VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Project Row Houses is excited to announce the opening of Artist Installation Round 34: Matter of FOOD.  Curated by Ashley Clemmer Hoffman and Linda Shearer. Artists & Community Talk, Wednesday, March 23 at 7pm.  Opening Reception Saturday, March 26, 4pm-7pm.  On view through June 19.

Participating Artists include: Tarsha M. Gary, Michael Pribich , RootDown Htown, Toni Tipton-Martin & Luanne Stovall, Jorge Rojas, Tattfoo Tan

Opening Reception: Featuring Brother-n-Law’s BBQ, Melange Creperie, Jorge Rojas’ Tortilla Oracle, Cooking Demo by Chef Tarsha, Family Activities, Texas Folklife’s “Place At The Table or Food Story Sharing” and greenHouse openHouse: Celebrating one year with greenHouse collective!

Artists, chefs, historians, nutritionists, and gardeners have been invited to explore an array of food-related topics that include the labor conditions that bring us readily accessible food, the process of urban farming and sustainable practice, the role of food in our belief systems and daily rituals, the image of the African American cook, and the recipes that are passed down from generation to generation preserving cultural heritage and family legacy.

Over the years, Project Row Houses has shaped itself in response to the needs identified within the Northern Third Ward community. When Michelle Obama began addressing her concern around “Food Deserts, areas with little to no access to healthy fruits and vegetables,” PRH was able to relate. With over forty households now living on our ten-block site, some of them without regular transportation, the lack of accessible, healthy and affordable food is a growing concern.

A year ago a group of residents and artists responded to this need by forming the GreenHouse Collective, and exploring the practice of aquaponic and raised bed gardening on PRH’s site. Simultaneously, another community-based garden, ECOTONE, situated one block away, has emerged and is thriving. Healthy cafes and food trucks are slowly getting established, farmers markets and co-ops are becoming more available and the idea of a community grocery store at PRH is being discussed.

Round 34: Matter of FOOD emerged as an opportunity to not only address issues of nutrition, accessibility and sustainable urban farming practices but to also celebrate how food traditions enrich lives, create connections and preserve history both in our Third Ward community and beyond. In researching the many creative practitioners who are exploring food-related topics, the role of food in our belief systems surfaced along with social justice issues around food production.

Round 34 explores some of the very intricate ways in which food affects, sustains, and improves our lives. Our hope is that it can serve as an educational vehicle, creating awareness, bringing people together and providing opportunities for dialogue.
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Tarsha M. Gary (Houston, TX): Food for Thought
ECOTONE (ECO-logical aTONEment), a community garden based in Houston’s Third Ward, will create a multi-component installation that includes a Contemporary/Retro Urban Garden, a visual Tree of Life, and “Showing Houston Growing Green,” a Photographic Awareness Campaign & Exhibit capturing Houston’s leaders in the green movement. http://www.ecotoneworld.com/

RootDown Htown (Houston, TX): The Soul of My Food
The term soul food is a true signifier of African American culture, and many of its defining elements can also be found in kitchens of nearly every culture. The Soul of My Food will be shaped by community participants, chef and novice alike, who contribute ‘soul food’ recipes, stories and illustrations. There will be a call for handwritten ‘soul food’ recipes, stories and illustrations from our neighborhood, city, and nation. The project will evolve, as soul food recipes do, with the input of more and more cooks. Monthly cooking competitions will be open to the public for tasting and judging.

Toni Tipton-Martin & Luanne Stovall (Austin, TX): Hearth House: A Period Room
Visitors to Hearth House are welcomed into the kitchens of America’s unsung heroes, the African-American cooks who cooked our meals, sewed our clothes, salved our wounds and elevated our character at the kitchen table. The installation features black and white photographs of black women at work in and around the kitchen hearth in slave and sharecropper’s cabins and in shotgun houses throughout the south. As juxtaposition between past and present, the front room of the house will feature contemporary “pie” stories.
http://www.tonitiptonmartin.com/ttm/Welcome.html
http://luannestovall.com/collab.html

Michael Pribich (New York, NY): Sugarland
The installation includes cut sugar cane, and references the current labor practices associated with the Caribbean sugar cane harvest industry. The work reminds us of the vast production effort required, and how the sugar industry, and all of us in the developed world benefit from these practices. This project is particularly relevant to Houston, a significant participant in the sugar industry.
http://www.michaelpribich.com/home.htm

Jorge Rojas (Salt Lake City, UT): Gente de Maiz
Cultures throughout the Americas have long worshiped the Corn Mother, as a deity of plenty and of fertility, often linked to renewal of life, and protection. Gente de Maiz explores myths and legends surrounding Corn/Maize and its uses in mystical practices. Visitors attending the opening reception are invited to Tortilla Oracle, a participatory performance where corn tortillas are prepared and read in a divining ceremony. Gente de Maiz and Tortilla Oracle are part of the artist’s Live Gestures, an ongoing series of performance-based, interactive works. http://www.phenomenaproject.org/node/41

Tattfoo Tan (New York, NY): S.O.S. + The GreenHouse Collective
The historic Row House will serve as a greenhouse, an incubator of ideas, a display of artifacts and documentation from the S.O.S (Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship.) projects. S.O.S. is an artistic, green and sustainable campaign, conceptualized by the artist, Tattfoo. The space will physically and conceptually serve to connect S.O.S with PRH’s GreenHouse Collective (GHC). Encouraging more activities with nearby Ecotone, GHC in raising chickens, selling eggs, growing herbs and more. Workshops, interventions and film screenings will take place over the course of the round.
http://www.tattfoo.com/

Also on view, Spirit House by Tamalyn Miller
2517 Holman Street
March 26th – June 19th

In conjunction with Round 34, Project Row Houses has invited Ann Harithas to curate one of the artist project houses. She has invited New York-based artist and educator Tamalyn Miller to transform 2517 Holman Street.

SPIRIT HOUSE explores cross-cultural methods of house protection used to attract beneficent influences or repel malevolent ones. Having grown up in Amish country, Tamalyn took the hex sign as a starting point. The Pennsylvania Dutch practice Braucherei is a magical system that protects person, house and livestock.

Melding Christian and pagan elements, it bears many similarities to Southern Hoodoo. Her project features oversized dollies- an age-old decorative item of protection, made of clothesline, stirrup and electrical wire; They serve as fetishes to ward away or trap negative forces (not influences) and protect the house and home.

About Project Row Houses exhibitions:  Seven of the original row houses are dedicated art spaces, hosting unique, interactive installations by artists from around the world. Each “Round” of installations lasts four months, and focuses on a particular theme that portrays, reflects and/or involves the surrounding Third Ward community.