Viewing Hours
March 31 – June 24, 2012
Free and open to the public
Wednesday through Sunday 12 – 5PM
2505 – 2517 Holman
Project Row Houses is pleased to announce the opening of seven new art projects in the historic shotgun houses on Holman St. in Houston’s Third Ward.
Round 36 will be on view from March 31-June 24, 2012, and features installations by artists based in Houston, Los Angeles, and New York.
Please join us on Thursday, March 29 at 7 pm for an informal discussion with the artists about their work. Come back on March 31 from 4-7 for our opening celebration and block party.
Round 36 Events & Programs
- March 29, 7PM: Round 36 Artists’ Talk
- March 31, 4 – 7PM: Opening Reception
- June 23: Round 36 Community Potluck & Closing Celebration
Participating Artists & Projects
Irvin Tepper
2505 Holman St.
The Fragility of Hope
Irvin Tepper will present an installation of large scale photographs in 2505 Holman St. The artist states of his project, “Most people don’t stop and view the homeless while they are sleeping. Perhaps it makes them uncomfortable to see others living on the periphery in plain view, unprotected, unconscious, and vulnerable. I too am uncomfortable, yet when I stop and stare I attempt to suspend my feelings for their plight. I then begin to see something else. The folds of their blankets, the planes of cardboard shelters, the geometry of the street-these elements reveal a sort of rugged beauty despite the grim condition of the subjects. My attempt in these photographs is to capture a moment that is serendipitous, transitory, and dependent on the subject’s inherent fragility.”
Irvin Tepper received his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute, and his MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. Working as both a photographer and sculptor, he has had more than 20 solo exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Monie Henderson and Marc Newsome of Our Image Film and Arts
2507 Holman St.
The Cultural Portal: Reclaiming Our Image
Our Image Film and Arts is a non-profit organization that curates positive imagery about and by underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, with an emphasis on Black communities of the world. Our Image also promotes and supports the creation of non-stereotypical, honest, cutting-edge, thought-provoking depictions of Black and other ethnic communities. For the duration of Round 36, the house at 2507 Holman St. will become the host of The Cultural Portal: Reclaiming Our Image, a series of screenings and events that invites the public to become an active participant in the process of reclaiming positivity in media images of people of color.
Monie Henderson has worked in film and theatre for over ten years. Marc Newsome is a producer of independent video projects, including the short comedy, “Here Comes the Neighborhood,” a finalist for the Chase Legacy Film Challenge sponsored by HBO. Together, Henderson and Newsome founded Our Image Film and Arts in 2009. They work and live in Houston.
Manuel Acevedo
2509 Holman St.
The House that Alhacen Built
Manuel Acevedo’s installation, The House that Alhacen Built, is inspired by Ibn Al-hacen’s first experiments in a darkroom, written and published in his Book of Optics (dated approximately 1029 AD). Revisiting the history of the projected image before the invention of the camera, Acevedo will use a combination of modern-day technologies and basic mirrors to reflect images in real-time and time-lapse throughout the house. Since the first description of the camera obscura, projection has affected the way we experience light by transforming the static photographic image into an active space of experimentation. This installation highlights the ephemeral nature of light by using the light reflected from the surrounding community.
Manuel Acevedo is a former artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and past recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Among the many institutions he has exhibited are the Queens Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, The Drawing Center (all in New York, as well as the Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Germany. He lives and works in New York.
Phillip Pyle II
2511 Holman St.
Value$
For his installation at Project Row Houses, Phillip Pyle II examines the spending power of the African-American community. Estimated at close to a trillion dollars, it is enough to rank African-Americans as the world’s 16th largest country in terms of spending. But what do African-Americans have to show for it? Pyle suggests that many African-Americans have lost sight of the concept of value. The tendency to purchase items that depreciate in value is almost second-nature. Value$ seeks to shed “light” on this issue, as well as point to what is truly valuable, and how a shift in spending is paramount to the future.
Phillip Pyle II has interned for Congress in the office of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, worked as a projectionist at River Oaks Theatre, and co-hosted a sketch comedy television show entitled the Edward & Alan Show. A resident of the Third-Ward, he is currently an Asset Protection Associate for WalMart.
Beth Secor
2513 Holman St.
Blueprint for Heaven
Beth Secor’s house, entitled Blueprint for Heaven, is a tribute to the artist’s late father, who died in November 2011. As she describes in her own words, “Dad passed away two days after Thanksgiving, and since he died I have found myself often considering the concept of Heaven. Each of us probably has our own idea of what Heaven is, whether or not it exists, who gets to go there, and when. As an adult I no longer believe in a Heaven that takes place in the afterlife, but rather think of it as a mental state that we occasionally are transported to while still alive. For my row house, which I call Blueprint for Heaven, I have combined a corner of my father’s earthly heaven with my own. The majority of the materials I have used in this installation, including the model airplane blue prints and the model airplanes, I found in my dad’s workroom after he died.”
Artist and writer Beth Secor has a BFA in Printmaking and a MFA in Painting from the University of Houston, and she teaches at the University of Houston Downtown and Houston Community College Central. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Museum of Texas Tech University.
John Pluecker
2515 Holman St.
Antena Books: Pop-Up Bookstore and Literary Experimentation Lab
Libros Antena: Librería temporal y Laboratorio de experimentación literaria
From March 31 – June 24, writer John Pluecker will transform the shotgun row house at 2515 Holman St. into Antena Books/Libros Antena, a bilingual bookstore, reading room and experimentation lab. Pluecker will be present in the space Wednesdays through Sundays from 12 pm-5 pm, and will host a series of activities open to the public, including a weekly Read/Write club. In addition to featuring books from small presses across the Americas (particularly the U.S. and Mexico), Antena will have chairs available for sitting; books, chapbooks and small magazines available for reading; and typewriters available for writing. By making 2515 Holman St. a hub of experimental writing, Pluecker’s intention is to foster multilingual dialogue in literary community-making among Third Ward residents and other visitors.
John Pluecker is a writer, interpreter, educator, and translator. Both on and off the page, his interdisciplinary art practice is driven by radical aesthetics, experimental poetics and cross-border cultural production. There are two chapbooks of his work, Routes into Texas (DIY, 2010) and Undone (Dusie Kollektiv, 2011). A third chapbook, Killing Current, will be published by Mouthfeel Press in 2012. He lives and works in Houston.
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
2517 Holman St.
Kentifrican Museum
For Round 36, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle will be transforming the house at 2517 into the first ever Kentifrica Museum, featuring the ethnomusicology, hairstyling rituals, and cultural myths surrounding Kentifrica, “a contested geography, identity and existence.” In collaboration with performer and composer Kevin Robinson, and visual artist and instrument maker Eugene Moon, Hinkle will offer workshops to the Third Ward community on instrument building and healing through music as part of the program Ethnomusicology of Kentifrica. With filmmaker Kelman Duran, she will also present a multi-media film and spoken word piece that focuses on “contemporary narratives within liminal portals and geographies that hold individuals in search of Kentifrica.”
Interdisciplinary visual artist and writer Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Painting, and in May she will receive her MFA in Critical Studies/Creative Writing at CalArts. She is one of the artists selected to perform at the first Los Angeles Biennial Made in LA 2012, presented by LAXART and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
