Project Description

Houston emerged as a significant city for the arts in the 1970s and 1980s, a former cultural frontier transformed by the oil boom and the arrival of several catalyzing figures including sculptor James Surls. When a fire displaced the University of Houston’s art department in 1979, Surls established the Lawndale Annex in a cavernous, unsupervised warehouse located miles away from campus as one of the city’s first viable alternative art spaces. Historic venues like Lawndale, DiverseWorks, and Project Row Houses are already nationally prominent. Impractical Spaces: Houston would consolidate their histories alongside those of such lesser-known spaces as the Houston Museum of Modern Art (1974-1976); Chicano Arts Gallery (1976-1978); Studio One (1979-1983); Little Egypt Enterprises (1979-1983); Firehouse Gallery (1982-1986); Commerce Street Artists Warehouse (1985-2010); Zocalo/Templo (1989-2001); The Axiom (1987-1991); Tha Joanna (2007-2013); and Skydive (2008-2011).

Partner Biography: 

Pete Gershon is the author of Collision: The Contemporary Art Scene in Houston, 1972- 1985 (Texas A&M University Press, 2018) and Painting the Town Orange: The Stories Behind Houston’s Visionary Art Environments (Arcadia Press, 2014). From 1997 to 2013 he was the founding publisher of Signal to Noise: the journal of improvised and experimental music. He has a BA in creative non-fiction from Hampshire College (1995) and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of North Texas (2015).

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/collisionhouston/