Origins and Legacies: Celebrating the Founding Artists of Project Row Houses
Exhibition ends March 17, 2024.
3131 Emancipation Ave., 2nd Floor., Houston, TX 77004
Curated by Robert Hodge and drawn from Angelique and Garnet Coleman's personal art collection, the Center for Civic and Public Policy Improvement launches its new art space in Houston's Third Ward with an inaugural exhibition of works by Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Floyd Newsom, Bert Samples and Jesse Lott.
Elevating Houston's Art Scene: Grand Opening of CCPPI's 3131 Gallery in One Emancipation Center
The heart of Houston's culturally rich Third Ward is set to witness the emergence of a remarkable artistic and public policy beacon as the Center for Civic and Public Policy Improvement (CCPPI) proudly announces the grand opening of the 3131 Gallery. This vibrant new gallery in One Emancipation Center promises to be a fresh platform for emerging local artists, celebrating their creative vision in a setting that represents the modern promise and history of Third Ward's Emancipation district.
About the Inaugural Exhibition:
Origins and Legacies: Celebrating the Founding Artists of Project Row Houses
Works by Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, George Smith, and Jesse Lott
The inaugural exhibition is a tribute to the visionary artists whose pioneering work laid the cornerstone for the artistic and cultural resurgence of Project Row Houses. This compelling collection unfolds the tapestry of creativity, resilience, and the transformative power of art and art for policy change, offering a glimpse into the heart of this influential movement.
A Vision for the Community Gallery:
The 3131 Gallery envisions a dynamic, ever-evolving space that curates exhibitions every three months, providing a platform for diverse artists to display their works and share their unique perspectives. This annual programming consists of four active shows, dedicating a full year to celebrating and promoting local artistry. Inclusivity and dialogue are central to this gallery's mission, featuring artist and public policy talks that dive into the creative process, inspirations, and the stories behind captivating works, advancing the community.
Honoring Garnet Coleman's Profound Contributions:
The inaugural exhibition takes its inspiration from the exceptional contributions of Garnet Coleman, a luminary in both public service and arts support. The exhibition is a tribute to Coleman's dedication, featuring his personal art collection, including the captivating artwork that graces the CCPPI building's exterior. His visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to nurturing and promoting the arts have made this extraordinary display possible.
Garnet Coleman's journey in public service began in 1991, leading to significant contributions within our community. He has been a tireless advocate for essential causes, impacting countless lives. His passionate support for local artists is truly inspiring, underscoring his vital role in nurturing our artistic ecosystem.
The 3131 Gallery at CCPPI is poised to be a hub of creativity, collaboration, and inspiration, bringing artists and art enthusiasts together.
Contact Information:
For inquiries or additional information, please contact Alex Bracey 713-446-4023
The 3131 Gallery at CCPPI promises to be an integral part of our community, providing a platform for artists to thrive and for us to celebrate the arts that enrich our lives. We hope you can join us for this momentous occasion and embark on this creative journey with us.
Media Contact:
Robert Hodge Chief Curator This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 713-202-1065
Garnet Coleman Founder and Collector This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 713-302-4461
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
About CCPPI:
The Center for Civic and Public Policy Improvement (CCPPI) is dedicated to supporting and nurturing the creative and civic aspirations of our community. Our mission is to promote dialogue, inclusivity, and the arts within Houston and anywhere people need a champion. The 3131 Gallery at One Emancipation Center represents a pivotal step in fulfilling this mission, offering a space where emerging artists can thrive and the community can celebrate its vibrant culture and fulfill its destiny.
About the Artists
JAMES BETTISON
James Bettison was a spirited visual artist, performer, and sculptor in Houston, TX. In vibrant color, his work fused realism and the abstract, and in his life, he stood as a testament to perseverance. After moving to Houston in 1980, Bettison appeared in an amazing number of groups and numerous solo shows throughout the city. In 1991, Bettison was hit with a series of surreal and tragic occurrences. First, a fire started in his home and studio, and most of his work burned. Soon after, he contracted spinal meningitis and fell into a coma. Despite doctors doubting his recovery, Bettison miraculously regained consciousness. Eventually, Bettison felt that he was at a similar place in his work, to where he was before the coma. Throughout these life-changing events, he came together with six fellow visionary artists to begin Project Row Houses. Bettison passed away and joined the ancestral realm May 11th, 1997. We work to honor his example of community and perseverance through the collective actions of the social sculpture that is Project Row Houses.
BERT LONG, JR.
Bert Long, Jr. was a painter, photographer, and sculptor who worked with traditional materials and ice. His personal philosophy was to never plan and to go with the organic flow that life provided. For Long, art was a way of elevation. He took his first art class in high school, but most of what he learned about art came from spending many hours studying art books at the public library. Born and raised in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Long had a successful career as a chef before dedicating his life to art in 1979. Long was key in establishing a connected artistic community in the city, asserting Houston as a major art center in the art world. In his career, he joined with six fellow artists to start Project Row Houses. On February 1, 2013, Long passed away and joined the ancestral realm, but his work lives on as we carry out the mission, he left behind with Project Row Houses.
JESSE LOTT
Jesse Lott was a prolific artist known for his wire and wood sculptures, papier-mâché figures and collages made from found materials within an aesthetic he has named “urban frontier art”. Lott’s practice involved turning trash into treasure and combining it with the spirit of activism. Lott’s passion for the community still transcends through decades, as he even held workshops at his studio to inspire student who otherwise have not had access to art. During the 1950s, his family relocated from Simmesport, Louisiana to Texas, eventually settling in Houston’s Fifth Ward. Alongside six artists also seeking to use art as a resource, Lott’s community-oriented philosophy and his Artists in Action program helped spark the creation of Project Row Houses.
RICK LOWE
Rick Lowe is a distinguished artist and community organizer who resides in Houston. Over the past thirty years, Lowe has worked both inside and outside of art world institutions by participating in exhibitions and developing his socially engaged art projects rooted in community building. For nearly 30 years, he put aside his own studio practice and fully submerged into the social reality of creative production that seeks to be a catalyst of creatively transforming neighborhoods and communities. Born in Eufaula, Alabama, Lowe moved to Houston, Texas in 1985. Lowe co-founded the Commerce Street Artists Warehouse SAW (1985-2010), and later the Union of Independent Artists, before joining with six fellow visionary artists to begin Project Row Houses.
FLOYD NEWSUM
With a career spanning over four decades, Floyd Newsum‘s paintings, drawings, and prints reflect bold colors and whimsical motifs from African and African American folklore. Using artifacts from many cultures, Newsum’s work explores social and environmental issues. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee during the 1960’s gave him a front row seat to the Civil Rights Movement, influencing and informing his motivations and worldview. In 1976, Newsum became a professor for University of Houston – Downtown, where he continues to teach today. During this time, he joined with six fellow visionary artists and together, established Project Row Houses.
BERT SAMPLES
Bert Samples is an experienced and spirited painter and conservator in Houston, TX. Samples developed his own spirit-based ceremony in artmaking, invoking a heady brew of imagery inspired by dreams, myth, movies, music, and potent magic in his work. Born and raised in Houston, TX. Samples studied under legendary Houston artists and teachers James Surls, John Biggers, and Kermit Oliver, while attending TSU (Texas Southern University). Understanding the importance of uplifting community and seeking to use Art as a resource for this, Samples joined in with six fellow artists to found Project Row Houses.
GEORGE SMITH
George Smith is a major visual artist and retired professor, who over the course of his significant art career has created powerful, original and immensely dignified artworks in welded steel, works on paper and other media that reflect his aesthetic orientation as well as his experience with steel construction. On one level his sculptural works communicate his spiritual ambition and synthesize three fundamental sources: the sense of scale and the intuitive look of Abstract Expressionism, the industrial geometry of Minimal Art, and the striations, expressive symbols of sacred geometry inspired by the Dogon peoples of West Africa. Smith came to Houston with his family in 1981, after being recruited to teach Sculpture at Rice University, where he taught until his retirement in 2010. In 1993, he joined six other prolific Houston Artists, and together they established Project Row Houses.
PROJECT ROW HOUSES ARTISTS FEATURED ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
The New York Times Style Magazine named the works of Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith, Project Row Houses, 1993, as one of The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since World War II.
Three artists, a curator and a writer came together to discuss the pieces that have not only best reflected the era, but have made an impact.
By Thessaly La Force, Zoë Lescaze, Nancy Hass and M.H. Miller
Oct. 15, 2020
On a recent afternoon, the artists Dread Scott, Catherine Opie and Shirin Neshat, as well as T contributor Nikil Saval and Whitney Museum of American Art assistant curator Rujeko Hockley, joined me on Zoom for a conversation about protest art. I had asked each to nominate five to seven works of what they considered the most powerful or influential American protest art (that is, by an American artist or by an artist who has lived or exhibited their work in America) made anytime after World War II. We focused specifically on visual art — not songs or books — and the hope was that together, we would assemble a list of the top 25. But the question of what, precisely, constitutes protest art is a thorny one — and we kept tripping over it. Is it a slogan? A poster? Does it matter if it was in a museum, in a newspaper or out on the street? Does impact matter? Did it change what you think or believe? Must it endure? What does that mean? And what is the difference, anyway, between protest art and art that is merely political?
It should go without saying that our answers to these questions, as well as the list we produced (which is ordered by the flow of our conversation), are not definitive. A different group on a different day would have come up with a different list, but disagreement and debate were always at the heart of this project. The panelists spoke candidly about the protest art that changed them or their ideas of the world in profound ways. We discussed the silent work that art does — when it makes us brave and when it makes us believe in our collective capacity to create change. There is simply no denying that it is a dark time in the world right now. There are many reasons to feel hopeless and afraid — we are experiencing, as Neshat pointed out, crises in every aspect of our 244-year-old democracy: about feminism, about human rights, about immigration, about poverty, about housing, about our health care system, about combating systemic racism, about the environment, about our very belief in what is good and right. Still, we managed to end the conversation that day on a note of resilience and joy — a lesson for all of us in the long days ahead. — Thessaly La Force
14. Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples and George Smith, Project Row Houses, 1993
Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses (1993), photographed in 2015. Courtesy of Project Row Houses. Photo: Peter Molick
Andrea Bowers’s 2010 installation, “Hope in Hindsight,” at Project Row Houses. Courtesy of Project Row Houses. Photo: Eric Hester
A 2010 opening at Project Row Houses. Courtesy of Project Row Houses
In 1992, the Alabama-born artist Rick Lowe, then 31, had been living in Houston for seven years when a handful of high school students visited him at his studio. At the time, he was making large-scale paintings and sculptures inspired by the poverty and inequality he saw around him in the city’s Third Ward, but then one of the kids asked him a question he could not answer: If you’re an artist, why don’t you come up with a creative solution to the problem? That encounter sparked Project Row Houses, a now almost 30-year-long nonprofit enterprise that vividly examines the porosity between art and activism. Influenced by the German artist and agitator Joseph Beuys, the progenitor of “social sculpture,” and the work of John T. Biggers, who painted haunting, impressionistic scenes, Lowe and a group of collaborators raised money to buy 22 shotgun houses, and renovated them for artists’ residencies and community use. Maintaining their pier-and-beam structures was not cost effective, but Lowe felt it was important to celebrate the African-American vernacular, first erected in West Africa and brought eventually to New Orleans. Behind eight houses that to this day are occupied for up to five months by artists, Lowe and his collaborators renovated others for single mothers to use for up to two years. And over the decades, the project has expanded to include a series of low-to-moderate-income duplex residences and created almost a dozen local social programs. “We can approach our lives as artists, each and every one of us,” Lowe told The New York Times in 2006. “If you choose to, you can make every action a creative act.” — N.H.
TLF: Does protest art have an expiration date or should it endure?
CO: History doesn’t have an expiration date. That’s my answer to that. Art, in my mind, has always been about continuing a dialogue, that continues to inspire as it educates. Ru, I’m going to call on you because I’m interested in the curator’s perspective.
TRANSFORM, PRESERVE, EMPOWER: Leading Community Change through Art
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Executive produced and conceived by CCPPI. Copyright November 2021. All rights reserved.
Filmed and narrated by Naomi Carrier (TCAALH) and Niles Dillard (Superior Video Production).
