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.

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.

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.

First Monday of the Month

Houston's chapter of The Transition Network gathered as we do the first Monday evening of every month for supper, conversation and this time, a look at Second Seating. TTN is a marvelous network of interesting women who have a lot to say and share about change. Many of us seem to be making good things happen when 'change' bounces into our lives either by retirement, divorce, death, illness, empty nests or new career opportunities. The change list is long. The organization itself is loose and welcoming.
Tonight I had the privilege of talking about what Second Seating means to me. For many of you who've followed the process on this blog for over a year now, it's old news. This installation has afforded me the opportunity to employ all of my skills and talents - to the fullest. I've had to raise the money to make the whole thing happen and find the wherewithal to ask what could possibly be hundreds of people to engage in the process.
'Making' Second Seating a reality has taken over a year and a seven day a week schedule. And you know what? I had fun doing it all. It's been a tremendous exercise in 'focusing'. It's provided me with an air of happiness in knowing that I brought a lifetime of knowledge to bear on this goal of collaborating with others to make an environment that just may enchant, entice, embrace anyone who enters.
The very best news is that every day someone walks into the space and says, "I want to have an event here. Can that happen?"
Yes, we can make that happen. In fact, that's kind of what it's all about. To those of you who've uttered those particular words?
You 'got' the whole idea of Second Seating. You want to be in the space itself. Thank you.

Jose Solis III: Totems and Chandeliers

Jose Solis is imaginative and the pieces he created for Second Seating combine many disparate elements. His chandeliers and totems are fanciful and quirky. And quite irresistible.
I first saw Jose's work years ago in a studio he shared at the Gribble Stamp Company with Ted Estrada. They used to invite people over to see new work and that's when I found his idiosyncratic wall pieces made with cans and wire, marbles and paint.

I bought one of his wall pieces for the Greater East End District and its sun shape has become one of their secondary logos. At the time, the management district offices were on the second floor of the Laredo National Bank on Harrisburg. Entering my office one morning, I discovered several big metal boxes connected by wide metal conduit on the wall over my desk. The bank had installed a neon sign on the outside of its building and all of the signs 'workings' were exposed on the wall of my office and were not a very pretty sight.

However, I knew who to call to make this mess of electrical boxes into a work of art. Jose created a series of pieces made with juice and coffee cans, more marbles and bits of metal and when he installed the work on all those electrical boxes, we had something wonderful.
Jose makes art filled with sly humor and quirky references. His work for Second Seating is a must see. And each of his chandeliers and totems is certainly a 'must-buy-and-take-home'.

Tired? Most Assuredly.

This is a photo my daughter Caroline took of me on Sunday evening after four days of family flying in and out for the opening of Second Seating and all of its attendant celebrations. It's Tuesday and I could still fall asleep on the floor given a moment or two. And I wouldn't have missed one minute of anything. Good days, all.

Friday and Counting

Slow start today. Not out of bed until nearly 9:00. What a surprise. Then spent time catching up with emails and putting something really nice in motion with the Houston Dynamos and their terrific chandelier. More on that later. So I didn't get to the Second Seating space until nearly 11:00 a.m. Met Moises and Mark there and we began on too many projects at once. An exercise in futility and disorganization.Finally hit our stride late afternoon after a clarifying trip to Bohemeo's over on Telephone Rd. for lattes, espresso and fish and veggie tacos. Well caffeinated and having taken many photos (They asked, "Are you always photographing what you eat and who you're with?" The answer is "Yes.") we returned to the space and began to hang stuff on the walls.We hung Aggie's things first and then my three photo montage pieces. Her work is beautiful. Folks are going to go crazy for it. The tables, the wall pieces. Can hardly wait for them to see it all. Jesse came by and took two of his batiks to get them ready for hanging.
We came back to the house for some of that green corrugated sheet metal Mike Garver let me have last year for my studio walls and screen porch. I still have some pieces left and we strapped them on the top of my car with bungees and drove them down to Chenevert. The guys inserted them piece by piece in between the rebar and all of a sudden the corner took on a whole new atmosphere. It became a 'space.'
They went back to the house for more and I stayed and painted on the Wall of Plates shelves. Added some of Aggie's colorful cut out metal from aluminum cans. We'll see how it looks in daylight tomorrow.Then we looked at how we'd hang things on the green wall. Mark and Moises took that fabric wall piece I made and instead of holding it out as a big square, one of them hung it by a corner and - wow, it looks great and we'll hang it that way. And there is plenty of space for my collages. The real trick is to get the Plexi on them - still not done. May go out to the studio in a few minutes and drill some holes and try to get at least one done...or go to bed and get up early in the morning. Nathan is coming at 10:00 to check on the big stage lights. They are not turning on yet. Hope it's not a big deal to find what the problem is.
So, all is well and there is still a ton of work to be done. More than a ton. What am I doing adding all these photos to this post? When I should be out putting Plexi on painted wood frames.