SPECIAL EVENTS

The Houston Downtown Management District (Downtown District) will host a Market Square Park Grand Re-opening!    The newly re-designed park "officially" opens August 28 with Niko Niko's Greek Cafe, gardens, lots of shade and the most amazing dog runs in town.  

Schedule of August 28 Events:

2pm-6pm
Dog Activities sponsored by the Houston Dog Park Assn.
Historic District Tours sponsored by Greater Houston Preservation Alliance
Meet & Greet w/Dimitri Fetokakis of Niko Niko's-- free coffee samples!

6 pm Ribbon Cutting & Fanfare w/Mayor Annise Parker
7 pm Singer/Songwriter Andrew Karnavas
8 pm The John Evans Band

Downtown Redevelopment Authority and the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department have spearheaded the redesign that gives the urban green space a much-needed makeover. Art installations are a major component of the park's redesign. The work in Market Square Park  is a collaboration of artists coordinated by DiverseWorks. Those same artists – Richard Turner, Paul Hester, James Surls and Malou Flato – have played a role in the redesign, along with newcomer Ketria Scott.

Artist Biographies:

MALOU FLATO
Malou Flato was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and earned a B.A. in Theater Arts from Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT in 1975. She and her husband divide their time between Austin, Texas and Paradise Valley, Montana just north of Yellowstone National Park.

Flato works among multiple mediums and disciplines including sculpture, ceramics, painting and drawing. Flato is perhaps best known for her mosaics such as the San Antonio Mission scenes on the Houston Street bridge in San Antonio.

Her work in ceramic tile includes murals near a school in Seattle, Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, several Central Market locations in Texas, and Breckenridge Children’s Hospital in Austin, TX. She has also integrated her work with technology, blending digitally scanned still images with paint and using computers to map out paintings before creating them.

Her work is on display at the McMurtry Gallery (Houston, TX), Visions West Gallery (Livingston, MT), The Hunt Gallery (San Antonio, TX), and The Davis Gallery (Austin, TX), among several others.

PAUL HESTER
Photographer Paul Hester earned a B.A. from Rice University in 1971 and an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. He was the founding president of the Houston Center for Photography in 1982.

Hester has been teaching a beginning photography course in the Department of Visual Arts at Rice University since 2003. He is also an architectural photographer for the Rice Design Alliance’s Cite magazine. He owns and operates Hester + Hardaway – a photography company – with his creative partner, Lisa Hardaway.

Hester’s work has been exhibited at The Menil Collection, Rice University, The University of Houston College of Architecture, Williams Tower, and The Houston Public Library in addition to an extensive list of books and magazines. His work can also be found among the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the National Museum of American art in Washington, DC.

KETRIA BASTIAN SCOTT
Houston sculptor Ketria Scott is largely self-taught in her discipline. She graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1989 without taking a single sculpture class until enrolling in 3D design during her final semester, sparking what would become a lifelong passion.

After graduation, Scott took a job working in the non-profit sector as an administrator. She was able to use her sculpturing skills to repurpose toys for children with cerebral palsy. Although happy working for non-profits, Scott’s calling remained art. She met Jim Neikirk who owned an ornamental ironworks shop and volunteered at the Orange Show. Neikirk taught her how to weld, and a new career path was forged.

Scott currently works at the Ken King Foundry, crafting bronze work of local and national sculptors on projects ranging in scale from the intimate to the monumental. She has advanced skills and experience in mold making, welding and metal fabrication. Their work at Ken King includes a large contemporary sculpture for the Guggenheim in New York, and a planter series for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

JAMES SURLS
James Surls is a world renowned modernist sculptor best known for his unpainted wooden sculptures. His work is among the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum, The Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and many others.

An East Texas native, Surls graduated from Sam Houston State Teachers College in 1966 and from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1968. He taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1969 through 1976 before moving to Splendora, Texas to raise his family. Surls then moved to Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado in 1997 where he has lived ever since.

His work is currently on display at the Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston and the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe and New York. Surls also spent several years working with the Lawndale Alternative Space in Houston, Texas.

RICHARD TURNER
Richard Turner is co-director of the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University in Orange, California where he also teaches sculpture, design and Asian art history.

Turner has been an active public artist since 1980, working individually and with design teams on projects ranging from police stations to waste water treatment plants, public parks to light rail. His team’s work for Portland Oregon’s light rail stations won a Presidential Award in 2001. His work is currently on display in Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Anaheim, Seattle and Portland.

Turner received his B.A. from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and his M.F.A from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has also studied in Taiwan and in India as a Fulbright Scholar. Turner resides in the city of Orange, California. 

Artwork in the park will be managed by the Houston Arts Alliance, the organization that manages and maintains the City of Houston’s 400+ piece art collection.