WHAM and Houston's 18th Annual Art Crawl

Spacetaker brought their Winter Holiday Art Market (WHAM) to Downtown Houston last weekend at
Winter Street Studios. The Winter Holiday Art Market – Downtown  was presented by Amegy Bank of Texas.   This is a juried event.  Earlier in the season, artists were invited to submit a portfolio of their products they would like to sell.  Products ranged from drawings, paintings, sculptural pieces, pottery, jewelry, handmade bags, leather goods, hand made wooden objects, fine art prints, hand died silk scarves, and much more. It was fun, indoors, and busy with lots of people. And things were selling.

Studios at Winter Street are identified by letters and numbers stenciled onto the floor in front of their doors. I got  caught up with taking photos of numbers on this day. This was not open studio day. Most of the studios were closed.

Below artist/printmakers Andis Applewhite (L) and Gema Barclay (R) running the booth this day for PRINT Matters  a Houston arts organization started by five artists who have exhibited locally and nationally and share a love of printmaking. Their goals are to promote traditional and non-traditional printmaking, encourage print collecting, and further the professional growth of our members.

L. Andis Applewhite, R. Gema Barclay

From Andis's P Series. Image from her blog.

On the Print Matters web site you will find a list of members with links to their web sites. Worth a look-see. You will also find information there regarding membership in the organization if you are interested and Print Matters has a current call for work for exhibition next summer. 
Click here for more information about that. 

Ichthys, save me
Multiple plates with dry-point etching; Rives BFK
Image size: 24 in X 18 in
Paper size: 30 in X 22 in
Monoprint

The image above was done by member Cathie Kayser. Her work is the yellow green-piece above Gema's head.   Click here to see more about her. 

 
Below is artist Steve Campbell making a sale. We stopped and chatted with him for a bit. He was gracious enough to give us a demo on how he creates the textures on some of his pieces. Said he learned it in Korea.

Steve's studio is three DOT pots.

 Golden Cat Silk Originals had beautiful hand printed silk scarves and shawls.  I wish I could have bought one.

Sparrow Birds Scarf

Y.E. Torres YET: Drawing, Dance and Design. Funky stuffed conjoined dolls, drawings and other stuff.   Click here for more about her.

Artist Matt Messinger's booth. He does mixed media paintings, collages from found materials and prints. Click here and here to see more about Matt.

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It was also the weekend of the annual Houston Art Crawl when artists whose studios are located downtown in the warehouse district and nearby open their doors for an open house.  The weather was good for it and there were lots of folks out. Many of the photographs I took below are not the art on view. We didn't get to all the studios---missed Vine Street and Diverse Works and probably others. Another time. Anyway, the pictures I took will tell you a bit of what I saw and the flavor of the event. Not all will have captions. My apologies to those artists whose names are missing. Photos are not in order any particular order either.  But the first image below is where we began.

Artist: Carter Ernst

Concrete wall with ghost sign.

Above and Below: Photos taken in one of the loft apartments. I don't know whose but the big C above and the strange black animal below are both paintings done by Matt Messinger whose work I saw at Winter Street. 

Artist Peter Dickson

John Runnels; House of Bausch ( A Danger to Be Safe In) Chartpack letters on tile & wood

Across the street.

Artist: Carter Ernst

Artist: Corrine Jones (from Nacogdoches)

These pieces were partly drawn and partly stitched. I didn't get the name of the artist.

The photographer talking about the images of Jo Ann Fleischhauer's installation at M. D. Anderson.
Click here to see more about this project. It is quite awesome.

More about Artist Jo Ann Fleischhauer click here and here.

William Reich: Bunny Love

Work by Tim Johnson

Just the floor.

John Runnels; Cigarette Chair, chair and cigarette butts

Streets of Houston

 

 Artist on right, art on left. We were nearing the end of our crawl for the day. This studio housed a sound studio as well as this hair dresser's salon.