LITERATURE + LECTURES

Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts - UH and Project Row Houses present Communograph Artist Talk: Hitting the Pavement: The Politics of Community Based Art Today - A conversation with Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses and artist Ashley Hunt, Wednesday, October 12, at 7pm. LOCATION: University of Houston, Dudley Recital Hall, School of Art.

Project Row Houses Founder Rick Lowe (pictured) is an artist whose work is inspired by the art of painter and muralist John Biggers who celebrated shotgun communities and Joseph Beuys who spoke about “social sculpture” and the idea of society as a whole as a work of art. Lowe has been recognized internationally for his work in urban revitalization and cultural preservation most recently receiving the Leonore Annenberg Award for Art and Social Justice in 2010. He was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard and also received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.

Project Row Houses has grown from its original site of twenty-two shotgun style houses on one and a half blocks to over fifty-five buildings on almost ten blocks.

Lowe will have a public discussion about art and social practice, a practice that emphasizes people in their relationships to each other and their surroundings, with Ashley Hunt. Hunt is currently an artist-in-residence at Project Row Houses and the creator of the Communograph Project.

Ashley Hunt is an artist and activist who uses video, photography, mapping and writing to engage social movements, modes of learning and public discourse. He is Co-Director of the Photography and Media program at CalArts.

This is part of the Communograph: Mapping Community Through Creative Action series, a series focusing on the exploration of the grassroots creativity found in the Third Ward. This series aims to help evaluate how the Arts at University of Houston can become an intellectual resource, redirecting its academic facilities and assets towards strengthening connections within the immediate neighboring community.

Please visit www.mitchellcenterforarts.org  for more information.