Grandalism featuring Article
Curated by GONZO247
April 28 – July 7, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6-9pm

Grandalism is a season-long series of street art commissions presented in partnership with GONZO247, founder of Aerosol Warfare. Throughout the season, the DiverseWorks dock will be the backdrop for a series of rotating, large-scale works that features accomplished street artists.  Featuring a different artist every 8 weeks, Grandalism showcases the raw talent and innovation of the city’s freshest and most prolific urban artists selected by one of Houston’s most notable street art legends.

Phillip Orlando Perez (aka Article) is a self-taught independent artist based ...

click to continue to Grandalism featuring Article]]>

Grandalism featuring Article
Curated by GONZO247
April 28 – July 7, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6-9pm

Grandalism is a season-long series of street art commissions presented in partnership with GONZO247, founder of Aerosol Warfare. Throughout the season, the DiverseWorks dock will be the backdrop for a series of rotating, large-scale works that features accomplished street artists.  Featuring a different artist every 8 weeks, Grandalism showcases the raw talent and innovation of the city’s freshest and most prolific urban artists selected by one of Houston’s most notable street art legends.

Phillip Orlando Perez (aka Article) is a self-taught independent artist based in Houston Texas. Since 1992 he has  created numerous works of art for local business owners, non-profit organizations, The Houston Mayors Office, and many nation-wide recording artists. Phillip is currently working as an artist for The Home Depot corporation, and in the past few years has also created artwork for Sneaker Pimps (Japan), Toyota Scion, Music World Entertainment and the Wortham Center Houston.  When not working on visual art Phillip likes to practice photography, study history and listen to all kinds of music.

The University of Houston School of Art, Blaffer Art Museum and DiverseWorks are proud to present the 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition, on view from April 28–May 12, 2012 at DiverseWorks.

Image: M’Kina Tapscott, M Theory, 2012, mixed media with hair

The exhibition features works by Danilo Bojic, Ted Closson, Sebastian Forray, Lisa Garrett, Steven Hook, Chuck Ivy, Rosine Kouamen, Natali Leduc, Emily McGrew, Abi Semtner, and M’kina Tapscott. These eleven graduating students represent five departments in the University ...

click to continue to 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition]]> 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition
April 28-May 12, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6-9pm 

The University of Houston School of Art, Blaffer Art Museum and DiverseWorks are proud to present the 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition, on view from April 28–May 12, 2012 at DiverseWorks.

Image: M’Kina Tapscott, M Theory, 2012, mixed media with hair

The exhibition features works by Danilo Bojic, Ted Closson, Sebastian Forray, Lisa Garrett, Steven Hook, Chuck Ivy, Rosine Kouamen, Natali Leduc, Emily McGrew, Abi Semtner, and M’kina Tapscott. These eleven graduating students represent five departments in the University of Houston’s Masters of Fine Arts Program; introducing Interdisciplinary Practice and Emerging Forms as the latest addition to the program with its first graduate Chuck Ivy. The 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition is designed to showcase individual work and to premiere its participants as professional artists who will go on to form new projects and shape the face of the art world in Houston and beyond.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Danilo Bojic and Natali Leduc are presenting environmental installations that will transport viewers into a world of their own. Leduc’s kinetic wooden sculpture manages whimsy despite its dominating size, a contraption whose construction and movement evoke the figure of the artist as amateur inventor. Bojic presents What Goes Around Comes Around, an exploration in data visualization, using sculptural installation, graphic design, and video as his primary tools.

Collectivity and collaboration inform the works by Sebastian Forray and Ted Closson. Forray commissioned five painters with whom he shares close personal ties to help produce his work, challenging what constitutes authorship and self-representation. Within the exhibition, Closson organizes a comic book convention as a mode of display and commerce in which to situate his current project, a graphic novel titled The Lorica.

Steven Hook’s large canvases play with a series of dichotomies to complicate their distinguishing qualities: order and chaos, pastoral and urban, figure and ground. His accompanying video documents his painting process while also activating it through a different medium. Where Hook’s process is heavily layered and labored, Emily McGrew’s canvases are bright, fresh and immediate, their feminine subjects painted from a combination of photography and the artist’s embellished memories.

Rosine Kouamen mines cultural nostalgia, both her own and in the broad network of Houston’s African diaspora. Her new series of photographs depict their first generation immigrant subjects as they live in their everyday surroundings, where profound attachments and familial memories lie just beneath the surface of the image. Abi Semtner is also inspired by family histories, which she translates through her obsessive, often subtle manipulations of delicate materials: cotton, embroidery thread, vintage parchment paper. M’Kina Tapscott’s sculpture and ceramic assemblages offer careful experimentations with the promise of materials to yield new insights into questions of race,class, identity and identification.

On the other end of scale and luminosity Lisa Garrett’s neon signs assert bright, custom-built graphics and lend an atmosphere of spectacle to the exhibition while her repurposed banners emphasize the role of graphic design in community making and marking. Also commenting on the viewer’s place within collective systems, Chuck Ivy’s new media work wages visual and auditory interference on clips from Inspector Clouseau cartoons using live audio from the Houston Police dispatch. The work itself is a kind of system that viewers to the exhibition physically activate with their movements.

Image:  Lisa Garret, Urban Decay, 2012, mixed media

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
The 34th School of Art Masters’ Thesis Exhibition is made possible by the University of Houston’s Student Fees Advisory Committee. Support for the catalog is generously provided by Cecily Horton and Judy and Scott Nyquist.

The exhibition catalog is designed and produced by graphics communication students led by Associate Professor Fiona McGettigan and features an introductory essay by Jenni Sorkin, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Houston. Copies will be available at DiverseWorks ArtSpace, the UH School of Art main office, and at Blaffer Art Museum’s temporary offices. The museum itself is currently closed for renovation with temporary offices at the UH Energy Research Park, 5000 Gulf Freeway, Building #10. For more information about the renovation and future exhibitions and programs, please visit www.blafferartmuseum.org.

ABOUT THE MFA PROGRAM:
The UH School of Art, has MFA in Art concentrations in Painting, Sculpture, Photography/Digital Media, Graphic Communications and Interdisciplinary Practice and Emerging Forms (IPEF). Built into each of these concentrations is the ability to extend outward and into the vast resources of a premier research institution. The MFA program integrates the university and the city of Houston as an extended classroom, in a fundamentally multidisciplinary platform.

The selected winner will receive $100!  $100!

Purchase sponsorships and tickets online here, or call 713-223-8346 to reserve your ticket today. Scroll down for ticket details. (Please note: tickets purchased online incur a small handling fee.)

Luck of the Draw, DiverseWorks’ annual summer fundraiser, has moved to May and will feature hundreds of 7×9 inch works of art, created especially for the event by invited artists  from Houston and beyond.  Participating artists to date include ...

click to continue to Luck of the Draw 2012]]> Friday, May 18
6:30 pm
Exhibition continues on view to the public through June 2, 2012 in the Main Gallery
Click here for a list of participating artists, to date.

Purchase sponsorships and tickets online here, or call 713-223-8346 to reserve your ticket today. Scroll down for ticket details. (Please note: tickets purchased online incur a small handling fee.)

Luck of the Draw, DiverseWorks’ annual summer fundraiser, has moved to May and will feature hundreds of 7×9 inch works of art, created especially for the event by invited artists  from Houston and beyond.  Participating artists to date include Elaine Bradford, Sasha Dela, Lynne McCabe, Rachel Hecker, Katrina Moorhead, Aaron Parazette, and Randy Twaddle (Houston); Sterling Allen and Anna Krachey (Austin); Fritz Haeg (Los Angeles); Graham Hudson (London); Karen Yasinsky (Baltimore); Nic Nicosia (Santa Fe); and Oliver Herring, Carrie Moyer, and Sheila Pepe (New York). Artwork is sold via lottery. Buy a Gambler Ticket for $125 (includes admission to the party) and get a number.  Numbers are drawn at random. When your number is called, pick your artwork – the perfect way to start or add to your art collection!

Luck of the Draw works will be on view as an exhibition from May 18 through June 2, 2012. Any artworks not sold on May 18 will be available for purchase for $125. All proceeds from Luck of the Draw support DiverseWorks’ visual and performing arts programs, professional development workshops for artists, outreach activities, and educational opportunities.  All participating Luck of the Draw artists receive a DiverseWorks Artist Membership and other special benefits in exchange for their participation.

For more information about sponsorships or tickets, please  call (713) 223-8346.

Sponsors:
High Roller:  Jim Petersen
Ante Up:  William Betts, Jason Roth Fuller, Rob Greenstein, Greg Higgins & Tucker Sexton, Kellye Sanford & Fritz Lanham, Ann & Michael Wilde

Digital Media Partner:  CultureMap

Beverage and Food Sponsors:  Dripping Springs Vodka, Pura Vida Tequila, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, t’afia

Host Committee:
Devin Borden, Karen & Steve Farber, Fredericka Hunter, Kerry Inman & Denby Auble, Robert McClain, Mirjam & Bryan Miller, Betty Moody, Arturo Palacios, Paul Pettie, Meg Poissant, Patrick Reynolds, and Erin Siudzinski

Artist Steering Committee:
Natasha Bowdoin, Elaine Bradford, Sasha Dela, Rachel Hecker, Allison Hunter, Maria Cristina Jadick, Gabriel Martinez, Lynne McCabe, Katrina Moorhead, Aaron Parazette, Robert Pruitt, Kelly Lynn Sears, and Randy Twaddle

Underwriting and Ticket Details

All In:   $2,500 (one available)

• 1 Double Down Art Chance Ticket with GUARANTEED FIRST PICK ($250 value)
• 3 Gambler Art Chance Tickets ($375 value)
• 4 Bystander Admission Tickets ($100 value)
• Sponsor recognition in promotional materials and at the event

High Roller: $1,500 (four available)

• 1 Double Down Art Chance Ticket with Guaranteed Top Five Pick ($250 value)
• 3 Gambler Art Chance Tickets ($375 value)
• 4 Bystander Admission Tickets ($100 value)
• Sponsor recognition in promotional materials and at the event

Ante Up: $500 (ten available)

• 1 Double Down Art Chance Ticket with GUARANTEED TOP 15 PICK ($250 value)
• 2 Bystander Admission Tickets ($50 value)
• Sponsor recognition in promotional materials and at the event

Double Down Art Chance Ticket: $250 / $225 for DiverseWorks members
(limited availability, top 40 pick)

Gambler Art Chance Ticket: $125  / $100 for DiverseWorks members

Bystander Ticket:  $25 (includes admission only)

********************************************************

Not Another Silent Auction

Founded by artists, DiverseWorks ArtSpace has been dedicated to supporting artists and their works for thirty years.  Our commitment includes promoting a healthy and sustainable local arts ecology in which artists can financially support themselves. To those ends, DiverseWorks has decided to discontinue the silent auction of donated artworks as part of the annual Luck of the Draw fundraiser.  The only works for sale at Luck of the Draw will be those created specifically for the event and which conform to certain criteria (for example, all works will be 7 x 9 inches). These special objects are purposefully distinct from those sold in the artists’ galleries and, as a result, do not put DiverseWorks in competition with the artists’ commercial markets.  We believe that artists and gallerists are integral participants in our city’s cultural economy and ecology, and want to encourage collecting and patronage at all levels.

A few reasons why we are not including a silent auction of donated artworks:

•  Artists are unable to receive a fair-market tax deduction for their donated works; they may only claim material costs (only a fraction of the total value).
• Auction “bargains” can negatively affect an artist’s market, therefore potentially impacting the artist’s income and ability to make a living.
• Gallerists are denied income necessary to sustaining their businesses, including their ability to support their existing artists or to add new artists to their rosters.

Last year Marina Zurkow researched the Permian Basin during a residency hosted by DiverseWorks. From Marfa to Midland, the artist met with geologists, naturalists, cattle ranchers, people working in the oil industry and activists. These dialogues deeply affected the resulting exhibition, but the discussions don’t stop there.  Participate in the dialogue, and share your opinions and insights through this survey that is part of the collateral “lab” of Necrocracy.

You can read previous responses or 

answer an additional set of questions about climate change and the weather.

 

(Image: The Petroleum Manga)

Marina Zurkow
Necrocracy
March 16-April 21, 2012
Commissioned by DiverseWorks as part of the Fotofest 2012 Biennial

Necrocracy is an immersive art exhibition exploring geology, time, nature and petrochemical production through video animation, drawings and sculpture.  Necrocracy questions the inherited, Romantic-era division between the natural and the human, as it navigates the critical-creative edge between human manufacturing of petroleum-based products and the ecological and geological histories of oil.

In January 2011, DiverseWorks supported a twoweek research trip for Zurkow to the Permian Basin.  From Marfa to ...

click to continue to GALLERY GUIDE – Necrocracy]]>

 

(Image: The Petroleum Manga)

Marina Zurkow
Necrocracy
March 16-April 21, 2012
Commissioned by DiverseWorks as part of the Fotofest 2012 Biennial

Necrocracy is an immersive art exhibition exploring geology, time, nature and petrochemical production through video animation, drawings and sculpture.  Necrocracy questions the inherited, Romantic-era division between the natural and the human, as it navigates the critical-creative edge between human manufacturing of petroleum-based products and the ecological and geological histories of oil.

In January 2011, DiverseWorks supported a twoweek research trip for Zurkow to the Permian Basin.  From Marfa to Midland, the artist met with geologists, naturalists, cattle ranchers, people working in the oil industry, and activists. She traversed the high southern plains of the Llano Estacado, the region stretching from Lubbock to the Edwards Plateau and a landscape so subtle that it has been dubbed “The Big Empty.” During the trip she became hyper-aware of several things: “We—all of us who live on the USA grid—are soaking in petroleum and we wouldn’t know how to live, feed, shelter, clothe, or express ourselves without oil-based products.” In the Permian Period 250 million years ago, the geological riches of the area were formed as marine microorganisms accumulated in sediments on the floor of a vast saline sea. Over millions of years, the seas dried out, and these creatures transmuted into hydrocarbons. In the past century, we have pumped over 100 billion barrels of oil and a hundred trillion cubic feet of gas from these Texas hydrocarbon reservoirs. The exhibition asks us to think about how we disturb, worship and are dominated by these long-dead beings: Necrocracy or the rule of the dead.

Necrocracy was curated by Artistic Director Sixto Wagan and Diane Barber, former DiverseWorks Co-Executive Director

Thanks to Veronique Brossier, Ellen Anne Burtner, Lucie Fink / DuPont, Lara Grant, Kevin Loutzenhiser / Global Protection USA, Mary Magsamen, Bobby McKnight, Michelle Mayer, Timothy Morton, Lindsay Nordell, Nancy Nowacek, Ruth Ozeki, Paul Paradiso, Ryan Perry, Petroleum Museum Archives, John Pluecker, Jon Read, Steve Sacks / bitforms gallery, Daniel Shiffman, Abigail Simon, Robert Tidwell, Burr Williams / Sibley Nature Center, Tom Williams / Williams Oil Co., and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Mesocosm (Wink, Texas) (2012)
Software-driven animation, color, sound
Custom software, computer
Code design: Veronique Brossier
Animation assistance: Michelle Mayer
Occasional sound: Lem Jay Ignacio
Edition 1/5

Mesocosm (Wink, Texas)—the feature, large-scale video installation in Necrocracy—is part of an ongoing series of animated landscapes that develop and change over time in response to software-driven data inputs. The title is drawn from the field of environmental science and refers to experimental, simulated ecosystems, which allow for manipulation of the physical environment and are used for biological, community, and ecological research. They are drawn by hand, frame-by-frame, yet their choreographies are dynamic—not predetermined or canned—dictated by constraints in real-time. Each of the works in Mesocosm is long in duration and recombines perpetually as inputs determine order, density, and interrelationships. They are looped, and have no beginning or end. Because change happens slowly but can be radical over time, the works are intended to be seen in public places where people gather or pass through frequently, or lived with like a painting—in living rooms and meeting spaces.

Wink, Texas is the most recent landscape to be animated as part of the Mesocosm series. In the animation, a large sinkhole— the “Wink Sink 2” located on private oil company property in the small Texas town of Wink—boils, gushes, flows, and expels objects: plastic bags, oil, and dark clouds that whirl out of the sinkhole’s vortex in ghostly choreography. Oil refineries burn off gases in plumes in the background as an occasional train or coyote lumbers past. This sinkhole has been widening steadily since it emerged in 2002; here, it appears as a natural geological event, complete with picnic rest stop furnishings. By day, the landscape is inhabited by birds, prairie dogs, insects, pronghorn antelope, HazMat workers and—depending on the season—by migrating monarch butterflies, snakes and sandhill cranes.

The Thirsty Bird (2012)
Two-channel animation, black and white, silent
5 min,12 sec loop
Animation assistance: Lindsay Nordell
Edition 1/5

The movement of a pump jack (known colloquially as a “thirsty bird”) and a public water fountain are synchronized in a delicate dance. As the pump pulls oil upward, the water fountain spurts water. An array of archetypal individuals—cowboys and Indians, a father and son, a county sheriff, a cow, a soldier, a girl and her dog—emerge in endless succession to drink from the fountain. The graphic treatment is based on Gerd Arntz’s ISOTYPE (International System Of Typographic Picture Education), developed with Viennese social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945) as a method for visual statistics.

Hydrocarbons (2012)
Single-channel animation, color, sound
2 min, 32 sec loop
Edition 1/5

Extracted, manipulated and re-animated from the industrial film The Inside Story of Modern Gasoline (1949), endless chains of anthropomorphized
hydrocarbon molecules dance until they blot out the screen. The hydrocarbon, an organic compound consisting of hydrogen and carbon atoms, may take on an indiscriminate variety of forms: rotting garbage, corpses, natural gas; and forms the base unit of the chains that make plastic. Hydrocarbons know not what they become; they simply proliferate, all energy and potential.

NeoGeo I – IV (2012)
Marina Zurkow in collaboration with Daniel Shiffman
Processing development: Dan Shiffman
Single-channel animation, color, silent
Qucktime renders of Processing sketches, custom
computers, speedrail, mirror
12 minutes each
Technical Assistance: Paul Paradiso
Edition 1/5

NeoGeo I-IV is a set of four 12-minute Quicktime renderings of algorithmic, moving image works created in Processing. They visually represent the work of an oil drill as it penetrates through an infinite series of geological layers, which continually auto-generate based on pre-programmed computerized parameters.

The environment is composed of tiny bits of hand-drawn rock, created in code, and activated by rules of physics and the formation of strata; rules affect the density and behaviors of the strata, as well as the possible location of hydrocarbon particles, all of which come into contact with a drill bit. Cap rock (salt and shale) forms barriers under which hydrocarbon particles accumulate. An oil “gush” occurs if conditions are right. NeoGeo visualizes the density and graphical, mutating formations of rock, as well as the liquidity of the earth over unfathomably long periods of time.

HazMat Suits for Children (2012)
Tychem® TK fabric, acrylic,
Velcro, rubber, mannequin
Fabrication: Lara Grant
Tychem® TK fabric courtesy of DuPont(tm)
Approx 45” tall
Edition of 5 suits

Dupont’s patented Tychem hazardous materials clean-up suits are used in petroleum industry disaster response to mitigate ecological disasters. These suits have been re-scaled to outfit toddlers. The suits are sealed to prevent actual toddlers from entering them, thus assuring that no children are harmed in the process.

EXAMPLES OF PETRO MANGA:

The Petroleum Manga (2012)
50 banners
Solvent ink on Tyvek
10’ x 54”
Research: Miriam Simun
Drawing assistance: Ellen Anne Burtner
Printing: Vista CRC Lab, NY

Manga is a Japanese term that refers to “whimsical drawings” or picture books. For The Petroleum Manga, the organization of this “picture book” on oil is drawn from Hokusai’s thirteen volume manga, depicting everything from trees to demons, from squirrels to shingles. Each Petroleum Manga banner represents items made out of a specific petrochemical: PET, PVC, HDPE, PMMA, polystyrene, polyurethane, ammonia, nylon, parrafin and more. These heroic banner-size drawings on Tyvek divide the gallery space into a labrynthian maze, with their images of oil-derived products: garbage bags, water guns, plastic chickens, balloons, food containers, credit cards, and more.

Related Events:
Artist Talk with Marina Zurkow
Saturday, March 17, 1pm

Artist-in-Residence Marina Zurkow will give an indepth tour of her multimedia exhibition, Necrocracy, that explores landscapes, hydrocarbons as agents, and other issues inspired by her research trip to the Texas Permian Basin. As part of the tour, Zurkow will discuss her research trip, ecosystems and the technology that she has created to produce video animations.

This event is free and open to the public.

DiverseWorks is a VAN Partner of the Visual Arts Network (VAN). This project is made possible in part through support from the Visual Artists Network
Exhibition Residency, which is a program of the National Performance Network. Major contributors are the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,
the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information: www.npnweb.org

Necrocracy received additional support from the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.

This presentation of NeoGeo is in collaboration with Aurora Picture Show with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Necrocracy is part of FotoFest 2012 Biennial

DiverseWorks is a non-profit art center dedicated to presenting new visual, performing, and literary art.  DiverseWorks is a place where the process of
creating art is valued and where artists can test new ideas in the public arena. By encouraging the investigation of current artistic, cultural and social
issues, DiverseWorks builds, educates, and sustains audiences for contemporary art.

DiverseWorks Gallery Hours:
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm or by appointment
Always Free!

DiverseWorks ArtSpace is generously supported by:

UNDERWRITERS
Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; Anonymous; Brown Foundation, Inc.; Brad & Leslie Bucher; The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts; Doris Duke Charitable Fund; Houston Endowment (a federal agency); Joan Mitchell Foundation; KUHF (88.7FM) / KUHA (91.7FM)*; LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity); Louisa Stude Sarofim Foundation; MAP Fund/Creative Capital; National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network; New England Foundation for the Arts; Texas Commission
on the Arts; University of Houston; Birgitt Van Wijk; The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

PATRONS
Foundation for Contemporary Art; Fritz Lanham & Kellye Sanford; Nightingale Code Foundation; Regulatory Economics Group, LLC; Visual Artists Network; Fabéne Welch

MAJOR DONORS
Bernie & Mary Arocha; Rosalie Buggs; Felix Sanchez Photography*; Patrick & Tracey Keegan; Que Imaging*; Shannon & Leslie Sasser; Saint Arnold Brewing Company*; Bob & Lillian H. Warren

DIVERSEDONORS
A Fare Extraordinaire*; American Express Charitable Fund; Diane Barber & Karen Niemeier; Adam Brackman; David Brown*; Boheme Cafe & Wine Bar; Shannon Buggs; CenterPoint/June Deadrick; Jereann Chaney; Cozen O’Connor; Jason Fuller; Greentree Foundation; Guitar Center*; Houston Chronicle*; Houston Independent School District; Allison Hunter*; Italy-America Chamber of Commerce of Texas – Houston*; JBD Foundation; Mark Johnson;
J.B. Kobayashi*; Marshal & Victoria Lightman; Lester Marks & Penelope Gonzalez; Tierney Malone*; Paul Mandell; Sari Miettinen; Lan Norwood & Bryan Vezey; Judy & Scott Nyquist; Poison Girl; Pura Vida Tequila*; Real Ale Brewing Co.*; Howard Sherman*; Kaneem Smith*; Christina Solís; Target Corporation; Chuy Terrazas; Emily Todd; Mark Dean Veca*; Wade Wilson Art*; Sixto Wagan & Matthew Dirst; Sarah Walters; Frank White*; Whole Foods*; Josh & Tina Zulu*

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
William Betts, Adam Brackman, Loli Fernández-A Kolber, Jason Fuller, Rob Greenstein, Stephen Hill, Patrick Keegan, Marshal Lightman, Kellye Sanford, Christina Solís, Sarah Walters

ARTIST BOARD
Soodabeh Babcock, Elizabeth Barrera, Elaine Bradford, Lucinda Cobley, Melanie Crader, Sasha Dela, Casey Fleming, Mark Francis, Ryan Geiger, Hank Hancock, Laura Harrison, Thomas Helton, J Hill, Maria Cristina Jadick, Mick Johnson, Laura Lark, Libbie Masterson, Greg Oaks, Louie Saletan, Soody Sharifi, Katherine Veneman

Artist-in-Residence, Marina Zurkow, will give an in-depth tour of her multimedia exhibition, Necrocracy, that explores landscapes, hydrocarbons as agents, and other issues inspired by her research trip to the Texas Permian Basin. As part of the tour, Zurkow will discuss her research trip, ecosystems and the technology that she has created to produce video animations.

This event is free and open to the public.

Are you the ultimate John Waters fan?  Have you fantasized about rubbing “shoulders” with The Pope of Trash?  If so, then thank your yucky stars because a very generous DiverseWorks supporter has donated two tickets (a $500 value) to This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier and given you a chance to claim them!  Or maybe win a book or DVD. That’s right, your dirty dreams could come true.  Here’s how:

Born in Baltimore, MDin 1946, John Waterswas drawn to movies at an early age, particularly exploitation movies with lurid ad campaigns. He subscribed to Variety at the age of twelve, absorbing the magazine’s factual information and its lexicon of insider lingo.  This early education would prove useful as the future director began his career giving puppet shows for children’s birthday parties.  As a teen-ager, Waters began making 8-mm underground movies influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Using Baltimore, which he fondly dubbed the “Hairdo ...

click to continue to John Waters]]> John Waters (Writer/Director)

Born in Baltimore, MDin 1946, John Waterswas drawn to movies at an early age, particularly exploitation movies with lurid ad campaigns. He subscribed to Variety at the age of twelve, absorbing the magazine’s factual information and its lexicon of insider lingo.  This early education would prove useful as the future director began his career giving puppet shows for children’s birthday parties.  As a teen-ager, Waters began making 8-mm underground movies influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Using Baltimore, which he fondly dubbed the “Hairdo Capitol of the World,” as the setting for all his films, Waters assembled a cast of ensemble players, mostly native Baltimoreans and friends of long standing:  Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Edith Massey.  Waters also established lasting relationships with key production people, such as production designer Vincent Peranio, costume designer Van Smith, and casting director Pat Moran, helping to give his films that trademark Waters “look.”

Waters made his first film, an 8-mm short, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket in 1964, starring Mary Vivian Pearce.  Waters followed with Roman Candles in 1966, the first of his films to star Divine and Mink Stole.  In 1967, he made his first 16-mm film with Eat Your Makeup, the story of a deranged governess and her lover who kidnap fashion models and force them to model themselves to death.  Mondo Trasho, Waters’ first feature length film, was completed in 1969 despite the fact that the production ground to a halt when the director and two actors were arrested for “participating in a misdemeanor, to wit:  indecent exposure.”

In 1970, Waters completed what he described as his first “celluloid atrocity,” Multiple Maniacs.  The film told the story of Lady Divine and her lover, Mr. David, proprietors of a freak show who lure unsuspecting suburbanites into their tents to witness “The Cavalcade of Perversions.”  In 1972 Waters created what would become the most “notorious” film in the American independent cinema of the 1970′s, Pink Flamingos.  Centered on the great battle to secure the title “Filthiest People Alive,” Pink Flamingos pitted Divine’s “Babs Johnson” against Mink Stole and David Lochary’s truly evil “Connie and Raymond Marble,” while turning Waters into a cult celebrity.  Pink Flamingos went on to become a smash success atmidnight screenings in theU.S. and all over the world.

Waters followed the success of Pink Flamingos with three more pictures, spanning the remainder of the decade.  In 1974 he created Female Trouble, the story of Dawn Davenport (Divine), a criminal who wanted to be famous so badly she committed murder.  1977 marked the premier of Desperate Living, a monstrous fairytale comedy starring the notorious Mafia moll turned stripper Liz Renay.  In 1981 Waters completed Polyester, a wide-screen comic melodrama starring Divine and Tab Hunter.  Filmed in glorious “Odorama,” ticket buyers were given scratch ‘n’ sniff cards that allowed the audience to smell along with the characters in their fragrant search for romantic happiness.

In Hairspray (1988), Waters created “an almost big-budget comedy extravaganza about star-struck teen-age celebrities in 1962, their stage mothers and their quest for mental health.”  The film was a box office and critical success and starred the then unknownRickiLake, Deborah Harry, the late Sonny Bono, Jerry Stiller, Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek.

The success of Hairspray brought Waters major Hollywood backing for his next feature, Cry-Baby (1990), a juvenile delinquent musical comedy satire, starring Johnny Depp.  In 1994, Waters released Serial Mom, the well reviewed, socially un-redeeming comedy starring Kathleen Turner and Sam Waterston, which was the closing night attraction at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Pink Flamingos, the ultimate trash masterpiece, was again in theatres for a 25th Anniversary re-release in 1997, complete with newfound footage.  Commenting on the long-lasting popularity of the film, director Waters proudly boasts, “it’s hard to offend three generations, but it looks like I’ve succeeded.”

Pecker, a feel-good movie about lesbian strippers, pubic-hair harassment and amateur photography, was released in 1998.  It starred Edward Furlong and Christina Ricci.  The Japan Times called it “a Disney film for perverts.”

Cecil B. DeMented, a comedy action-thriller about a young lunatic film director (Stephen Dorff) and his gang of film cultists who kidnap a real-life Hollywood movie goddess (Melanie Griffith) and force her to act in their own Super 8 underground movie, was released in 2000.  Kevin Thomas of The LA Times, called Cecil B. DeMented “a fast, furious and funny fusillade of a movie.”

A Dirty Shame concerns head injury sufferers who, after their concussion, experience a carnal lust they cannot control.  It stars Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair, and Chris Isaak. Rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the film “wicked, kinky fun.”

In addition to writing and directing feature films, Waters is the author of six books: Shock Value, Crackpot, Pink Flamingos and Other Trash, Hairspray, Female Trouble and Multiple Maniacs, and Art: A Sex Book (co-written with art critic Bruce Hainley).  His book, Role Models, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May, 2010 and earned spots on the best seller lists for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Concurrent to his careers as a filmmaker and author, John Watersis also a photographer whose work, first represented by American Fine Arts and presently, the Marianne Boesky Galley in New York, has been shown in galleries all over the world since 1992.   Three art catalogs have been published on John Waters’ photographs and sculpture beginning with Director’s Cut in 1997 (Scalo Books).  John Waters: Change of Life followed in 2004 (Harry N. Abrams) to accompany a Waters retrospective exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.  The exhibition traveled to the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, the Orange County Museum of Art and The Andy Warhol Museum.  And finally, in 2006, the catalog, Unwatchable was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name that opened simultaneously at The Marianne Boesky Gallery inNew York and de Pury & Luxembourg Gallery inZurich.  In April, 2009, Waters’exhibition, “Rear Projection” opened at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York and the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles.

John Waters’ one man spoken-word lecture entitled “This Filthy World” is performed at colleges, museums, film-festivals and comedy clubs around the world.  In 2010, he played to sold out audiences at the Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Sydney Opera House. In 2006, Netflix released a film version of the live act that was screened at the Toronto, Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals. In 2004, the music compilation CD “AJohn WatersChristmas” was released by New Line Records and was followed up in 2007 by “A Date WithJohn Waters”.

As an actor, Waters has appeared in many motion pictures including Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild”, Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown”, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ “Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat” and Don Mancini’s “Seed of Chucky.”  In February, 2006, Waters hosted a 13-episode television series on the here! TV Network called “John WatersPresents Movies That Will Corrupt You.”  He also appeared in an episode of NBC’s hit show, “My Name Is Earl,” and played “The Groom Reaper” in the CourtTV series “Til Death Do Us Part.”

Waters is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is on the Wexner Center International Arts Advisory Council.  Additionally, he is a past member of the boards of The Andy Warhol Foundation and Printed Matter and was selected as a juror for the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Director Filmography

2004                A Dirty Shame

2000                Cecil B. Demented

1998                Pecker

1994                Serial Mom

1990                Cry-Baby

1988                Hairspray

1981                Polyester

1977                Desperate Living

1974                Female Trouble

1972                Pink Flamingos

1970                Multiple Maniacs

The Diane Linkletter Story

1969                Mondo Trasho

1967                Eat Your Makeup

1966                Roman Candles

1964                Hag in a Black Leather Jacket