you've seen his work in, oh, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Time or ... look, you name it. The man ain't in the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame for nothing. He's a good. So, funny thing: I was looking for something on eBay and stumbled across this circa-1970s piece the Dallas-based illustrator did of the Dallas Convention Center.I called Unruh to ask him about it. He didn't know what in the hell I was talking about, so I sent him the link. He took one look at it and insisted, nope, not his. Then he looked at it a little harder.A close-up from Jack Unruh's Dallas Convention Center piece​"I would not ever have recognized it, but I recognize the signature," he said. "Boy, if that ain't a crappy-ass painting. It's a wonder I ever survived." He laughed, long and hard. "I think I'd pay $110 to burn the sumbitch."But, I told him, you're in the illustrators' hall of fame. That price tag seems like a hell of a good deal."Mistakes are made every day," he said. "I wonder where in the hell they came up with this thing." Then he read aloud the description: "This is an incredible piece of original 1970s illustration art for the Dallas Convention Center." He stopped, then laughed again."Didn't say good," Unruh said. "Just said 'incredible piece.' That doesn't mean good."Act now, before our art director Alexander Flores does. 'Cause as far as he's concerned, $110 is a steal for a piece by a local legend.

​Yesterday came the big announcement: AT&T done bought itself the naming rights to the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. But there was one glaring omission in the press release's fine print: How much did the company pay? That troubles New York Times arts and business writer Judith Dobrzynski, who also maintains the Real Clear Arts culture blog: Stephen Becker directs our attention to her Tuesday-night post in which Dobrzynski writes that AT&T's refusal to provide the dollar amount doesn't make sense ... and could come back to bite the giant in the ass:How are people going to judge whether this is a fair deal or whether AT&T bargained too hard? And how are AT&T shareholders going to know whether they're getting their money's worth?Eventually, the numbers usually out. Why hide in the meantime? It looks suspicious.And here's another thing we don't know: how long does this deal last? AT&T did say that it would offer free WiFi throughout the 10-acre complex.

​The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center opened its doors in September 1989 -- seems like only 18 years ago. Accordingly, there are big doings at I.M. Pei's palace on September 27 -- a free open house that'll include the intriguingly advertised "instrument petting zoo." And if you've got a few spare moments, Meyerson's 2MCompanies Inc. just posted Part One of a making-of doc, and it's quite the revealing flashback from the man who says toward the end that "I'm really not a public person" when explaining his reluctance to let H. Ross Perot bestow upon the joint Meyerson's name. I'll post Part Two when it becomes available.

For those who missed Part One of Mort Meyerson's 20-minute doc, made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the concert hall that bears his name, it's right here. You might want to watch that before you view Part Two, in which things get Curb Your Enthusiasm tense during the construction.

Nina Kotova​Beginning Thursday through Sunday, Nina Kotova will sit in with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, as the acclaimed Russian cellist makes her Texas Instruments Classical Series bow. Hers is a particularly special debut in Dallas, as the occasional University of Texas at Austin visiting artist, former Charlie Rose guest and one-time model will world-premiere "Cello Concerto" penned by her good friend and 41-year-old Dallas native Christopher Theofanidis -- a piece she commissioned, matter of fact. The classical-music blog Sequenza21 today features an audio interview with Kotova, who talks about the long-distance collaboration that's been a work in progress for two years.

​In the October 12 issue of Newsweek, Cathleen McGuigan takes a visit to the AT&T Performing Arts Center and tells Lincoln Center to watch out. Well, more or less: "Lincoln Center is still the country's premier cultural complex, but it's getting competition from an ambitious project in -- are you ready for it, New Yorkers? -- Dallas." But she wonders the same thing everyone else has been asking since, oh, 1988, maybe? As in: Does an Arts District a "city" make? Writes McGuigan:Dallas audiences will certainly explore the new complex and the surrounding public space. But weaving it all together to create a dense and urbane neigh-borhood requires more than dramatic buildings by famous architects. Ask the people in another car-centric city: Los Angeles, where the vaunted Disney Concert Hall (also by Gehry) has had almost no effect on creating a street life downtown, even though Gehry proposed a plan, never instigated, to help do just that. "It's almost impossible to design a city," [Renzo] Piano, architect of the Nasher Sculpture Center in the Dallas arts district, once said. "What makes a city beautiful is that it's not designed. Time makes cities beautiful."

​We first took a long, hard look at Jaume Plensa's Sho, otherwise known as the 13-foot-tall head that weighs 600 pounds, back in August, when SMU's Meadows Museum announced its acquisition. But the sculpture rears its lovely head tonight with the official unveiling as the Meadows reopens the redesigned plaza and sculpture garden at 6 p.m. Says The Official Release from high on the Hilltop: The dedication launches a celebration of the Elizabeth Meadows Sculpture Collection with the exhibition "Face and Form: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in the Meadows Collection." The new plaza will feature a permanent installation of monumental sculpture from the Elizabeth Meadows Collection and the Meadows Museum by artists such as Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, and Claes Oldenburg. ...Santiago Calatrava's Wave, already a fixture of the plaza's southwest corner, can now be viewed from above from a terrace donated by Richard and Gwen Irwin in honor of his parents, William and Florence Irwin. A staircase, which can be approached from each side, will help integrate the plaza with the rest of the campus, while a new fountain at its foot will greet museum visitors.Calatrava's Wave, incidentally, is what most of Schutze's dreams look like. Speaking of, it's supposed to rain, what, four inches between tomorrow and Friday? Hmmm, I wonder where Jim'll be later this week. (That thing's still stuck on September 30?)

An abstract Duvan Lopez Yepez painting, among the Derrill Osborn items up for grabs next week.​When my former colleague Christina Rees says Dallas print media needs to get off its ass and properly cover the visual arts, this probably isn't exactly what she means. Nevertheless, I now direct your attention to the 350-plus cow paintings and sculptures and whatnots being auctioned off October 14 at the Dallas Auction Gallery per the instructions of their owner, Derrill Osborn, the former longtime head of Neiman Marcus' men's fashion division (a "men's wear maestro," matter of fact) who wants to clear the clutter from his Oak Lawn town home. And lest you think this a novelty item, well, it did merit a piece (scroll down) in this morning's New York Times, in which Osborn, owner of the greatest facial hair in the history of follicles and an exquisite dresser, explains his love affair with four-legged art: "People don't normally associate cows with elegance. But this is the best of the best in the bovine world. It isn't the potholders, dishrags and ice cream scoops you might imagine."