Weekend Warrior

As many of you may know I'm in a little show called 20 to Watch at the Austin Museum of Art. The opening was this last weekend and kicked ass. Mama Uhlir was proud. And it's a good show overall, I think. Eric Zimmerman has a really nice installation involving an overhead projector covered with architectural model-style towers and little trees iluminating the wall. It activates the space in a good way and translates the ideas from his accompanying drawings effectively. Rebecca Ward painted a wall to loosely resemble a game of Tetris with the falling pieces handled via projected animation that almost perfectly matches the painted pieces. Surrounded by a field of black, it's a neat spacial effect. Jill Pangallo turned herself into a living doll in one of the best/creepiest performance/installation pieces I've seen in a while (although the question was raised what the impact of the piece would be to the public as the performance was limited to the members-only preview).

If you're in Austin, or want to come see the work and hang out, DO IT. Otherwise you can wait until the show comes to a venue near you. After Austin we go to Blue Star in San Antonio (Fall 2008), the Grace Museum in Abilene (Spring 2009), and then Diverseworks in Houston (Summer 2009) .

There's also a good discussion to have about the importance and relevance of shows like these. Since I'm an biased participant now, I'll leave it up to the blog team and the comments below to expand upon this bait. For now.