curated by Teresa O'Connor

Opening Friday, January 6, 2006 from 6pm 10pm
January 6, 2006– January 28, 2006

The cold winter continues but the art continues to be "hot" as Polvo begins a new year with artists from Texas. Guest curator Teresa O'Connor from Commerce Street Artist Warehouse(CSAW) in Houston has organized a show of contemporary artists living in Texas and will be in town along with some of the artists in the show. The artists and work selected for this show represent Texas artists' authentic aesthetic. Raw and witty, sentimental and sarcastic, Texas artists sprawl conceptually and literally in limitless space.

Aside form the main exhibits during 2006, we will also showcase a monthly video/dvd by an international artist. This month's artist is Malian Lahey. Plus we will continue with mini-exhibits that showcase emerging local/international artists. This month's artist is Analu Lopez.

Bios: Andrea Chin was born in Houston, Texas, in 1984. Her work has been featured in several group shows in Houston. The Houston Festival Foundation commissioned her for costume work for the 2006 International Festival. Fabric is her preferred medium. Past collections have had music or scientific themes, rather than focusing on particular season. Outside of fashion design, she is a member of the art collaborative “I Love You Baby” and “Commerce Street Artists’ Warehouse”. She has also had writing published in Good: A Millennium Memento in 2000. She is currently studying at the University of Houston majoring in Fashion Design.

Rene Cruz is a graphic designer in Houston Texas. He earned his Associates in Visual Communication and has shown his work all over Texas. He spent a good portion of his childhood reading natural science and fantasy books. His current work tends to merge the two. From science comes a strict detailed view of subject matter, a discipline that overcomes medium in some cases. From fantasy comes the notion that anything in front of you has to exist, tangible or not, it is real. The Polvo piece a first of a series of sculptures based on death of iconic imagery. The horse was taken for its strong Texas presence, a connection that will forever be obvious to me. The animal embodies a nobility that few other living things carry. The piece simply reminds us that everything, no matter how "majestic", has a life cycle, we happen to find this creature weeks after its demise.

Vicki Fowler lives and works in Houston Texas. She received her BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute as a New Genres major. Currently, Vicki coordinates shows in the Performance Bay of Commerce Street Artist Warehouse in Houston. In her work, sculptural elements are used as props in performance. Fowler also looks to the residue created from her live images as a means to transcend objects. Performances and work by Fowler recently appeared in the Houston Area Show at the Blaffer Museum and Diverse Works.

Randall Garrett was born in Ft. Smith, Arkansas in 1962. Early interests included bluff climbing, Indian lore, and photo-collage. As a teen he moved to Texas, and currently resides in Dallas. In 1993 he gained an MFA from the University of North Texas, after finishing his BFA at West Texas State. His installation and performance work has been featured throughout Texas and the U.S. In 2000, Garrett founded the subversive art gallery Plush, through which he has organized 4 dozen shows, most recently at art fairs across the U.S.

Kevin Jefferies teaches government at a community college, directs an arts non-profit and drives around taking pictures from his car window. He likes bright colors, unusual signage and urban decay. He is not sure why. Occasionally his friends humor him and let him display his photographs in their exhibits. He appreciates their kindness.

Aimee Jones lives and works in Houston, Texas. She received her BFA in painting from the University of Houston. From 2000 to 2004 she lived and worked at Raw Space, an alternative art space co-founded by Jones and another artist. She now hides out in her studio at Commerce Street Artist Warehouse with her cat Isabelle. Aimee’s work has been show nationally and internationally; her most recent work was shown at the Nada Art Fair in Miami. In 2006 she has collaborative projects with the Feel Better 4/Ever Club and a solo show at Ingalls and Associates in Miami.

Jason Kunke was born on the last day of 1977, just south of Houston, Texas. He started college with the intention of entering the field of Sociology, but found the discourse to be too limiting, and with just a semester to go before graduating, jumped tracks and began pursuing a career in art. He graduated from the University of Houston in 2004 with a B.F.A. in Studio Art, with minors in both Sociology and Art History, and is currently working towards his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts.

Laura Lark lives and works in Houston. She has degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Painting from the University of Houston.

Teresa O'Connor lives and works in Houston, Texas. She received her MFA from the University of Houston. Teresa is currently part of "Going West" curated by Erin Keever, a show that originated at ArtHouse and travels though 2006. Teresa was selected by Bill Arning, MIT Visual Arts List, to be one of the artists for the Houston Area Exhibition 2004. She has been the recipient of a Cultural Arts Grant. The piece for Polvo is part of larger project. It is a section from the movie "Making A Life".

James Eck Rippie is a sound and visual artist currently living in Houston, Texas. He began his self-taught form of work at the age of 15 when he started working with turntables to create sound collages. Most of his work revolves around the deconstuction of the visual and the aural, although he strides to create sound alone to guide the listener's own visuals and concept. The piece being presented at Polvo is an ongoing study by Rippie of the use of radio. It is a segment of a larger piece in which a number of sound artists worked with the "Radio" theme and their music was then compiled into an exquisite corpse to be broadcast across Europe on various stations. Rippie has also appeared on the Portuguese SIRR and Cronica record labels as well as the Seattle based Elevator Bath label.

Chris Sauter lives and works in San Antonio where he earned his MFA in 1996 at UTSA. He exhibits nationally and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at Elizabeth Dee, NY,NY, Galerie Valerie Cueto, Paris, France, and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, LA, CA and group exhibitions in Limerick, Ireland, Saint-Etienne, France and the Drawing Center, NY. His work addresses issues concerning the relationships between the dichotomies of nature/culture, body/architecture, body/mind, man/beast. The work in this exhibition consists of plans for the construction of a museum bench and its accompanying artwork from the walls of the exhibition space.

Jenny Schlief was born in Houston. "It's hot there. Sometimes it's like 110. Seriously." She lives and works there now. This piece here at the Polvo show is pretty awesome. She guarantees it. She hopes that it makes you a little uncomfortable.

Peter Tucker lives and works and plays in Austin, Texas. He received his BFA from the University of Texas and his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. He has exhibited across the U.S., and has works in the Library of Congress and the Blanton Museum of Art. Peter's work is highlighted in Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art. The piece in the Polvo show is one element of a web-based piece under development called Virtual Minister.

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Malian Lahey hails from Kansas City, where she always stuck out like a sore thumb. The whys, wherefores, and how to blend in, when your personality is like a big jello salad of Singaporean buddhist and Irish Catholic, and the pressures of living under constant racial scrutiny led her to her first degree in Anthropology. Her work approaches the "dominant paradigm" like a big game of cultural Jenga where you have to leave enough familiarity for society to function while removing the extra gunk and deadwood. She attempts to create objects and video that serve as suggestions for a new social architecture. Most recent exhibition: Winter Artist in Residence, Around the Coyote Festival, Feb. 2005. Most recent social art project: Airlift Project, Zürich, Switzerland, 2005 www.airliftproject.net

CORPORATE PROVEILLANCE
Video, 05:30, SEE THE VIDEO HERE(4MB)
Malian Lahey, 2005

In response to the paradigm of surveillance I invented the term “Proveillance”. Proveillance takes a positive approach to gathering information, in which the observer simply asks the subjects for information in person. This avoids the negative power dynamics of surveillance. RCMA is a rubber trading group which had some communication problems between its European and Asian offices. I applied the techniques of Proveillance to find out what was wrong.

RCMA buys rubber from producers (mainly Asian) and distributes this rubber to clients worldwide. Although RCMA is a tiny group compared to such giants as Monsanto or Bechtel, it is a participant in the corporate arena and displays many characteristics that are earmarks of corporate culture.

One of these characteristics is the battle over cultural values. In a highly competitive market, someone may decide to do business with you or not based on culturally expected behaviors. In turn, these decisions influence other businesses to re-evaluate their cultural position and adjust – either to cater more to the crowd or to stake out a niche – with the goal of catching more clients. Ultimately, these battles over values (termed “Culture Wars” by the GOP) have a huge impact on us, since the victors have the power to protect their system of beliefs in the public sphere.

At a time when more and more symbiotic, relationship-based cultures are crumbling under the influence of consumer culture, the outcome of these struggles is critical to the future of the environment, individual autonomy and traditional cultures worldwide.

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Analu Lopez is a Chicago-based artist who works in the media of photography. Analu grew up in the Valley of South Texas, along the border town of Los Fresnos. The majority of her family comes from working class backgrounds. She is third generation Mexican living in the United States but first generation to attend college. Her photographic work ranges from Social Documentary, Digital Manipulations, photographic essays, installations, to intimate portraits which explore the multi-dimensionality of the Latino experience in the United States. Aside from being published in “The best of College Photography,” Ms. Lopez has been a featured artist in “Que Ondee Sola,” a 31 year old Puerto Rican/Latina/o monthly student magazine based out of Northeastern University Chicago. She exhibits work widely throughout her community of Little Village and Chicago. She is currently finishing her Bachelors in Fine Art Photography at Columbia College Chicago and will pursue a career in education specializing in “Curriculum building,” which will focus on teaching through photography in an alternative environment.

BECOMING HER: ANALU MARIA LOPEZ
“ I am visible-see this Indian face-yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They’d like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t, we haven’t.” – Gloria Anzaldua[1]

In 2003, I created a series of images which I titled “Becoming her,” which constitute five black and white digital manipulations where I integrated Mexica[2] iconography. The portraits are of a female with the Mexica moon goddess glyph superimposed upon her face. The images are in order beginning with the first portrait of the female without any Mexica iconography, which is meant to symbolize a “blank” identity which slowly progresses into the goddess appearing on her face in the second, third and fourth images. The image of the goddess serves as a mask of the female’s identity which in the final image takes on the form of an embedded identity deeply rooted into her being, which even if she is not aware of, still exists. The text: “I am the Woman,” serves as an empowering agent of the female’s Mexica identity she is embracing within the 21st century, an identity which may have evolved from the time of her ancestors but which is very much in existence. Also, although there are many interpretations to the legend of Coyolxauhqui-the Mexica moon goddess-it explains the separation of Women amongst themselves, men, society and also the separation of identity. Here we reclaim what we are: Powerful Mexica Women. Here we embrace our identities.

The Legend:
Coatlique, madre de los dioses, was sweeping on top of the mountain, Coatepec, when she discovers two beautiful feathers of which she places into her apron and continues to sweep. But without her noticing, the feathers began to gestate there next to her womb and an already aged Coatlique soon discovers she is pregnant and will give birth to Huitzilopochtli, god of war-the sun god. Her daughter, Coyolxauhqui-the moon goddess-finds out her mother is to give birth to him and became upset and along with her four hundred siblings conspires to kill Coatlique rather than submit to a world where war would become god. Huitzilopochtli, her brother, finds out they are conspiring to kill their mother and vows to defend her. When he is about to be born he comes out fully armed and murders Coyolxauhqui, cutting off her head and completely dismembering her body. Coyolxauhqui, along with her siblings are banished to the darkness to become the moon and stars.

[1] Gloria Anzaldua was an internationally recognized cultural theorist and Creative writer from South Texas which sadly passed on into Mictlan May 15, 2004. I am quoting from her 1987 book entitled, “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.”
[2] Mexica relates to the people who founded a civilization in the middle of a lake during the 14th century in the basin of Mexico. The Mexica are commonly referred to as the "Aztecs", but that is a generic term and now most commonly known as the "Mexica" ("x" pronounced as "sh", as in "should"). In time, they became the new Rulers in the Earth in Mexico. They conquered the Toltecs, and after they in turn were conquered a hundred and fifty years later, some seven generations into their rule, by bearded white men from the East. Their medicine men called the foreigners “Children of Quetzalcoatl.” Today they are a part of the collective tribes we know as Mexicans and Chicanos.

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Hear a review of this show at Bad at Sports
direct download here

Polvo
1458 W 18th Street 1R(entrance on Laflin St.)
Chicago, IL 60608
773-344-1940
hours: saturdays from noon-5pm or by appointment