Six of one,
half a dozen of the other

SELECTED PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE IDEA FUND

CO-ORGANIZED BY DIVERSEWORKS, AURORA PICTURE SHOW,
AND PROJECT ROW HOUSES

Six of one, half a dozen of the either features a selection of Idea Fund supported projects. The Idea Fund is a re-granting program established by The Andy Warhol Foundation and administered by a partnership of DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses.

Since its inception in 2008, The Idea Fund has supported the creation of 60 Texas-based projects (ten annually) that exemplify interventionist, entrepreneurial, or guerrilla activities. Six of one, half a dozen of the other surveys some of these projects through a series of co-organized events across Houston, including an exhibition (DiverseWorks), film and video screening (Aurora Picture Show), and an outdoor installation and public program (Project Row Houses). Inviting and inspirational, these unconventional projects utilize a variety of methodologies, conceptual concerns, and thematic elements to encourage viewers to think beyond art’s typical framework. Representing a diverse group of artists and collectives from across the state, Six of one, half a dozen of the other brings together bold new ideas about artmaking, social engagement, and community involvement.

AT DIVERSEWORKS:

Mary Margaret Hansen, Second Seating (2009 Idea Fund): Originally presented in a warehouse just blocks from Minute Maid Park in Houston, Second Seating features a series of elegant dinner tables and fanciful chandeliers created with recycled projects from Houston’s East End – the industrial heart and historic core of the city.

Nate Cassie and Ethel Shipton, Vacancy Projects (2013 Idea Fund): Vacancy Projects featured a variety of interactive and performative artistic events staged in non-art venues across the San Antonio area. The singularity of each event, combined with the project’s multidisciplinary nature, created spontaneous energy that rippled throughout the community. For Six of one, half a dozen of the other, Cassie and Shipton have created an intervention inside DiverseWorks’ neighbor, Modern Barber College, with embellishments added to the empty spaces between working areas – above the mirrors, on the floor, and in the windows. At DiverseWorks, the artists have created an idealized, somewhat surreal, barber shop featuring objects and artworks from the past two-and-a-half years of Vacancy Projects. 

Mel Reiff Hill, Robin Mack, and Jay Mays, the GENDER book (2011 Idea Fund): In the style of an educational children’s book, the GENDER book is a 90-page, hand-drawn book and e-book that strives to alleviate societal oppression and misunderstanding of gender minorities through education.

Erin Elder, Nina Elder, and Nancy Zastudil, PLAND (2010 Idea Fund): In operation from 2009 – 2013, PLAND (Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation) was a multidisciplinary organization that supported the development of experimental and research-based projects. Headquartered off-the-grid in Tres Piedras, New Mexico, PLAND was a hands-on, exploratory approach to alternative living.

Christina Sukhigian Houle, Exodus: Sequel to Migration Patterns during Wartime (2012 Idea Fund): This durational performance featured 12 individuals who camped in and around Big Bend while inside large soft sculpture costumes, made primarily of stuffed animal pelts.

MASS, The Alleycat Project (2012 Idea Fund): MASS, an artist collective based in Austin, commissioned a series of site-specific sculptures, murals, and interventions that celebrated local history, liminal spaces, and unexpected beauty.

The Bridge Club, The Trailer: Performance Art Tour (2013 Idea Fund): The Trailer is an ongoing project addressing issues of regionalism, identity, and domesticity through the presentation of live mobile performances from a vintage camping trailer. Each performance is distinct and tailored to its location’s specific context, site, and audience.

Kevin Curry, Housewarming (2009 Idea Fund): Housewarming was an oversized quilt tailored to envelop the artist’s house in Houston, a metaphorical and physical embracing of the present by the past. The piece has since evolved into an installation replicating the cabin that Henry David Thoreau built at Walden Pond – becoming a place of respite and contemplation for the artist and audience.

Wura-Natasha Ogunji, one hundred black women, one hundred actions (2010 Idea Fund): Premiering in Austin on April 24, 2010 as part of Fusebox Festival, this piece was a performance of critical actions, gestures, and movements by one hundred black women from around the world.

AT PROJECT ROW HOUSES:

Esteban Delgado, Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (2013 Idea Fund): Esteban Delgado transformed vacant buildings in small South Texas towns with bright, colorful window installations informed by each structure’s history and the surrounding community. At Project Row Houses, Delgado will create a new window installation, and give a public talk on Saturday, June 28 at 2 pm.

AT AURORA PICTURE SHOW:

Saturday, June 28, 7 pm
Screening of Idea Fund film and video projects:

Angela and Mark Walley (Walley Films), Justin Boyd: Sound and Time (2013 Idea Fund): In this short documentary, artist Justin Boyd, Department Chair of Sculpture and Integrated Media at Southwest School of Art, shares his connection with sound and how he uses it to create original works of art.

Madsen Minax, My Most Handsome Monster (2013 Idea Fund): This workdocuments two separate BDSM scenarios and morphs the landscapes in which they take place. The scenarios collide with archival family footage, landscape meditation, and voice over narration to suggest a state of suspended engagement and a gesture toward collective histories and imagined futures.

Kara Hearn, The Need for Grand Emotion (2009 Idea Fund): In this series of staged dramas reminiscent of classic anxiety dreams, 30-year old Will inexplicably finds himself back in high school trying to win the approval of a group of girls. In scenarios ranging from mundane and pathetic to violent and absurd, the character and video work together self-consciously to squeeze authentic experience and emotion from the most artificial and mediated of circumstances.

Stephanie Saint Sanchez, selections from Señorita Cinema (2013 Idea Fund): Señorita Cinema, founded by filmmaker Stephanie Saint Sanchez, is Texas’ first all Latina film festival, with the goal of presenting the rich tapestry of voices, styles, and ideas unique to the Latina experience.

Potter-Belmar Labs (Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens), Thirteen Views in Arid Lands (2010 Idea Fund): This series of 360-degree scrolling Southwestern American landscape videos was shot in time lapse, using robotic technology designed, built, and programmed by PBL. Texts that appear in the videos were borrowed from and inspired by the reports and journals of U.S. soldiers seeking the last free Apaches in the Southwest in the 1880s, as well as quotations from the Apaches themselves.