Michael Agresta
Photos of Dystopia
FotoFest, Houston’s biennial art photography fair, bears witness to a planet in peril.
FotoFest, Houston’s biennial art photography fair, bears witness to a planet in peril in alternately beautiful and disturbing ways. Read More
Houston’s Absent Son
The Bayou City displays the personal collection of its beloved-in-absentia Mark Rothko.
The Bayou City displays the personal collection of its beloved-in-absentia Mark Rothko. Read More
Here Are 21 Texas Mass Shootings ‘Good Guys’ with Guns Didn’t Stop in 2015
Nearly four dozen people, including at least six children, have been killed (so far) in Texas mass shooting incidents this year.
According to the Gun Violence Archive and ShootingTracker.com, America has averaged more than one mass shooting per day so far in 2015. Twenty-one of those mass shootings (instances where four or more people were killed or injured by gunfire) occurred in Texas. Of the eight deadliest gun violence incidents of the year nationwide, Texas can claim three. Read More
Catching Up with Janis
Her brand of blues presaged 21st century sexual politics.
Joplin remains important now, 45 years after her death, through a combination of that indelible voice and her zeitgeisty identification with the exuberant spirit of 1960s counterculture. Read More
‘Upstairs Inferno’ a Harrowing Look at Another Era of LGBT Life
Robert L. Camina's new documentary takes an unflinching look back at 'the largest gay mass murder in U.S. history.'
Upstairs Inferno is a worthy effort to dredge up a piece of significant, but for too many of us, forgotten, history — what is, in Camina’s estimation, the largest-ever mass murder of LGBT people in the United States. Read More
Narco Violence, as Seen by a Journalist-Turned-Artist
Binational artist Luz Maria Sánchez grapples with killings that haunt her family and her country of birth.
In person and in her art, Sánchez’s style is observational and exact, almost without an expressive first-person stance, except for, perhaps, one of detached and utterly rational horror. She could almost be viewed as an avant-garde journalist who broadcasts her dispatches from speakers shaped like automatic weapons and collects her supporting evidence in the form of migrants’ cast-off garments from the north banks of the Rio Grande. Read More
The Man Who Designed Texas
For three decades, DJ Stout’s vision has shaped how we look at the Lone Star State.
You may not know designer DJ Stout by name, but if you live in Texas, you know his work. His aesthetic has determined the past 30 years of visual Texana, both forward- and backward-looking. Read More
The Great Mellowing
God, Willie Nelson, and the increasingly thinkable pipe dream of marijuana reform.
Thanks to God and Willie Nelson, marijuana reform is an increasingly thinkable pipe dream. Read More
Now You See It
Artist Mel Chin revisits home in Houston.
"Rematch," Mel Chin's overtly political career-retrospective exhibition, will dominate the Houston museum world for two months. Read More