Second Seating Returns

Busy days at Diverse Works recreating portions of 2009's Second Seating. I wish all seven of the collaborating artists were represented in this redo, but space did not permit. The original show was huge, covering over 2500 square feet. This Second Seating comeback shares about 2000 square feet with five other Idea Fund grantees. The gallery is full, the projects diverse. Where might we have hung Jesse's coffee cup batik? As a swath across a corner of the gallery? Maybe. I still have Gonzo's crazy orange and yellow chandelier, but his terrific table and four chairs are long gone. Ted Estrada's table is no long either and I bet those pinata parrots have flown off too. So, here's to all of the artists who participated in the original Second Seating and are not represented in this rehash called 'Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other'. I am preparing a folder with information about all the artists in that installation on Chenevert. It was way bigger than what we are recreating.
Last Friday, ES and moved two car loads of stuff from Sonny's place. Box after box after box stacked up in a corner of the DW gallery. Am I a hoarder or what?

Beautiful still life in a U.S. Postal box.

Worked Saturday on the Wall of Plates and got started on the banquet table. Rachel hung Mercedes Fernandez' two tall embroidered paintings and they look good.

On Monday, Paul and I picked up the table for the Clorox chandelier from Sonny's warehouse and then stopped by my house to pack - very carefully - the spun sugar cathedral and the Hughes Tool pipe lights. Thank you, Sonny, for loaning us your red truck for the second time.

Sugar cathedral arrives at Diverse Works all in one piece.

Paul and Taylor hung three chandeliers on Monday. All the light bulbs work. Hurray! However, the new structure for the Clorox chandelier has a larger diameter than I'd planned - can't control everything - so this morning I'll cut up a white tablecloth and knot in more widths of fabric between the swags of filigreed Clorox bottles. That mirrored ball light should be almost obscured and it's not YET. But it will be by mid-day today.

On Friday morning the Wall of Plates will be totally finished when Jose Solis delivers his totem of china cups and vases for the center piece. He's traveling from Brownsville with the work on Thursday. In a few minutes I am off to DW for another day of assembling.
DW has been great. They actually have folks who help with the installation. Paul was been wonderful. He rebuilt an entire new structure for the wall of plates. Rachel is terrific at overseeing and planning our progress. Taylor was a wonderful help yesterday. Wish she were there again today while I'm up on the ladder messing with the Clorox bottle chandelier.
I was surprised by all this assistance. I'd expected I'd have to find folks to help me get it all together. Couldn't have imagined all the help I'm getting from DW. Thank you, thank you.

OK, it's Tuesday and time to pick up those few remaining Clorox bottles from Sonny's and get on over to DW and up on that ladder. And after that, on to the banquet table which needs a lot of tweaking.

Coffee Buffet Moves To METRO

At last, METRO installed Jesse Sifuentes' Second Seating coffee buffet and batik in their building lobby on Main Street. We talked about a move last fall when folks from METRO saw Second Seating. Seemed like a good idea as Jesse is one of their transit stop artists for the Harrisburg line. Good for folks to become familiar with his work and motifs. Good for public relations reasons. And good that the work won't simply be stored away in his garage for the summer. I'll have to take myself to METRO and see how it looks in the new digs.

Photos below are of Jesse moving the coffee buffet into the Second Seating space last September and then beginning to pack up the piece at the end of Second Seating last November after Art Crawl.

Art Crawl: Second Seating's On the Map

Second Seating will be open on one more day. That day is Art Crawl, Saturday, November 21. Check on line for more about what will be a pretty terrific event. See Flickr's geotag here.
And here are a few things I love about this show:
I love the way it the outside is part of the space, that the boundaries between the art and the patio garden fall away and Jesse's batik is like a curtain at a very big window.
I like these lamps made from oil drilling pipes. They are the first thing folks see when they walk through the front door. Second Seating opens right on to the street with trucks barrelling toward the freeway, street folks walking to and fro, customers coming and going from Irma's and about 40+ people coming to see us.
I love this table and the story of how it came to be. Sure looks like those arches on Post Oak Blvd, just as it's meant to look because the company that fabricates the arches also made this one-of-a-kind table. That would be The Offenhauser Company on Telephone Road.
This would be a plate on the Offenhauser table top photographed in very bright morning light.
Jose's coffee can chandelier simply floats and it's dazzling. Below, Mercedes bowl of hot soup is also dazzling and catches views in the face, just rushes off the fabric.
And this image is quite simply baroque. No, make that rococo. And I love it. Walk through the door into Second Seating and you'll get to see this chandelier too, which Gonzo247 painted. Beautifully.Please join us for the very, very last day of Second Seating on Saturday, November 21. It's Art Crawl.

Second Seating In Today's Houston Chronicle

Halloween has come and gone. I left the front of the house dark last night and was in bed asleep before 8:00. That good night's sleep makes all the difference. I am ready for today, which is bright blue and clear.
And to top off this bright blue day? Lisa Gray's story on Second Seating appears in this morning's Houston Chronicle. And today is Sunday. What a good day for this story to run.
Thank you, Lisa Gray.

What's Not to Love at Second Seating?

Images of Second Seating - a few things you may have missed the first time around. The Clorox bottle chandelier with its table of vintage linens surrounded by bags of laundry was hard to overlook, but we find it's always best to wander through this space a second time. Enjoy. Return. Peruse the painting you may have passed by, yet now find irresistible. Find the chandelier you cannot live without. Light your way forward. Fly with feral parrots. Allow yourself enchantment. It's all here at Second Seating. We love it and it'll be on view one more week. See gallery hours and special gathering events in the column to the right.Jose Solis created this delicate coffee can chandelier. Victor Rodriguez crafted a flock of feral parrots that fly over our space just as they fly throughout Houston's East End.
Gonzo247 used cans of aerosol paint to cover this exquisite table and four chairs with his 'Exotic Fruit Salad' motif. Imagine eating dinner at the table. Hold your breath and dive in.
All the comforts of home when seated on this chair, one of a pair that'll light any room. And you thought they were simply part of the decor. No, they're 'haveable.' These two chairs rest on either side of the 'Bayou, Bay, Beach' table and chandelier which does not mince words about what 'we, the people' do with plastic, never thinking of harm to our waterways and sea creatures. Read the text on this elaborate table and weep and never improperly throw away a Styrofoam cup again. Ever.
Ted Estrada's ode to grandmothers draws quiet attention and reflection. One remembers the days, the past, the times, the warmth of a family table.
Ah, pinto beans. We could not live without beans, cooked many ways and very often.
Jesse Sifuentes giant ceramic coffee cup yearns for a new home. Take it with you, along with roasted coffee beans from Maximus Coffee.
Catarina Williams created a fantasy collage, a plethora of foods we love set in an enchanted place.
Mercedes Fernandez paints with passion and love about the village in which she lives. She works with women in her village in Mexico with women whose men have gone 'north' and never returned. Nor do they send money home, so the women are embroidering, weaving and when Mercedes sells a painting, half the proceeds go to the women in her village.
Oil drilling pipes transformed into lighting fixtures. Heavy, durable, gorgeous. Wired in duos and trios with transparent wire. We love them on a buffet table or on the floor and then there's the patio.... Lights work anywhere.
Another view of the Gonzo247's painted chair back against Mercedes paintings. Funny how they all work together in this special space.
And here's a bit of weirdness. A tableau on the banquet table. Looks like unrequited love, don't you think? Or maybe, a simply invitation to love. It is what it is. And so close to that vintage meat grinder.
A chandelier abandoned, repainted and then reworked with provocative little phrases in gold on each piece of beveled glass. It'll all light up your night.

Second Seating Updates

Yes, there are many other things happening in my life besides Second Seating, but you wouldn't know it. Since the opening on September 24, Second Seating has turned into yet another kind of job. My experience of Second Seating is now about caring for a gallery/retail store. Regular hours to keep six days each week, folks coming and going, sales to be made, tours to be given, docents on hand, a series of quite wonderful 'gatherings' on selected evenings each week. Every morning, we look for fruit flies and exchange new mangos and pears for those beginning to rot. We turn on the music which by now, is getting very, very familiar. I may never feel the same way about these particular CDs ever again. We carry out the garbage and when it rains, we worry when water flows into the space from the parking lot, finding it way here and there between the concrete slab and the exterior wall. And until a few days ago it was also tremendously muggy and quite warm in the space. Now, the temperatures day and evenings are just about perfect.
Second Seating doesn't go away on Sunday. Today, I updated the database with all the new email addresses we've collected in our guest book. They'll be ready for an eblast we'll send within a week.
I knew all of this would happen, but before September 24, we were so busy installing the exhibition, planning for the reception and counting the money raised, that I didn't focus on keeping 'the store open' and what exactly that would entail. Plenty as it turns out. None of it bad, just constant.
Last Thursday, we hit a record for visitors. Jeff Brown, Second Seating's docent extraordinaire, counted 70. Two tours and about 40 other folks who just walked in. Here's Jesse talking about coffee, his murals, batiks and ceramics to the St. Luke's Methodist Church seniors group.At our gathering last Wednesday evening, another 40 people showed up, some with wine in hand. Here's Irma Galvan with Joe Cooper who brought friends for a return visit. Jennifer Flores came back and visited with Jesse Sifuentes. My brother stopped by and so did Kathie Easterly. Kathie wrote an article in the latest issue of Change Magazine (free at places like Kroger and Randall's or on-line) called "One Woman's Renaissance". That would be about me. Kathie got the story exactly right. Should you want to know about MMH, it's a great and accurate read.
My sister Kate was in town from Seattle for three days . We had a terrific time and had to have a sibling photo in the Second Seating space. Hey, we also made it out to Harwin Drive for a shopping spree and ate Vietnamese, Turkish, Mexican and homecooked Indonesian while she was here.Kate and I also had the Second Seating Lunch Plate Special which is a combination of my two favorite dishes at Irma's: a fresh spinach enchilada and a one chicken mole enchilada . Note the Second Seating Lunch Special signage on the table. It's called cross marketing.And here's number one docent Jeff Brown, unmatched by any standards. He's in this photo with long time friend Kimble Gaebler, Director of Sales for Warehouse Live over on St. Emanual, a place we should all know more about.
Mary Vargo visited with Cheryl Beckett at the gathering. We just all had a lot of fun that evening and someone bought the blue wine bottle chandelier too.
We really must sell in earnest now with eblasts, more gatherings and suggestions for early holiday shopping. This group of artists made work to sell and I'm thinking a few more signs to that effect throughout the space is in order. Think about owning one of Mercedes Fernadez paintings with its elaborate emboridery, its story of the women she works with in Michoacan. Many visitors are truly surprised when I tell them things are for sale. Second Seating is a charming store as well as an intriguing space to experience.Actually, it is a terrific space in which to spend time. Evocative, funky, nostalgic, informative, fanciful and downright wonderful. Great to wander about with a glass of wine, a cold beer. I wouldn't mind having a barista during the day either. That would be fun.
OK, I began this post in order to talk about all the other things that are happening in my life simultaneously with Second Seating, but as you can immediately see, my mind continues to be centered on one track.
Next gathering is on Thursday, October 29. See you then.