Douglas Newby Insights - Page 28
First Museum Show
The first major art show for an artist is a big deal. The first major solo museum exhibition for an artist is maybe even a bigger deal. It is also a big deal to the museum to be able to have the first major solo exhibition of an artist. The recent opening featuring Jonas Wood at the Dallas Museum of Art was a triumph for both the artist and the museum. It was also a joy for all of those that attended. Jonas Wood had his first major New York show just ten years ago. Now, just days before his 42nd birthday, the DMA is celebrating his work with this mid-career exhibition. This museum opening was my favorite art opening in a long time. It included the genuine excitement of the artist who was enjoying his first museum show, the pride of his extended family all in attendance, the keen interest of gallery owners from New York, Los Angeles and Dallas who were also attending the opening, and collectors of his work from Dallas and across the country that were in attendance, as were couple number one. Those seeing his work in person for the first time were also thrilled. Enthusiasm for the arts, not pretense, was the mood. Kudos to the DMA Director Agustin Arteaga and Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, who initiated, curated, and organized this exhibition.
#JonasWood #Artist #DallasMuseumOfArt @DallasMuseumArt #ArtOpening #MuseumOpening #Fashion #Dallas #Painting #Art #ArtsDistrict #Museum #art
Dress for Painting
There is often much conversation on how one should dress for an art opening or how art patrons were dressed for the event. The specific museum, gallery, or featured artist might often subliminally or consciously guide these sartorial decisions. It is fun to see when someone hits the tone of the evening exactly right with their attire. At this exhibition, Beverly gets my enthusiastic nod for so closely tracking Henri Rousseau’s influence on this painting with her beautiful green mid-length open jacket.
#HenriRousseau #JonasWood #Artist #DallasMuseumOfArt @DallasMuseumArt #ArtOpening #MuseumOpening #Fashion #ArtAttire #Dallas #Painting #Art #ArtsDistrict #Museum #joyspotting
Mother – Theater Designer
Not everyone grows up with their kitchen woodwork painted purple, but not everyone has a mother like artist Jonas Wood’s mother who was an artist and theater designer. We can see the colorful expression that artist Jonas Wood grew up with from this painting of the family home in Weston, Massachusetts, where he was raised. He was the beneficiary of this colorful exuberance as a child. We are the beneficiaries of his exuberant art now. The joy of Jonas Wood’s work seen at the Dallas Museum of Art solo exhibition spilled over to the people that attended his opening at the DMA. His art is strong, expressive, and brings a smile to the viewer.
#PurpleWoodwork #JonasWood #DallasMuseumOfArt @DallasMuseumArt #Kitchen #MuseumOpening #Dallas #ArtOpening #Art #Artist #Design #Color #ArtsDistrict #TheaterDesigner #Mother #WestonMA #joyspotting
Scholar Studying Up
Read, look, or listen are three approaches to learning about the Jonas Wood exhibition opening at the DMA. A prominent gallery owner and fellow SMU Town & Gown member chose to read the exhibition catalog before he viewed the paintings. A distinguished museum director got up close to the painting maybe to authenticate it or to study brushstrokes. My choice of an introduction to this painting was to listen. The delightful family of Jonas Wood came to the opening where I met his dad in front of the painting of the bathroom of the home Jonas Wood grew up in. The back story was particularly interesting to me. Jonas’ father is an architect who bought this 1903 home in Weston, MA, in 1975 and owned it until 2016. In 1975 I bought my 1905 house that was also dilapidated; however, his was painted battleship gray and was considered the “horror house” of Weston. The agent thought when seeing the young couple (wife in overalls and husband with long hair and beard) that the house was going to go from bad to worse. Mr. Wood assured the agent his wife was an artist and he was an architect and knew what to do with the home. He showed me many details of the painting, from the American Standard bathtub five inches longer than usual, the replica pedestal sink, and ceramic tile installed in 1935, the last year any work had been done on the house. Mr. Wood discussed many of the travesties of the home that he corrected over the next several decades. He mentioned that Jonas’ mother was able to see her son’s first major New York show in 2009 right before she died. The oral history of the home and family gave depth to the paintings in the exhibition. There is an intimacy and bond with the architecture that comes from living in a 100-year-old home. The extravagant details and patterns of architecture in the paintings of Jonas Wood reflect his having an architect and artist as parents and his entire young life observing the patterns, proportions, materials, and quirks of an old house. Listening adds depth that even the most acute studying and the most intense observation cannot offer.
#JonasWood #Art #Artist #Architect #DallasMuseumOfArt @DallasMuseumArt #Dallas #MuseumOpening
Suburban Brownwood
A view out the front door of this Dick Clark architect-designed modern home presents a much different look than that of a flat Dallas neighborhood suburban development. Even with other homes in the vicinity, there is a sense of endless Texas country and a rugged rather than city environment. Here is a site where the advantage of large modern home windows makes sense. #Brownwood #Architect #Architecture #FrontDoorView #SuburbanDevelopment #Country #Hill Country #TexasHillCountry #NorthHillCountry #Design #Contemporary #Modern #ModernHome
Hill Country Looms
The flat plains of much of Texas can lull a driver, then all of a sudden one hits the northern edge of Texas Hill Country and there is a hill maybe not remarkable for many places in the country, but almost a shock to the system of a flatlander.
#Texas HillCountry #NorthHillCountry #HillCountry #Flatlander #Brownwood #Hill #FlatPlains
Camellia and Safflower
While I missed capturing in this image one of the frequent cardinals enjoying the safflower seeds and fresh berries out the window, the camellia blooms were saved from the recent freeze and brought inside as an homage to the cardinals that stop by and always cheer up gray winter days.
#Dallas #Neighborhood #MungerPlace #Camellias #City #CamelliaBlooms #flowers #urbanyard
Backyard Concentrated ADUs
Surrounded by single-family homes on two sides, are these 70 new ADU-sized apartments being built, a block from a historic district. This small apartment complex is equivalent to building backyard rental houses behind 70% of Swiss Avenue Historic District homes or building a backyard apartment house behind one of every three homes in the Munger Place Historic District. If just one more small apartment project was built close to these single-family zoned neighborhoods it would create the density equivalent of building backyard rental houses behind every single-family home in the Munger Place Historic District. The City Councilman for the neighborhood has promoted backyard rental houses and promised to get permission for anyone wanting to build a backyard rental house in their backyard. Even if every homeowner builds a backyard rental house, it would only offer a dent in the low density that the City Councilman despises, but the backyard rental houses would be devastating to the single-family middle income neighborhoods, the city, and the environment. The Dallas Morning News just ran a story about how the temperatures of urban areas are rising twice as fast as the rest of the country. One solution and action taken is to plant more trees. One might think that the trees that get destroyed for backyard rental house/ADUs are more important than another apartment unit. One also might think that having neighborhoods with backyard trees and play areas for children is more important than another apartment neighborhood with streets lined with cars where kids cannot ride their bikes or play safely in the front yards and parkways of their neighborhood.
#ADU #BackyardRentalHouse #GrannyFlats #Apartments #EastDallasApartments #MungerPlace #MungerPlaceHistoricDistrict #SwissAvenue #SwissAvenueHistoricDistrict #Fitzhugh #Density #LowDensity #Dallas #DallasCityCouncil #SingleFamilyHomes #BackyardTrees #MiddleClassNeighborhoods #MiddleIncomeNeighborhoods #Urban
Artists Discover Neighborhoods
In 1975 Roy Fridge made his Norma Cat Mask in honor of Norma McManaway, wife of Artist David McManaway. This was also the year the McManaways bought a house on Tremont Street where artist James Surls had first bought a home two years earlier in what was identified as the worst neighborhood in Dallas. Very quickly Tremont Street and Munger Place became an enclave of artists. A score of artists bought homes in Munger Place or lived on Tremont or visited frequently, including Frances Bagley, Randy Brodnax, Mike McNamara, Manuel Mauricio, Barbara Bell, Giva Taylor, T.A. Taylor, Pat Forest, David Bates, Dan Rizzie, John Alexander, Jim Love, Sam Gummelt, and a host of others that later included Adrian Hall, Director Dallas Theater Center, and Eugene Lee, set designer of Saturday Night Live. The recent show at the Kirk Hopper Gallery included work by Roy Fridge and reminded me that this hermetic and reclusive artist known for living in temporary beach houses also discovered Tremont Street and lived in a1910 unrestored 200sf space over my open one-car garage. Roy Fridge created dignity and grace in this incredibly simple space.
Artists have a way of discovering neighborhoods that have potential and spaces that can be made into something. I heard artist Giovanni Valderas speak about his City Council race in Kessler Park’s District 1. District 1 is 80% Hispanic but it has been governed by the white political cartel based in the extensive Kessler Park single family home neighborhood. His most interesting comment at the Dallas Breakfast Group Forum was that he was in favor of homeownership for the Hispanic community in his district with City resources going towards streets, curbs, sidewalks, parkway trees to encourage Hispanic families to buy and fix up a home to create a better neighborhood and wealth for themselves. His City Council opponent, a Kessler Park resident, had a very different platform. He emphasized spending City resources on government subsidized apartments for Hispanics. I think artists often have a better vision of neighborhoods.
#TremontArtists #CityCouncilDistrict1 #Art #GiovanniValderas #DallasCityCouncilRace #Dallas #Neighborhood #OakCliff
Dart Decoration
Visually looking good—economically looking bad! A city train is a toy every city desires to feel like a city. When DART was first proposed, the alleged “flat earthers” who opposed it suggested that it would be cheaper to pick up and deliver every potential DART rider in a limousine than to subsidize their ride on a DART train. They might have been right. Does anyone know the true cost for a passenger mile on a DART train, if all the money to build DART and all the tax money collected every year to subsidize DART is calculated? From Michael Morris to local politicians I have sought but have not been able to receive an answer to this question. The current ridership is so anemic that now there is a proposal to use tax money collected by DART to subsidize developers that will develop projects by DART stations to increase ridership. Inevitably if this happens, DART proponents will point to DART ridership as the economic instigation of this development. Many argue that no matter what the extraordinary cost is per DART passenger mile, it is worth it if it takes cars off the road. Not true! All the studies show that mass transit just encourages urban sprawl, as the temporarily emptier roads fill up, by the increased distant development becoming more economically attractive and valuable. In the meantime, I love the look of the yellow trains zipping around making me feel like I am living in a hip city. For now, I will continue driving to help block the roads to discourage urban sprawl and encourage vibrant growth in the city.
#Dallas #UrbanSprawl #DART #MassTransportation #PassengerMiles #City #Trains #Rail #SubsidizedTransportation #city #downtown #artsdistrict #hipcity #toy