Fall 2019-Spring/Summer 2021

My Mirror Is Fine

Take a virtual tour of the exhibition

Six Texas artists explore their self-identities through a series of individual styles, techniques and motifs in “My Mirror Is Just Fine,” opening Saturday, June 12, at The Collective.

Houston artists Lauren Janelle, Alexis Pye, Matthew Napoli and Mathieu Jean Baptiste join San Antonio’s Cassidy Fritts and Mauro de La Tierra for the group show, which runs through July 30 in the Midtown/Third Ward Gallery.

Baptiste is of Haitian ancestry, and his rich heritage attributes to his impeccable ability of infusing culture and art. He is a self-taught, visual artist known for his paintings, murals and metal sculptures. The core of his artistic prowess is his belief that art should teach, heal and inspire.

Mauro de la Tierra, a first-generation Mexican American from San Antonio, is a self-taught painter, sculptor and illustrator. What began with street art transitioned into canvas and beyond. His work focuses on socio-economic challenges and generational struggles such as the prison industrial complex, poverty, addiction and the deterioration of the earth.

Fritts, whose dedication is to community and youth empowerment, is a painter, printmaker and muralist.  Her artwork typically explores topics of personal identity, mental health and community.  Fritts has a passion for immigration advocacy, anti-gentrification work and education reform.

Janelle, also known as LJANELLE, is a figurative artist whose creative process is an exploration of her own personal identity and history through painting, drawing and multimedia work. Many of the figures in her art serve as self-portraits, not just of the physical form, but of the mental and emotional state. There is an anonymity, yet familiarity in her figures that draw out different meanings depending on the viewer.

Napoli is a visual artist specializing in oil painting and drawing.  He earned his associate’s degree in fine art from San Jacinto College in Houston in 2017, his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2021 and is currently starting his graduate studies at Texas Christian University.

Pye is a working artist creating portraiture. She uses this tradition to unveil the ”fantastical truths about the relationship between art history and race.” At her most recent exhibition in September 2020 she was part of a group show in the Netherlands called “This Is America: Art USA Today,” which dealt with the subject matter of the recent political climate.

The exhibition is curated by Miles Payne.

AncesTREE

Multidisciplinary artist Lindsay Gary explores the complexities of a contemporary woman of the African Diaspora by looking at her experiences through an ancestral lens in the exhibition opening May 8 at the Community Artists’ Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116.

“AncesTREE,” a self-portraiture series, is an extension of genealogical research wherein specific ancestries have been discovered.

The exhibition specifically explores two layers of both maternal and paternal ancestry--distant ancestors in Africa represented through traditional clothing and recent ancestors represented through black and white photographs. Ultimately it is a work on identity, ancestry, history and culture and how the meeting of these ancestors (represented through a mosaic of images) parallels contemporary experiences.

Gary is an interdisciplinary artist who uses art to educate, connect and empower the African Diaspora. Primarily working as a dance artist and choreographer, Gary also works in photography, poetry, creative writing, film, and theater. Gary is the founder and artistic/executive director of Dance Afrikana, LLC, which exists to connect and celebrate Africa and the Diaspora through dance. 

The exhibition, which runs through June 5, is curated by The Collective’s Miles Payne.

The Microscopic Show

Tiny Resolution Art Show is an interactive art show that highlights tiny inspirational messages, motivational words, thought provoking quotes and mini renditions of original artworks. Every guest that enters the venue will receive their own personal tiny magnifying glass to experience the petite art and messages throughout the venue.

Participating artists include Melissa Aytenfish, Raymond Dunlap, Art by Nato, Ofeii, Tei Cooper, Iah Eshe, Maddkyng, WhoisAndrea, Honest Art and Kahmah Draws. Photos by Douglas James, Jr.

Take a tour of the exhibit.

“2020”

Top Row, l to r: “Allegory of Triumph/Angel with a Black Lives Matter Protester”; “An Allegory of Liberty/Say Her Name/Ms. Breonna Taylor; “Luncheon of the Damned/Fool’s Paradise”; “Cain and Abel/The Gadsden Flag”; “Free”; “Orbis Fabrica/100 Years/ Nurse in Waiting”; “8:46”

Second Row, l to r: “The Witness/The Martyr/ Portrait of Dr. Li Weinlang”; “Our Voice/Our Vote/2020”; Psyche (in Distress)/Oh No Not Me”/”Ready for the World/The New Negro”; “The American Prometheus/The Final Days/The Unknown”; “The Messenger/Portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci”; “Truth and Consequences”

Ricardo Osmondo Francis’ exhibition “2020” opens Thursday, January 28, with a 5 to 8 p.m. virtual reception at The Collective.

The solo show of new original paintings by the Houston native, New York City based artist and curator is an allegorical reflection of mankind’s response and reality to the unprecedented COVID-19/Coronavirus worldwide pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020.

This series is deeply inspired by the Roman writer Ovid, and his collection of myths called “The Metamorphoses.” In this exhibition, Francis reimagines our current year through a series of dreamy yet provocative images that in essence is a spiritually aspirational reflection of our collective reality. Francis’ often illustrative fairy tale like imagery takes on a bolder socially conscious tone in this new body of work-- all while representing the possibility of human involvement, progression and continuation despite the many obstacles and uncertainty that this virus has evoked worldwide. 

Inspired by Classical art, multi-ethnic antiquity, and present-day advertisement imagery Francis' vivid pictorial works present a torrent of imagery culled from every possible corner of the visual culture. His lush, elaborately graphic surrealistic paintings and drawings often depict the social constructs of humanity and the complexity of our existence through striking introspective, portraiture, still life and abstract compositions. This current series further explores the artist’s fascination with the possibility of narrative in portraiture.

Francis is a native of Houston, Texas, and a graduate of Houston’s (now Kinder) High School of Performing and Visual Arts.  He is currently the Gallery Director of LeonidesArts NY, an artist run multimedia visual arts organization dedicated to presenting contemporary art exhibitions and public art projects that reflect a variety of distinct themes, disciplines and cultural experiences outside of the conventional art gallery tenet.

The exhibition, which runs through March 27, is curated by The Collective’s Miles Payne.

Take a tour of the exhibit.

Closing Reception

With Ricardo Osmondo Francis and poets Henry Jones and Martha De La Paz

Ashé Holiday Market

The Community Artists’ Collective kicks off its thirteenth Annual Ashé Holiday Market December 5 at The Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116.

The market features artistic gift items by Aidee Alfaro, Shawn Artis, Patricia Henderson, Gail P and PM Neist.

After the first weekend, the Ashé Holiday Market will be open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 12 noon until 5 p.m. and by appointment through Saturday, January 2. The market is free to visit, but because of the COVID-19 restrictions attendance must be by appointment.

Perspective, Pivot and Change

“Perspective, Pivot and Change,” a solo show by Jo El M. Mercer, opened at The Collective November 6 and continues through November 28.

“My show is about diversity and magnifying it on a personal level and maybe that grows it a little bit bigger,” Mercer explained.

“The message I am trying to express,” she says, “is that we all have various perspectives as to how we see, hear and feel.  We are living in a world where the stage is constantly changing, and the perspectives are unsettling at times.  We must pivot in our thinking, our behavior and how we individually define and magnify diversity.  Change begins with self-inventory.”

“This show was born out of my love of Motown and the change and pivot and different type of thinking that this music evoked,” she explained.

“What I’ve tried to do in my work is use this in abstract painting, mixed media, work that you can deliberate on and that speaks to me.”

“Currently, I have been incorporating cartoons in my abstract expressionism,” the Houston resident, said.

“As an artist I am inspired by under-appreciated female African American artists like Alma Thomas, Betty Blayton-Taylor and Mildred Thompson.  I am passionate about cartooning and watercolor painting.  It’s my love of watercolor that allows me to use the same technique to manipulate acrylic,” she added.

Mercer is featured in “Meet the Artists at The Collective,” a new series initiated by Dr. Michon Benson. 

Take a virtual tour

Hearts, Hands and Heritage 2020

An October without a quilt show would be like a Halloween without pumpkins and trick or treaters.

Four talented artists will satisfy our quilt cravings this year with their original creations at the Community Artists’ Collective October 3-31.  The exhibition, a biennial collaboration with CERCL (Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning at Rice University) is free to visit, but because of the COVID-19 restrictions, attendance must be by appointment.

Leslie Abrams, Patricia Henderson, PM Neist, Trevon Latin and Lanecia Rouse have created colorful quilted tapestries and wearable pieces for display and for sale. Each artist has created unique textile stories and images through their own personal methods of quilt-making techniques.

Souls of a Perserverant Generation

Online Gallery

Choked on Cotton

“Choked on Cotton,” a virtual exhibition by artist
Nell Gottlieb, opens at The Collective May 22

The exhibition stems from Gottlieb’s reflections on her Alabama family’s plantation past and her current work to turn their empty antebellum house into a community space for art and culture in service of social justice.  Gottlieb’s psychological and sociological analysis of “that place” provides a glimpse of her struggle to understand and come to terms with this history.  She considers the cotton economy that supported plantation life in the context of the deteriorated house and the efforts of the descendants of those enmeshed in cotton to create a new narrative together. 

The multi-media artist uses family images to reference black and white narratives of the place to both document and transcend time.  Large unstretched canvases provide a map to the circumscribed world of the artist’s childhood and glimpses as she reckons with her heritage.  A series of small photographs with drawings are a time-space collapsed narrative of return, while a plate installation references two families honoring the past and creating a shared future.

Gottlieb completed the Block Program at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. and is professor emeritus of public health education at The University of Texas at Austin. A native of Alabama, she moved to Texas in 1980 and now lives in Houston.

She founded Klein Arts & Culture, the non-profit community organization that now owns the former plantation house and organizes cultural activities to promote the rectification of past injustices.

Gottlieb is donating all proceeds from sales to The Collective. The exhibit continues through June 20.

Image and Africology

“Image and Africology,” opens March 7, 2020, at the Community Artists’ Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116, with a reception from 3 to 5 p.m.

The exhibit, which runs through April 18, is one of the participating spaces for Fotofest Biennial 2020.

The exhibition displays images by photographers Derrick Bey, Sinden Collier, Colby Deal, Christie Leday, Gail Mallory, Marc Newsome and Mel Perry who explore their fellowship with the diaspora and discuss the ways we all deal with cultural deference.

Curator Dominic R. Clay states that “Although we are separated between land and language with massive bodies of water in between us, the African Diaspora never seemed to be so close. Tethered between continents, we are all blood bound. Common expressions tie us together linking all of us to a common future.

“In our past” he continues, “as African Americans, we dealt with a theoretical phenomenon W.E.B. Du Bois called ‘double consciousness.’ However, this concept has been reconstituted into something bigger and more complex. Today, the world is much smaller than it was yesterday, giving us the ability to keep one another at arm’s length. This is not simply an exhibition, but it is a love letter to Mother Africa and an homage to all of our ancestors who nurtured her.” 

Online Gallery

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Black & Blue: Lest We Forget

Dallas artist and curator Vicki Meek celebrates the historical and inspirational contributions that Dallas’s former Bishop College (1961-88) made to black cultural development with her “Black and Blue: Lest We Forget” exhibition opening at the Community Artists’ Collective Saturday, January 18, 2020.

The exhibition, which runs through February 29, is the original 15 collages used to create the “Black and Blue: Cultural Oasis in the Hills” commemorative markers that comprise the site-specific installation commissioned by the Nasher Sculpture Center for Nasher Xchange 2013-14. This installation is now permanently installed on the campus of Paul Quinn College in Dallas.

“For over 35 years I have spent my creative energies reclaiming African American history in installations that both invoke memory and emotion,” Meek stated.

“I have researched my community's past hurts and slights, its horrors and abominations, its beauty marks and its warts, all with the purpose of making my audience face history without apology. Black & Blue: Cultural Oasis in the Hills was created to help Dallas, particularly Black Dallas, face the truth about one aspect of Bishop College's history and hopefully place Bishop at the center of Black cultural development, a place it has rightfully earned,” she continued.

Meek, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a nationally recognized artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Norwalk (Connecticut) Community College. She was awarded three public arts commissions with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Art Program and was co-artist on the largest public art project in Dallas, the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project. Her retrospective exhibition Vicki Meek: 3 Decades of Social Commentary is currently at Houston Museum of African American Culture through February 16, 2020.

The opening reception at The Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116, is Saturday, January 18, from 3 to 5 p.m.

 Ashé Holiday Market

December 2019

Most Improved

“Most Improved,” Lance Flowers’ assembly of collages for his exhibition at the Community Artists’ Collective, addresses the philosophical concept of Anicca, the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence.

An opening reception will be held at The Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116, on Saturday, November 16, 2019, from 3 to 5 p.m.  The artwork will be on display beginning Saturday, November 9.

Flowers, who will give an artist talk Saturday, November 23, from 4 to 6 p.m., explains that he is channeling an awakening by repurposing the objects around him.

“In Buddhist philosophy, suffering arises from becoming overly attached to one form or idea of form,” he states.

“I incorporate the principle Anicca (meaning everything is changing) and mindfulness in my collages.  By changing an object’s story, I hope to alter its intention.

“Recently I have implemented packaging with a focus on luxury goods.  These boxes and bags were once symbols of material wealth and great status. Now empty with their contents dissected and their purposes fulfilled, these items inevitably would have decayed as their life cycle concluded,” he contends.

“Consumerism often dissects us in similar fashion.  Logo vs. logos; the human condition is paralleled with a new plot twist.  This is my Houston story, our comeback; this is us “Most Improved.”

Flowers is a multi-disciplined artist native to the greater Houston area with strong ties to TSU and the Third Ward community. He formerly teamed with Complex Magazine, the Beam Suntory investment group and the late fashion mogul Jonas Bevacqua through his LRG clothing imprint. His work is travelled and collected nationally. He has participated in Houston’s Project Row Houses and was awarded MFAH 5A’s "Best of Show.” His first city-funded Houston Arts Alliance grant was in 2013.

Earlier he collaborated with UCLA professor and Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize recipient, Rodney McMillian. The audio/visual collaboration premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco where it ran for four months. Flowers briefly put his own art on the back burner to focus on civic work and help establish the Houston Public Library's internal art program, where he served as chairman alongside HPL Director Dr. Rhea Lawson.

Flowers recently constructed three large permanent installations for the lobby of Memorial Towers, a multi-million dollar acquisition of the Barvin Group. 

His current visual offerings entitled “Most Improved” are funded once again in collaboration with the City of Houston.  

San Tana’s Fairy Tales

Sarah Rafael Garcia brings “SanTana’s Fairy Tales” to the Community Artists’ Collective for an exhibition opening with a  reception Saturday, October 19, 2019, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Garcia, a writer, traveler and arts educator born in Brownsville, Texas, has created contemporary fairy tales and fables from community-based narratives representing the history and stories of Mexican/Mexican-American residents of Santa Ana, Calif., (inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales).

The multi-media installation, created by Garcia in collaboration with local visual, musical and performance artists, presents bilingual single-story zines, a fully illustrated published book, an ebook and a large format classical book with graphic art by Sol Art Radio’s Carla Zarate.

Stories include “The Carousel’s Lullaby,” “Zoraida and Marisol,” “Just a House,” “Hector and Graciela,” (an homage to Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel,”), “When the Mural Speaks,” and “The Wishing Well.”

On Thursday, October 24, from 5 to 7 p.m., Garcia will host a lecture “Fairy Tales for Truth & Justice: Preserving and Re-Presenting History through Contemporary Narratives” at The Collective and will expound upon SanTana’s Fairy Tales as a visual art installation, oral history and storytelling project. She will share the impact of community collaboration and ethnofiction on storytelling and how it all comes together in her new work with Reality Check 3rd Ward in Houston. 

On Saturday, October 26, from 2 to 4 p.m., Garcia will present a free workshop “From Oral Storytelling to Zine Making” at The Collective and lead participants in sharing their own stories through a zine-making activity. The exhibit closes on October 26.

Facing Pages…Bodies of Water

Facing Pages…Bodies of Water,” opens September 5, 2019, at the Community Artists’ Collective, with the art of Bobbie Wallace Wright, whose work often intersects and connects the literary, visual and performing arts disciplines.

The opening reception will be held Thursday, September 5, from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Collective. An artist talk will be given on Saturday, September 28, from 1 to 3 p.m. at The Collective.

With this exhibition Wright takes a cursory look at the effect of the environment upon memory. By accepting a relative compositional premise that each of two natural bodies is composed of approximately two-thirds water, her canvases creatively abstract this interconnectedness of human beings and gently rolling rivers.

In Houston Wright has exhibited paintings, photographs and sculptural pieces at the Museum of Fine Arts, Contemporary Arts Museum, Project Row Houses and the O’Kane Gallery at UH Downtown, as well as at the Galveston Arts Center and the August Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts. 

In addition, she has performed literary monologues in collaboration with other artists in solo and group exhibitions.  She received a Rockefeller/NEA grant through the Andy Warhol Foundation to create the visual and literary art project, “Words on Walls: A Writer’s Gallery.

“Facing Pages…Bodies of Water” will continue through October 12.

Shadows in the Garden

Texas based artist Delita Martin will present her artwork and new book “Shadows in the Garden” at the Community Artists’ Collective Saturday, July 13, 2019, at an opening reception at 6 p.m.

An artist talk beginning at 6:30 p.m. will be followed by a book signing with books available for purchase. The “Shadows in the Garden” exhibition, which is in association with PrintHouston 2019, continues through July 27. 

The book focuses on the work and artistic journey of Martin. It highlights art from several exhibitions and works held in various collections around the country. Contents of the book include a foreword by Dallas artist and curator Vicki Meek and an interview with artist Joshua Asante of Little Rock, Ark. Dr. Kheli R. Willetts and Gary Reece of Houston have each contributed original essays. The book features full color images of Martin’s works. 

The works included in this publication examine the transition of women into their “spiritual self” and reinforce the bond among women and how they co-exist in the physical and spiritual realms.

“Through the layering of various mediums and symbols I can pull the viewer out of a logical and common world and place them within a space that offers a glimpse into the spirit world,” Martin states.