The Horlock House finally gets the attention it has deserved.

And what a transformation!

The Horlock House has been restored from stem to stern.

The city of Navasota found the funds to refurbish and repurpose the Horlock House on Washington Avenue. If you do not know which house this is, that explains why it was completely stripped and given a new life as artist's apartments and an art gallery.

Architectural elements come alive in the Spartan surroundings.

In an effort to make the house relevant to the community, and further Navasota's arts identity, the Victorian furniture and history exhibits were removed to make room.

The City of Navasota has taken bold steps to artistic glory...

And look what is happening downstairs...

A New Era Begins: The Horlock House as Cultural Center

A SERIOUS  art gallery in Navasota, Texas!

The Horlock Gallery is managed by the Arts Council of the Brazos Valley. Art is placed sparingly for effect in this new artist's venue, where each painting is given importance and the space necessary to connect with its viewers without distraction. Mr. Horlock's personally designed tile-fronted fireplace was a great shock to his wife in 1892... Today it fits right in.

The new life of the Horlock House has begun as a contemporary art gallery.  It is a challenge for artists to create works which can stand alone and compete with the fetching surroundings... but there are now three artists living in the house determined to try.

A painting awaits placement in the newest and most exquisite art gallery in the Brazos Valley.

There will be a viewing of the art (and the house!) on May 17 between 5:30 and 8:00. Brace yourself for a shock- at the beauty of the old Victorian house now that it has been painstakingly restored. And at the quietly stunning surrounding it supplies for the art...

Artists live and work upstairs and display their works downstairs. Each door beckons the visitor to enter into another different exhibit.

It's no Taj Mahal... but for emerging artists this may be a unique opportunity to get away from their ruts or distractions and live in and with their work, and to meet the public and other artists and observe reactions to what they are doing.

Great things have small beginnings...

The end of an era... the beginning of an another

It is the end of a couple of "eras" in our town's unfolding cultural scene.

Leon Collins has been painting on the sidewalk here for several years now and has become a familiar and popular Brazos Valley icon.

Spread out in front of Tejas Antiques (owned by Duane Garner, who had the vision and good sense to provide him a studio ) Leon Collins has sold thousands, yes thousands of his paintings to art enthusiasts from all over the country. He has been featured on television shows and magazine covers and newspaper articles. Recently Leon told me that he was turning a page and moving to cooler and more private headquarters, and planning on focusing his production toward the shows he is slated to do in Houston and New Orleans. After his success at Rice University, his place in Texas art is secure.

After all is said and done, Leon has taught local Navasota merchants what it takes to succeed using Navasota as a backdrop.

I feel like I could write a book after watching him carve out an art career against all odds, not to mention a bad economy. And in the process, his presence helped all of us, and I hate to admit it, he will be missed.

UPDATE; Leon came back... his art is still available at Tejas Antiques in downtown Navasota.

The Friday night jam session at Blues Alley is moving. We had our last jam there last friday night, with a packed house.

After seventeen months, we have outgrown the inadequate space at Blues Alley and the VFW Hall out on HWY 105 West has offered to host the event from now on. It has been a wonderful season, and in the process, I have picked up the wash-tub bass and drums as things I wish I could do... maybe someday with enough practice! Scores of musicians have complimented us with their attendance, and great music has come from this gathering. But last Friday night was a good example of why it had to go... fifteen musicians squeezed, VERY UNCOMFORTABLY IN OUR LITTLE STORE... all of whom deserve better, a place to flower and enough room for an audience to come enjoy their talent.

The jam has been a sweet chapter, a place to relish in talent and new friendships, a time to share and learn, and pass things on to those we love. Jett McFalls shares the bass with his granddaughter.

There is no doubt, it was special... the generosity of the musicians, the blending of rock and country and blues... it was just like heaven will be some day.

The jam will ot happen this Friday, as we will have a concert at the Brosig Auditorium the day before... THE BLUES CAPITAL REVUE, but we will resume the jam at OUR NEW LOCATION, ON AUG 17.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">

Dave Clements making art make a difference

Event organizer Dave Clements explained to the crowd... you can be a part, everybody paint on this... Clint Black is going to sign it... and Rett research will get the money... Folks stood in line to add every little bit of love...

Sounded like a fool's errand to me... But being an artist, I could not resist.

The older I get, the less I think I know...

Lesson 1: Dream Big. What have you got to lose?

A Tale From Between the Cracks... ART IN KINDERGARTEN

Very early I learned to mix colors to make my own flesh tones...

 

I don’t remember much before Kindergarten. As best I can tell, I was a pretty dopey little kid and no one expected much out of me. I had been born premature, nearsighted and left-handed, and it was much easier and fruitful to obsess over my older brother Ralph. So he got double the pressure and I got a similar measure of indulgence. So, Kindergarten was a big shock and an unforgettable nightmare. My parents had not spent much time preparing me for reading or writing. I’m not sure if they even knew I was a lefty. Had they expected more, they might have dismissed all of those scribblings and creations that came out of my room, and made me learn the alphabet. They were just glad I showed aptitude for something. But it was a big clue that I was a horse of a different color.

Even by Kindergarten, I knew that I loved art. I loved it because, quite simply, it was my one strength. There are two telling memories that have survived that first year of public education. And the ironies make them worth telling.

We were fifty or more, and they were two. White haired and grizzled Kindergarten teachers; nearing retirement, jaded, opinionated, perhaps a little burned out. I am being kind. 

Besides the usual memories of stale graham crackers, jungle gyms, and Skip to My Lou, My Darling, the outstanding times for me were when it was coloring time. Or better yet, Clay Time. Whenever they passed out the clay, that was when I came alive. Eventually all the kids at the table learned to just hand it down to me. I would swiftly manufacture all kinds of animals and figures on demand, cranking out a whole rodeo, or Civil War battlefield, or a farm scene. Early in life I learned to use my talent to please others, and in the process find self worth. 

Sometimes the teachers would catch the kids passing me the clay, and forbid sharing... What they said next sounded kind of funny. Something to the effect of “Children, I see you giving your clay to others, don’t let them take your clay, keep your clay to yourself.” They just passed it under the table, their eyes big with expectation. Everything was great until they began to fight over some super dinosaur I had just created or whatever something was new. My table always seemed to cause the most trouble.

And then there was the time we were handed Santa Claus faces to color. It was Christmas time of course, and everyone was excited about the coming holiday break, and presents and, you know, all of the intoxicating elements that come with Santa Claus. When I went to color mine, there were no flesh color crayons left. I knew already how to mix pigments to get the desired hue, so a I began to dig for the ingredients to make a flesh color. In the attitude of Christmas cheer, I allowed lesser colorers the easy route, and I eagerly entered the road less traveled. 

I closed my eyes and thought of skin. I looked at the other kids. I looked at the teachers, pictures on the wall. It was obvious. To this day, as an artist, I still use the same mixture to achieve flesh tones. And much to your dismay, and certainly my teachers, you start with orange. A little sienna into a mid tone orange makes a great, rich, tanned skin tone.

I carefully outlined Santa, that was the style you know, but with brown. The girls all had to outline everything. And they decided the acceptable artistic style. I shaded in the lines, everything in its place, very neat... and colored Santa’s face a brownish orange. It was the only one like it, and compared to all of the bland flesh tone Santas, he stood out, and was decidedly different. 

Little could I have known, that my Santa’s facial hue would have compared well next to the Sunblum Santa made famous at that time by Coca Cola. It occurred to me that day that the flesh tone crayon was ridiculous. Nobody is really that color, except maybe band aids and the old or infirm. 

But that did not stop one of my teachers, who out of respect for teachers everywhere, shall remain nameless. She snatched up my coloring job and brandished it like a Comanche warrior would a fresh scalp...

“Children... Everyone look this way... What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone, look at this! What has this person done wrong? Everyone knows, all of you know, Santa is not ORANGE! Now, Ralph, do another one and color it correctly.”

Never, as my father always observed, was I caught without an excuse... I shrugged in embarrassment and explained there were no more flesh crayolas...

I was grateful that being so old, and confused, she called me by my father’s name, for she had taught him thirty years before. If she were alive today, I might send her some samples of my works, my accomplishments, and all of my orange people... But, she died a long time ago. Sad to say, that is about all I remember about my first school days. 

It was a lonely time. The world was telling me I was different, wrong headed, counter-cultural. The next few years of school would only re-enforce this message. I shudder to think of all of the impressionable little ones that did not fare as well as me.

Idiom Savant: I'm an Anartist!

Let's get on with it. First of all, isn't that a great work by Goya? Too bad, a century ago philosophers commandeered the art business. The guy with his hands up is every traditional artist since then. The Critics and philosophers and professors moved in and stole our venue, our terms and social status. They made talent expendable and crucified our values with Bolshevik-style zeal and hatred. They changed art forever. If you do not think so, go to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, on any day, and see what creations are given the most prime or prestigious space.

The traditional artists of the mid-century era were unprepared to defend their realm and chose instead to wait for the pendulum to swing back to them and bring final justice. The philosophers took down the pendulum and hammered the nails to their coffin with it. Words like art and artist were reinvented and indoctrinated to several generations of "art lovers". The time-proven concepts of design, color theory, and drawing were disposed of. Standards were also disposed of, and these disciplines became personal and subjective. Today the very language and standards of art no longer represent what talented people have known and used for thousands of years.

"Art", which had been a discipline in communication and the pursuit of truth and beauty, has become an undisciplined pursuit of introspection and inner struggle. We are told that good art is a reflection of the philosophy of its time, regardless of how few hold to that philosophy. A free market was usurped by Elites who shut down the happy exchange of understandable symbols and imposed the narrow and elusive whims of existential thought.

The artists of old must find their own flag, claim their own hill, and disassociate themselves from the waste-heap that was their domain, and forge a new one free of the hurts and confusion over the tragic loss of Art. The pendulum is not coming back.

Here is what I am going to do. I will no longer think of myself as an artist. I do not identify with the "artists" considered "significant" to this century. I have little in common with them. I will no longer waste my energy fighting or trying to understand them. Like the philosophers they sprang from, they have nothing to do with anything. They have made art an extension of an irrelevant exercise which most of us care nothing about. To them I am not an artist. According to them, I never have been. That is settled. No hard feelings.

So what am I? I am a talented person who communicates my passion for life and beauty through sculptures and paintings. Although most Modern Art experts would refuse to make room in their concept of "Art" for my works, they never-the-less have to accept that I make paintings and sculptures, even though they betray ignorance of value and good taste. So I concede, and in fact am thrilled to divorce myself from their "art". I will create my own title. Even art enthusiasts will have to tolerate that.

They have no contempt for stained glass craftsmen. No hatred for basket weavers. No vendetta against potters. They do not persecute talented craftsmen of any medium, except those who dare to call themselves "artists", who operate outside of the current philosophical trend and their academic paradigms. It seems all that would be necessary to gain legitimacy and status and peace with these intolerant oppressors is to disclaim the now hollow and lifeless title of "artist". So I do so heartily. I am not an artist. I am not an artist. I am not an artist.

It will take some getting used to, but I feel invigorated already.

I am talented, and a creative person with paint and canvas and clay and whatever I can manipulate. I make stuff. People like it. I sell it and they buy it and we are all happy. This has got to be a good thing. We just have to make a name for it. It's not art. That's for museums and history books and university discussions. What I make gives everyday people a lift, a shot in the heart, without interpretation or discussion. "Art" is about verbal jousting with ten dollar words like perspective and juxtaposition and interrelatedness.

I will call what I do something that has to do with wordless communication and visual delight. This has got to be a good thing. Just thinking about it makes me proud that I am not an artist. I am something greater, someone more relevant and useful than an artist.

Decorations don't really describe what I do. Hand painted canvases are surely more special than wall paper. Original paintings like mine have all of the value of live music, or entertainment, except they are there, every day, every hour, and give the owner or user unlimited, lasting pleasure. This has got to be a good thing.

I'm a pictographer I guess. An iconographer. They sound too technical. An Artificer. That is exactly what I am but it sounds like a faker or con man. An "Artiste". It's in the dictionary. Sounds presumptuous. A humble artisan. Artworker. Arty, artillerist and artefacter. This is going to be tough. 

The old connotation of artist is far superior to any of these handles.

Picture maker. Art media technician. 

Dimensional communicator. 

Pigmentsmith. I've got to somehow combine talent, expertise and expression into one word. Expressionist, impressionist and abstractionist are already taken. I am an illusionist. But that has come to connote magician. This is harder than I thought. I've got to be something!

I'm sure those in the other camp do not care what I call myself. They are just glad to see me and my ilk out of their sphere. I guess there is no going back. I have got to find myself and all those like me a title.

I remember in college that someone wrote all over the art department "Ort will break your Hort". Well said. 

Aartist. Makes you want to yawn. Ahrtist. That looks stupid. Art maker… art person, art man, art reject. Not an artist. Non-artist. Not!

Image maker. Imagist. Imaginist. Imaginator. Sounds sci-fi. I know! I'll steal the idea that solved an ethnological semantic problem. American Indians became Amerinds. We'll be Amerartists!

All I want is my name back. What is it about a stupid name? Perhaps the right to bear it. The right to carry it with pride and dignity. The right to be who you are, without arrogant challenges and humiliation. 

Styles, trends, technologies and words change. We have the right to be who we were before they invaded. They should not be able to bully us away from our hard-earned titles. I want my name and my status and my vocabulary back. Nothing less will restore my loss.

I am an artist. The first kind. The original kind. The Coke Classic of culture. There is no other word for me. But perhaps vanquished. Anachronism. Anarchist...

 Anartist! That has possibilities. I am an anartist. No I'm not stuttering. What is keeeeeping that pendulum?