The Architecture, Design and Art Library has developed an online collection of interviews called Building Houston, which documents the oral history of Houston’s built environment, as told by the people who impacted it.  Architects, developers, planners, scholars, philanthropists, and community leaders discuss their work and its relationship to Houston’s urban fabric in this online collection.  Each subject is interviewed by a scholar or colleague who frames the discussion and provides context.  Ten recordings made earlier this year are now available in the UH Libraries’ audio/video repository.  Click on the link to see interviews with Leslie K. Elkins, Natalye Appel, James B. Thomas and others.

By selecting a language from the drop down menu at the bottom of the Architecture, Design, and Art Library’s page, users can now translate this site into 80 different languages.

I’m pleased to announce that Edith Villasenor has joined the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library staff.  Edith earned a BA in in Art History from UH and worked in the Jenkins Library as a student shelver from 2014-2016.  While a student she served as Vice President of the Blaffer Student Association and the Treasurer of the Jenkins Library Ambassadors.  Edith has worked as a docent at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and as a volunteer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Lawndale Art Center.  She interned in the Blaffer Art Museum’s Education Department and as an archival and curatorial assistant at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum.  In her new role as library supervisor, Edith will supervise the student shelvers as well as the Jenkins Library Student Ambassador program.  She will also be heavily involved in outreach activities and research instruction targeted at visual arts students enrolled in the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts.  Edith may be reached at evillasenor@uh.edu or at 713-743-2340.  Please join me in welcoming her back to UH.

This comprehensive five-volume set from Yale University Press is now part of the Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Collection in the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library.  Patrons may contact cwessinger@uh.edu to schedule a time to view this definitive work.

On view in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library until November 2017.  The artist, Isaac Farley, is now in the third year of an MFA program in painting.

My work is a form of storytelling. I want to tell stories of the lives of everyday people, like my family that is made up of people who were and are workers, either on ranches or in factories, and their desires, struggles, their triumphs, and tribulations.  Stories are rooted in oral traditions and cave paintings and are the basis of human history. When I try to tell a story without words, I think in images.  These images are influenced by movies, photography, and other art, and are most readily translated onto a two dimensional surface.

Often the work deals with America.  Not so much what America is or what it was, but the ideal, and myth of America.  America, the land of equal opportunity, where the truth is spoken, justice is fair and even, and where people live as they choose instead of what others impose on them.

Duality appears often in my work as innate and inborn opposing or balancing forces.  People are simultaneously advanced and primitive, capable of great acts of kindness and cruelty, with the ability to create both great art and terrible destruction.

Vietnam Sinfonie oder Desastres de la Guerra by Wolf Vostell

Materials from the German artist Wolf Vostell’s  Vietnam Sinfonie oder Désastres de la Guerra (Vietnam Symphony or Disasters of the War) are on display in the Architecture and Art Library’s upper mezzanine.  This piece was performed at the Galerie Van de Loo in Munich in 1972. Vostell is known for his role in the Fluxus art movement in the late 1950s in Europe. He was the founder of the European Happening scene and was one of the first video and installation artists.

Art Revolution: Women Artists from Around the World

On display in the south wing are books dedicated to groundbreaking women artists from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States.  These women challenge traditional assumptions and engage us in conversations that were previously unthinkable through their creative work in video art, photography, performance art, paintings, textiles, sculptures, room installations, drawings, etchings, collages and beyond. This exhibit highlights many different art movements including Hannah Höch’s work as a Dada artist in the Weimar period, Carolee Schneemann’s Fluxus’ work, Ana Medieta’s involvement in the Body art movement, Helen Marten’s contemporary art earning her the 2016 Turner Prize, Germaine Arnaktauyok’s work stemming from her Inuk childhood, Lorna Simpson’s Conceptual Photography and avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s installations.

The William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library is pleased to present Leah Bydalek’s first solo exhibition.

Fluorescent Lessons is on view from July to August 2017. Bydalek is a senior painting major at the University of Houston. Ms. Bydalek’s color palette was inspired by the pictorial artist Wayne Thiebaud, known for painting cakes. The artist also plays around with her memories and giving them a final twist.

Leah Bydalek’s art is on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library through August.

Artist’s statement:

I love it when the “truth” of a thing can be turned on its head to yield a novel experience.  It shows us that perceptions are malleable and that people have the potential to change.  This is the meeting point of the familiar and the unknown the beautiful and the disgusting the docile and the disobedient.

Interested in working for a museum?  Join us for a friendly conversation with museum professional Javier Sanchez Martinez and learn about his career and curatorial research.  Refreshments will be served.

RSVP to library.ambassadorsuh@gmail.com

A Geniza by Raphael Rubinstein, Professor of Critical Studies at UH’s School of Art, is on display in the upper mezzanine. A Geniza is a limited edition poem in a box inspired by Cairo, Egypt. The poem is fragmented into more than 100 pieces of paper, using various colored paper and different fonts, resulting in an eclectic and visually stimulating display. The poem is meant to be pieced together by each reader to create a distinctive itinerary through Cairo’s history and meaning.

On display in the south wing exhibit case: the LEGO Architecture series, curated by Library Specialist Julia Kress (and assembled by her son).  The LEGO structures are based upon great built works, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Villa Savoye, and complimented by books from the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library collection.  

An installation of drawings titled “The Shortest Distance, an Accidental Series,” which was on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library from February – August 2016, is now on view in the UH Digital Library.  The artist, Talha Kabasakal, is a junior majoring in industrial design who plans to design cars after graduation.  His series of works in ink on paper draws upon the visual culture of his native Turkey and his interest in car design.  The artist has played upon the notion of a personal geographic dichotomy by juxtaposing two places, two different countries – the familiar and the foreign, the old and the new, the past and the future.  Though each occupies discrete space, isolated at opposite sides of the composition, the two are connected by a bridge.  The artist expresses the belief that there should always be a bridge, a connection representing hope, remembrance, love…