MEDIA CONTACT
Wando Okongwu, wokongwu@projectrowhouses.org
Comms and Marketing Manager, 713.526.7662
Houston, Texas—Project Row Houses (PRH) invites the community to celebrate its 30th anniversary and honor its founders at The Founders Round + PRH’s A Legacy Mixtape Block Party on October 14, 2023, from 1-9pm.
In 1993, seven visionary Black artists working in Houston embarked on a mission that would change the face of their community. James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Rick Lowe, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith recognized immense potential in a block and a half of abandoned shotgun houses at the corner of Holman and Live Oak. While others saw poverty and neglect, these artists saw a canvas for positive, creative, and transformative experiences in Third Ward.
PRH Curator and Art Director Danielle Burns Wilson created Project Row Houses: The Founders Round as a tribute to these artists and their foundational role in shaping this unique social sculpture and to shine a light on PRH’s 30-year legacy.
Wilson shares: “The Founders Round will feature newly installed and original works of art created by some of the visionary artists and will give viewers a chance to immerse themselves and experience their creative brilliance in the row houses that started it all.”
The round opening will be part of a larger event, Project Row Houses’ A Legacy Mixtape Block Party, where art and entertainment collide. This is a family-friendly event, featuring dedicated kids’ zones, games, and crafts. Two stages will showcase multiple DJs and guest performers trading electrifying performances to get people dancing. Guests can shop from a market highlighting a variety of local businesses and artists and buy food from a collection of food trucks.
Through its work, PRH has cultivated independent change agents who have been empowered to support people and their ideas, equipping them with the tools and capacity to do the same for others.
The Founders Round + Block Party is a testament to the transformative power of art and community, and the importance of celebrating the spirit of collective creative action.
Event Details:
Porch Talks + Opening
Saturday, October 14, 2023 | 1-2 PM
Block Party
Saturday, October 14, 2023 | 2-9 PM
Location
2521 Holman Street, Houston, TX 77004
On View
Saturday, October 14, 2023 – Sunday, February 18, 2024
For more information and updates about the event, please visit PRHTurns30.org.
ABOUT THE FOUNDERS
James Bettison was a spirited visual artist, performer, and sculptor in Houston, TX. In vibrant color, his work fused realism and the abstract, and in his life, he stood as a testament to perseverance. After moving to Houston in 1980, Bettison appeared in an amazing number of groups and numerous solo shows throughout the city. In 1991, Bettison was hit with a series of surreal and tragic occurrences. First, a fire started in his home and studio, and most of his work burned. Soon after, he contracted spinal meningitis and fell into a coma. Despite doctors doubting his recovery, Bettison miraculously regained consciousness. Eventually, Bettison felt that he was at a similar place in his work, to where he was before the coma. Throughout these life-changing events, he came together with six fellow visionary artists to begin Project Row Houses. Bettison passed away and joined the ancestral realm May 11th, 1997. We work to honor his example of community and perseverance through the collective actions of the social sculpture that is Project Row Houses.
Bert Long, Jr. was a painter, photographer, and sculptor who worked with traditional materials and ice. His personal philosophy was to never plan and to go with the organic flow that life provided. For Long, art was a way of elevation. He took his first art class in high school, but most of what he learned about art came from spending many hours studying art books at the public library. Born and raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Long had a successful career as a chef before dedicating his life to art in 1979. Long was key in establishing a connected artistic community in the city, asserting Houston as a major art center in the art world. In his career, he joined with six fellow artists to start Project Row Houses. On February 1, 2013, Long passed away and joined the ancestral realm, but his work lives on as we carry out the mission, he left behind with Project Row Houses.
Jesse Lott was a prolific artist known for his wire and wood sculptures, papier-mâché figures and collages made from found materials within an aesthetic he has named “urban frontier art”. Lott’s practice involved turning trash into treasure and combining it with the spirit of activism. Lott’s passion for the community still transcends through decades, as he even held workshops at his studio to inspire student who otherwise have not had access to art. During the 1950s, his family relocated from Simmesport, Louisiana to Texas, eventually settling in Houston’s Fifth Ward. Alongside six artists also seeking to use art as a resource, Lott’s community-oriented philosophy and his Artists in Action program helped spark the creation of Project Row Houses.
Rick Lowe is a distinguished artist and community organizer who resides in Houston. Over the past thirty years, Lowe has worked both inside and outside of art world institutions by participating in exhibitions and developing his socially engaged art projects rooted in community building. For nearly 30 years, he put aside his own studio practice and fully submerged into the social reality of creative production that seeks to be a catalyst of creatively transforming neighborhoods and communities. Born in Eufaula, Alabama, Lowe moved to Houston, Texas in 1985. Lowe co-founded the Commerce Street Artists Warehouse SAW (1985-2010), and later the Union of Independent Artists, before joining with six fellow visionary artists to begin Project Row Houses.
With a career spanning over four decades, Floyd Newsum‘s paintings, drawings, and prints reflect bold colors and whimsical motifs from African and African American folklore. Using artifacts from many cultures, Newsum’s work explores social and environmental issues. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee during the 1960’s gave him a front row seat to the Civil Rights Movement, influencing and informing his motivations and worldview. In 1976, Newsum became a professor for University of Houston – Downtown, where he continues to teach today. During this time, he joined with six fellow visionary artists and together, established Project Row Houses.
Bert Samples is an experienced and spirited painter and conservator in Houston, TX. Samples developed his own spirit-based ceremony in artmaking, invoking a heady brew of imagery inspired by dreams, myth, movies, music, and potent magic in his work. Born and raised in Houston, TX. Samples studied under legendary Houston artists and teachers James Surls, John Biggers, and Kermit Oliver, while attending TSU (Texas Southern University). Understanding the importance of uplifting community and seeking to use Art as a resource for this, Samples joined in with six fellow artists to found Project Row Houses.
George Smith is a major visual artist and retired professor, who over the course of his significant art career has created powerful, original and immensely dignified artworks in welded steel, works on paper and other media that reflect his aesthetic orientation as well as his experience with steel construction. On one level his sculptural works communicate his spiritual ambition and synthesize three fundamental sources: the sense of scale and the intuitive look of Abstract Expressionism, the industrial geometry of Minimal Art, and the striations, expressive symbols of sacred geometry inspired by the Dogon peoples of West Africa. Smith came to Houston with his family in 1981, after being recruited to teach Sculpture at Rice University, where he taught until his retirement in 2010. In 1993, he joined six other prolific Houston Artists, and together they established Project Row Houses.
