Goodbye to plop: the rise of real public art
Scott Andrews sandrews@sacurrent.com Over the last decade or so two domains in the art world that were previously thought of as rather dull have taken on a new air of glamour. Fiber arts, once considered craft tradition and therefore (like anything with a folk or feminine heritage) not high art, are becoming the media of…
If you can’t follow the game, you won’t understand dance
Scott Andrews sandrews@sacurrent.com Reading last week’s Spuriosity, I was happy to see a point being made by a sports writer that should have come from the art world. Appreciating sports or art demands similar engagement by the viewer. The two endeavors aren’t so different, though they seem to mark two sides of a cultural divide…
One Question with Paul Varghese
Paul Varghese is a comedian who just happens to be of Indian heritage. The kind white people don’t have to feel ‘guilty’ about. That is unless you are descended from British Imperialists. (Oh wait — that’s right – you SHOULD be ashamed of yourselves! Now go read George Orwell’s ‘Burmese Days’ and think about what…
EPA head speaks against Texas’ greenhouse reg resistance
By Michael Barajas mbarajas@sacurrent.com The head of the Environmental Protection Agency made her rounds through San Antonio Friday, defending the agency’s rare decision to take over greenhouse gas permits in the state — a move that some GOP lawmakers have dubbed the agency’s “war on Texas.” Lisa P. Jackson, the EPA’s top administrator, visited Alamo…
Future of ‘Dirty Deely’ coal plant debated
Sonya Harvey sonyaharveytx@gmail.com A new report from Environment Texas titled “Dirty Energy’s Assault On Our Health: Mercury” released this week suggests CPS Energy’s coal-fired plants housed at Calaveras Lake are the 11th dirtiest in the state. With an estimated 16,350 pounds of mercury emitted in 2009 in Texas alone, the state ranks number one nationally.…
“In the Army” by Kenneth Weene
Introduction Kenneth Weene’s story “In the Army” has the calm, matter-of-fact strangeness of the Beat Generation. The Captain appears and disappears and what happens to him is not as important as how he reacts to it. The cast of characters who exist as sounding boards to his lovely and slightly sad personality (in that larger-than-life…
Hidden Message from #SOTU: America Needs More Burlesque!
OK, so maybe there wasn’t a drinking game for every time Obama said the word “boobies” during his State of the Union speech, but it sure would have been fun if there was! Regardless, it’s high time conservative San Antonio catches up with Mr. POTUS and gets freaky. Get a jump on the Valentine’s Day…
Content: An illustrated history of creation, circulation, and consumption
Content: An illustrated history by Sheldrake & Karoshikula is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
100 Palabras at Guadalupe Gallery holds mischief, heartbreak
By Veronica Salinas San Antonio Current Intern We often see words as simply text: small black shapes organized in predictable patterns floating against a white background. At the 100 Palabras exhibition at the Guadalupe Gallery the printed word — from elegiac prose to structured screenwriting – is used to create an inventive correspondence with a…
Opera Festival
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 More than 450 musically inclined youth between the ages of eight and 21 from 100 plus schools in the metropolitan area and surrounding counties make up five unique orchestras under the umbrella of Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA). For YOSA’s Opera Festival, Troy Peters directs future symphony stars in…
Mame
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Patrick Dennis’ 1955 bestseller Auntie Mame was such an instant success that no time was wasted adapting the novel for stage and screen. With Rosalind Russell in the title role, Auntie Mame opened on Broadway in 1957, earning several Tony nominations and a win for Peggy Cass, who stole the…
No Idea Festival 2011
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Expect anything but the explainable when heavy Denim and Fl!ght Gallery host the San Antonio leg of the 8th Annual No Idea Festival, which celebrates creative, improvised music from Texas and beyond. Percussionists Tim Feeney (who lectures at Cornell University) and Nick Hennies (who performs with the Austin New Music…
Carol Cisneros: Falling
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 A few weeks ago, artist and musician Carol Cisneros performed a “21st-century jazz sonata” with Jay Fort’s Nuclear Hamsters (Chuck Glave, George Prado, and Joe Gonzalez) at the opening reception for Falling, a survey of her music and art career currently on view at Bihl Haus. Although Falling (which is…
Rodney Crowell: Chinaberry Sidewalks Tour
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Gone is his mainstream success of the late ’80s and early ’90s, but Grammy-winning alternative country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell is doing perhaps the best work of his long, illustrious career. On January 18 he released his memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks (Knopf), and this January 29 show will find him there by…
Sandy Skoglund: The Artificial Mirror
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 When Sandy Skoglund’s large-scale photograph The Cocktail Party hit the gallery and museum scene almost two decades ago, it made a big splash. Not only was it screaming orange, funny, and lambasting the rampant consumerism of the Roaring ’80s, it was big. The work depicts a staid middle class hallmark…
Mame
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Patrick Dennis’ 1955 bestseller Auntie Mame was such an instant success that no time was wasted adapting the novel for stage and screen. With Rosalind Russell in the title role, Auntie Mame opened on Broadway in 1957, earning several Tony nominations and a win for Peggy Cass, who stole the…
Ledaswan: NUM83R5
Ledaswan: NUM83R5 Label: Self-released Release Date: 2011-01-26 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording A musically inclined family affair (with the exception of freshly welcomed bassist, Lalo Rodríguez), Ledaswan graces their SA faithful with an eagerly anticipated third stab at gloomy pop-rock ingenuity. Every track is aptly named in relation to the album’s title, save for the opening…
Destroyer: Kaputt
Destroyer: Kaputt Label: Merge Release Date: 2011-01-26 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Is the world really going to end in 2012? Let’s check out the signs: Hundreds of animals spontaneously dropping dead every five minutes? Check. Sarah Palin still taken seriously as a potential leader of the free world? Check. The best record of 2011 (so…
Praxis: Profanation: Preparations for a Coming Darkness
Praxis: Profanation: Preparations for a Coming Darkness Label: M.O.D. Technologies Release Date: 2011-01-26 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording To accurately translate the labyrinthine assemblage of sounds that make up Praxis would take more hyphens than even the most genre-specific record store would be willing to accommodate on its display signage. One of the constants in that…
ARTS San Antonio Presents: Vince Gill in Concert
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill boasts 20 studio albums, 40 hit singles (on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart), and 20 Grammys — more than any other male country artist. Based on recent concert reviews, the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter doesn’t disappoint when performing live. During a three-hour concert last…
Pinetop Perkins & Willie â??Big Eyesâ? Smith
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 With a fresh Grammy nomination for 2010’s Joined at the Hip (the first album to credit them both as bandleaders), Pinetop Perkins and Willile “Big Eyes” Smith return to Sam’s just six months after Perkins’ 97th birthday concert. In the late ’60s, the lifelong friends roomed together while touring with…
ARTSLAM! 5th Anniversary Party
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-26 Rather than challenging artists with visual parameters (superheroes, pirates, ninjas, the undead, etc.), ARTSLAM! returns to its original theme-less format in honor of five years of live “art mayhem.” L.A.-based artists Jim Mahfood (aka “Foodone”) and Dave Crosland (aka “King Gum”) “rock the canvas” with a live soundtrack courtesy of…
The Scientists get inside Sally’s Happy Hut
Before we get down to our very, very important business of figuring out just what the hell is up with Sally’s Happy Hut, I think a brief re-introduction is in order, in the form of a handy FAQ: Who, or what, are the Scientists? We are a group of intrepid, thirsty explorers dedicated to expanding…
A bit of con, a bit of protest in Bienko/Vormstein Artpace installations
Joshua Bienko is a trickster, a showman, and a bit of a con artist. His installation Ever So Much More So in WindowWorks gallery at Artpace is high on spectacle, but under all the glitz lies something tentative, almost silent. The street view exhibition space is a good fit for Bienko, who places fashion —…
Rededication of San Anto Cultural Arts’ mural, End Barrio Warfare (video)
A new office location, a re-dedicated mural, and San Anto Cultural Arts is off to a fast start for 2011. The mural “End Barrio Warfare” (detail, left) was first painted in 1998 on Guadalupe Street as a challenge to the youth of the Westside to lay aside their interpersonal and gang-related conflicts. Lead muralist John…
Best of Flash Fiction, January 2011
The Current’s Flash Fiction section is back in print with a monthly best-of from the Flash Fiction blog. Every month we’ll be running this column with my pick of the most original, touching, or intriguing flash fiction/prose poem/piece that appeared on the blog for that month. For the first run of it, I’m happy to…
Children who are men
Cinefile is a random reference guide that explores the vast catalogue of films available on Netflix instant viewing, with special emphasis on the interesting, the unusual, and the ones that got left behind. Consider Starman and The Big Lebowski. Here are two films with the always intriguing Jeff Bridges that offer vastly different performances, yet,…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: A few years ago, I moved to Tucson. In said city, I noticed that there were little piles of stuff accumulated on the medians of the main roads. It looks like what was Día de la Muertos paraphernalia — I’m not so gringo as to not know what’s up. These little piles of…
Scenes from the life of a mystic
Seven centuries before Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was bullied into silence by Church fathers who pronounced it improper for a bride of Christ to create poetry, another gifted nun was writing books, composing music, and practicing medicine. She also ran her own cloister. Reluctant to submit to male authority, Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)…
The art of the game
I worked at an Austin art museum as a gallery assistant for almost two years. In a nutshell, my job demanded constant walking in circles (about 10 miles per day). I was the guy that made sure you didn’t use all of five of your human senses in the galleries — no smelling, tasting, or…
Swan dive
To the average moviegoer, terms like “romantic comedy” and the less chivalrous-sounding “chick flick” are probably synonyms. A few clever filmmakers have discovered ways to divert from the typical clichés and create those rare date movies men and women can sit through without wondering why the hell they’re on a date with someone who enjoys…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What rewards do you deserve for all the good living and the hard work you’ve done since your last birthday? And what amends should you make for the mediocre living and the work you’ve shirked since your last birthday? If you choose this week to take care of these two matters…
Warming trend
Three years ago, Scott Kimble, a chiropractor and cattle rancher, was among the first of Karnes County residents to lease his mineral rights when landmen came calling for acreage above the Eagle Ford Shale, a geological formation rich in oil and gas 10,000 feet beneath a vast stretch of South Texas. After observing the oil…
The QueQue – January 26, 2011
SA2020 People from all over San Antonio overwhelmed the Tripoint YMCA on Saturday to participate in the fifth and final public work session of the city’s SA2020 initiative for a chance to share what they thought the city should look like nine years from now. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the vision was of a city that had vastly cut its…
Winter beer tasting
Omniboire has been threatening to do a beer tasting for many moons now, always stepping back from the precipice just in the nick of time. Fear was the major factor, for while we know a little something about wine, and can touch on spirits a tad, beer is, in comparison, tierra incognita. When we decided…
Texas budget cuts pack a wallop for students, elderly, and the ill
If you’re like most people, you probably look at TV and newspaper stories about Texas’ anticipated $27 billion budget shortfall and the proposed budget cuts likely to come and your eyes glaze over before deciding, “Well, it won’t affect me.” Think again. The Texas Legislative Budget Board last week released the first draft of a…
Jason Dady’s Tre Trattoria Downtown replaces Restaurant Insignia
The restaurant space in the Fairmount Hotel is cursed. No eatery stays for very long. Maybe it’s the location, the distance from the River Walk’s tourists, the restaurants themselves, who knows? Sage, Luca, and Polo’s all folded in this location. Now Jason Dady’s Restaurant Insignia is the latest victim. But as soon as it died,…
Too soon to keel-haul: Reasons for Mr. Cod
When I see superlatives, I’m driven to challenge them. Best taco, top 10 burgers, worst salad, I have to eat them all. So when I saw that Mr. Cod’s website claims they serve “UK’s Most Famous Fish & Chips,” I demanded a plate. Then I tried a few other dishes. The results suggest Mr. Cod’s…
Phonolux seeking extras for video
The guys from Phonolux are some of the best songwriters, singers, and multi-instrumentalists in town. Their self-titled 2009 debut was one of that year’s best, and I’ve always wanted to catch them live. Due to one curse or another, I’ve never been able to do so. My next chance to see their show is 10…
Live & Local: Ledaswan CD release party at Nightrocker Live (with video)
If Ledaswan don’t already have a reputation for being one of the most courteous indie bands in South Texas, I’m going to start the buzz right here. “If everyone could please buy our album, that would be great,” said guitarist Jaime Monzón — as if he was informing a congregation of upcoming church functions —…
New Jersey’s Ill Niño roars in on a metal wind
Latin metal masters Ill Niño blast through San Antonio with “Restore The Insanity,” a U.S. headlining jaunt that ends their two-year absence from the American touring landscape. The New Jersey six-piece is hitting the road in support of their fifth full-length, Dead New World, released via their new label, Victory Records, in October 2010. Ill…
San Antonio Beer Week a reality
San Antonio Beer Week has become a reality. May 15-22, San Antonio will celebrate the beer culture that arisen over the last 15 years for the benefit of locals and thirsty travelers alike. In the late fall (“Beer me, SA,” November 3, 2010), this column made the case that the time had come for the…
Drutt leaving ED position at Artpace
Artpace San Antonio’s Board of Directors announced today that Matthew J. W. Drutt is leaving his position as executive director after more than four years at the helm. Artpace External Affairs Director Mary Heathcott will step in as interim managing director. During Drutt’s tenure he expanded the non-profit’s programming with exhibitions and artist and curator…
Citizens pay when local lawmakers try to tackle immigration issues
By Michael Barajas While many Texas lawmakers seem to have their hearts set on cracking down on illegal immigration at the state level, two national reports released this week show how costly the resulting legal battles can be, draining taxpayer dollars in the name of enforcement. The reports released by the Center for American Progress…
