Upcoming Educational Programs

Join us for an artist's talk immediately before the opening of Felipe Lopez's The Liquidity of a Right.  The Artist's Talk will be at 5:00 pm; the Opening Reception will begin at 6:00 pm.

Get an early look at this new exhibition, in which Lopez elevates the concepts of light and water in a contemporary sculpture format. His work takes the Edison Bulb form and marries it with a commonplace bath faucet. The is some of Lopez’s strongest work to date, both conceptually and visually. It addresses the necessity of water to daily life while emphasizing the fragility of the earth's clean water supply.

“We are allowing old tech to affect the future of our health in an age when we know how precious life’s greatest asset is which makes up 60% of our physical state…” says Lopez. “Regardless of people thoughts towards climate change, politics, or manufacturing practices, water is as precious as life itself.”

Felipe Lopez is a multi-dimensional, self-taught visual artist based in Houston, Texas. Born in New York, Lopez began his career with his mixed media drawings & paintings. He has exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Exposure; Cindy Lisica Gallery; PrintHouston; the Aspen Art Fair; and Scope Miami, among others. He has been a facilitator at Artist INC with Fresh Arts, and is a recipient of a 2019 HAA Individual Artist Grant. 

Join us for a lecture by Clare Elliott on the subject of Forrest Bess, a Gulf Coast abstract artist. The event will take place at The Printing Museum, 1324 West Clay Street, Saturday, March 2 at 11:00 a.m.

A unique figure in the history of American art, Forrest Bess (1911-1977) lived an isolated existence in a fishing camp on the Gulf Coast. He painted visions that he saw in dream states, creating an abstract vocabulary that was mysterious, even to him, and he develop idiosyncratic theories about his work. “Forrest Bess: Painter-Fisherman” explores Bess’s curious and compelling abstractions and the letters that he wrote explaining how they relate do his theories of symbology and hermaphroditism.

Clare Elliott is Associate Research Curator at the Menil Collection, Houston. In 2013 she curated “Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible,” the first retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work in more than twenty years. Elliott received her M.A. in the history of art from Williams College in Massachusetts.

The Printing Museum Hours:
Friday & Saturday, 10am – 4pm with guided tours at 11am & 2pm
Tuesday – Thursday, Group Tours by appointment only.

Join the Visual Arts Alliance for a tour of “Diversity and Richness” - part of the Latino Art Now! Conference (LAN!) - with exhibition curator Rosa Ana Orlando. The exhibition features artists with connections to Latin American culture addressing themes of The Real, The Magical, and The Abstract.

Charles Criner, artist in residence at The Printing Museum for over a decade, will give a lecture on his inspiration and experience creating his large body of work. His lithographs and paintings reflect his own childhood and the larger history of black people in the United States. He is especially known for his posters celebrating Juneteenth, the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in Texas.

RSVP now. 

Self-taught urban artist Anat Ronen, whose large-scale murals often ask the viewer to consider deep questions about their world, offers her thoughts on the artist's intention.

Cindy Lisica, owner of Cindy Lisica Gallery, will offer a lecture entitled "The Artist as Brand: Takashi Murakami."

For the last 15+ years, Cindy Lisica has taken her curatorial research and professional work to cities such as Paris, Miami, London, Taipei, Marseille, Berlin, Helsinki, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo. In addition to championing artists' careers through gallery shows, she has worked in museums including The Warhol, MOCA Los Angeles, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and the Menil Collection. She is a scholar on Takashi Murakami and Andy Warhol and regularly presents at international speaking engagements and conferences. As a professor, she has taught at University of Houston, National University (Los Angeles), and University of Pittsburgh, and currently teaches multiple graduate courses Art History, Gallery and Museum Practices, and Writing About Art at Houston Baptist University. She regularly serves as a guest curator, juror, and speaker at museums, universities and other art institutions.

Jay Wehnert is a Houston based writer, curator and collector. His new book, Outsider Art in Texas: Lone Stars, is the product of his explorations into the nature of what is now referred to as outsider art and its origins in Jean Dubuffet’s concepts of art brut. In it, he examines the lives and art of eleven extraordinary Texas artists who exemplify an essential isolation at the core their creativity. Jay Wehnert will share their art and stories with a special focus on three Houstonians. Mr. Wehnert will sign copies of his book Outsider Art in Texas: Lone Stars, following his presentation.

Chris Higham invites three collectors, Terry Hamman, Marc Schindler, and Meredith "Butch" Jack, to offer their unique insights into the process and experience of acquiring and curating a private art collection.

Join VAA for discussion of social commentary in contemporary visual arts. Panelists include arts and culture writers Catherine Anspon and Garry Reece, artists Ann Johnson and Rabéa Ballin, and gallerist Johnathon Hopson.

Tickets are FREE and available through the Match Houston Box office 713-521-4533.

Door open at 6:00 p.m.

Join VAA for a gallery talk with Terrell James at 10:30 a.m. before her 11:00 a.m. opening showcasing her new work at Hiram Butler Gallery.

Terrell James (b.1955) is a painter and artist based in Houston. She produces oil paintings, vigorous mural-scaled work to small panel works. Throughout her 35-year career, she has also produced studied works on paper, including etchings, lithographs, monoprints, and drawings. She has worked in bronze and clay, producing small-scale sculptures, and in patinated steel, producing large flat works very like paintings. James has also worked in various mediums producing site-specific and impermanent installations around the world.

Her paintings are interpretations of landscapes, internal and external, and memory, real and intuited (or personal and collective).