Houston 175: Hear Our Houston

DiverseWorks is working with artist Carrie Schneider to produce recorded tours called “Hear Our Houston.” We’ve invited some of our notable friends and arts peeps to share insights and experiences of some of Houston’s hidden gems.  Houston is a city of great but hidden richness, only truly discovered by experience and word of mouth. Hear Our Houston is excavating some of those hidden gems, preserving our oral history and celebrating our common sense of space.

	The Art Guys: Greens Bayou Street The Art Guys decided to take a walk on the “edge of town” in an area where we have never been.  We looked at the map and chose to go east towards the edge of the city near the ship channel.  We settled on Greens Bayou Street a street that follows part of Greens Bayou.  Because there are two of us, we used two recorders to capture our observations and thoughts.  We started walking east from the corner of Normandy Street and Greens Bayou Street with a time delay of 1 minute between Jack’s then Mike’s departures.  Jack stopped after about 10 minutes and awaited Mike’s arrival.  Using two recorders at the same time but in different locations creates a kind of spatial “phase shifting” wherein the sound begins in sync, then goes out of sync, and finally resolves itself as it comes back into sync.
	Mike Guidry: University of Houston Public Art Collection My tour is a small sampling of public art at UH. On the north side of campus near the Arts Corridor is a grouping of work by artists, Mary Miss,Frank Stella, Alyson Shotz, Matt Mullican, Tom Sayre, Brian Wall, Scott Burton, William King and Jim Love.  UH has been building this Collection since 1966 and has grown tremendously over the years. The Collection, including all five campuses also features Carlos Cruz-Diez, The Art Guys,Jacob Hashimoto, John Biggers, Liz Ward, Rob Ziebell and Anthony Shumate,Jackie Ferarra, Rachel Hecker and so much more. Find us at http://uh.edu/uh-collection and also on facebook.
	Barbara Hinton: World Famous Orange Show This is an insider’s view of the recently conserved and re-opened Museum inside the World Famous Orange Show. I’m a board member of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art which preserves and manages the Orange Show, the Beer Can House, produces the Art Car Parade and is building Smither Park, Houston’s first visionary sculpture garden. Check out our website www.orangeshow.org for a complete listing of upcoming activities and events including concerts, hands-on art workshops and much much more.
	More audio tours to come!