“The latest round of NEA grants for Access to Artistic Excellence, American Masterpieces, Arts on Radio and Television, Learning in the Arts for Children & Youth and Partnerships is out, and Texas visual arts orgs have got their share.”

..among the recipients are the following Houston Area organizations:

The Galveston Historical Foundation got $12,000 to support a symposium on the preservation of cast-iron storefronts.
The Houston Arts Alliance got $50,000 to identify, document, and present the varied folklife found in Houston.
Rice University, Houston, got $15,000 to support Explosion: East Asia Architecture Today.
Houston’s Spacetaker got $10,000 for its Artist Resource Center

Congratulations to everyone!
full article here

“Michelle Obama has presented a Coming Up Taller award (which recognizes and supports outstanding after-school arts and humanities programs) from the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities to a Texas A&M student and an education curator for the University of Houston’s Blaffer Gallery in a White House ceremony.”

via The Houston Chronicle

Not in Houston, but close enough.

“The Bone House was Dan’s baby, the 12th house to embody his Phoenix Commotion’s wild mix of art, ecoconsciousness and serious attention to affordability — all in Huntsville. Dan and his crew had fashioned the strangely beautiful house out of things destined for the dump: scrap lumber, old signs, old T-shirts. Bottle caps covered one floor, wine corks another. Mosaics made of broken mirrors and old CDs glinted from the walls of the studio in back…

The “Phoenix” part used to be purely a metaphor about rebirth and reuse, he said. Now they had actual ashes to rise from.”

via Can the Bone House rise from the ashes? | Fine Arts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.

Congrats to Franklin Sirmans, the Menil Collection’s curator of modern and contemporary art ['NeoHooDoo' curator], for being chosen as a recipient of one the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation’s inaugural Gold Rush Awards.

via Arts in Houston: ‘NeoHooDoo’ curator gets Gold Rush nod.

The worst part for 17-year-old ballet dancer Sebastian Concha was flying nine hours from Houston to Switzerland.

The best part was becoming one of the winners of the Prix de Lausanne, a prestigious six-day competition for young dancers from around the world.

Follow the link below to read the full article.

via Houston dancer wins prestigous competition | Fine Arts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.

Don’t give Joel Sandel that old canard about how it’s impossible to piece together an acting career in Houston unless you get hired as a company member at the Alley Theatre.

Sandel’s been doing just that for 20 years, chiefly as a mainstay at Main Street Theater, but with regular work at the Houston Shakespeare Festival and other companies — and only two gigs at the Alley, thank you very much.

Follow the link below to read the full article.

via Years of work made Sandel one of Houston’s top actors | Fine Arts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle.

Houston’s Deborah Colton Gallery has launched Outpost NYC / DCG in New York City in collaboration with New York-based art writer/curator Liutauras Psibilskis, who curated the 2007 Chemical City exhibition at Deborah Colton’s Houston space. The new venue will begin by sharing space with other institutions, but aims to establish its own permanent space in Lower Manhattan. In other year-end news, Colton has announced the promotion of Selene Arrazolo to Assistant Director.

via Glasstire: Texas visual art online - Outpost on the Eastern frontier.