J. P. Bryan, whose monumental collection of Texas art is the source of this traveling exhibition, determined that he would collect only those artists who had actually participated in the settlement of Texas?not artists who imagined the events after they were history. Thus, Deep in the Art of Texas constitutes not just a tour of Texas artists, but a virtual tour of the romantic history and vast geography of the state itself. Deep in the Art of Texas pulls pieces from the Torch Energy Advisors Collection of Texas Art, which showcases the likes of Charles Franklin ?Frank” Reaugh and Robert Julian Onderdonk. The collection is housed at Torch Energy Advisors Inc. in Houston.
Critic Michael Ennis stated twenty-five years ago that there has never been more than a cursory overview of Texas art from the nineteenth century to the present. The Art of Texas: 250 Years now tells a deeper story, beginning with Spanish colonial paintings and moving through two and a half centuries of art in Texas. By the twentieth century, most Texas artists had received formal training and produced work in styles similar to European and other American artists. Written by noted scholars, art historians, and curators, this survey is the first attempt to analyze and characterize Texas art on a grand scale.
The cold, stygian dark of the extreme sea depths is home to some of our planet’s strangest creatures. Even their names evoke a science fiction adventure: dragonfishes, greeneyes, viperfishes, mirrorbellies, lanternfishes. Marine biologist Henry “Hank” Compton (1928–2005) of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Rockport Marine Lab was present on some of the earliest Gulf of Mexico cruises on which these fishes were collected for the first time in Texas waters. Upon returning, Compton would retire to the darkroom he had constructed beneath a stairwell at the lab and photograph the specimens. A talented artist, Compton then painted watercolors based on his photographs. He allowed free rein to both his scientific judgment and his artistic vision as he constructed representations of how the specimens might have appeared in the crushing pressure of their alien environment. Compton dubbed the series of deep-water paintings “Fire in the Sea” because of the shimmering bioluminescence common to these deep-water species. Then, along with taxonomic descriptions, he drafted fanciful narratives to accompany the paintings: quirky, humorous, and sometimes cryptic stories of the fishes in their unreachable habitat. Professor, researcher, and author David A. McKee has taken Compton’s work, discovered in cardboard boxes following his death, and, along with others, provided chapters on bioluminescence, life in the deep, taxonomic arrangement, and life history information.
The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.
Three kids venture to the North Pole to help Santa defeat an army of evil elves in this holiday classic from the brilliant mind that brought you The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Art Atchinson Aimesworth—inventor, crime fighters, and all-around whiz kid—journeys north with his sister, Esther, and his pal Spaulding, by special invitation from Santa himself. Why did Santa call them to the North Pole? Art wants to know. But when Esther is taken by the Queen of the Dark Elves, Art must put his questions aside and save his sister. This reissue of William Joyce’s epic Christmas adventure now comes complete with lift-the-flap letters from Santa himself!
This carefully documented book with its unusual photographs is a powerful triute to the strengths and acheivements of Texas Jews. The heroes, heroines, and hell-raisers are all here.
Winner, 2016 Liz Carpenter Award for the Research in the History of Women, presented at the Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting At Fair Park in Dallas, a sculpture of a Native American figure, bronze with gilded gold leaf, strains a bow before sending an arrow into flight. Tejas Warrior has welcomed thousands of visitors since the Texas Centennial Exposition opened in the 1930s. The iconic piece is instantly recognizable, yet few people know about its creator: Allie Victoria Tennant, one of a notable group of Texas artists who actively advanced regionalist art in the decades before World War II. Light Townsend Cummins follows Tennant’s public career from the 1920s to the 1960s, both as an artist and as a culture-bearer, as she advanced cultural endeavors, including the arts. A true pathfinder, she helped to create and nurture art institutions that still exist today, most especially the Dallas Museum of Art, on whose board of trustees she sat for almost thirty years. Tennant also worked on behalf of other civic institutions, including the public schools, art academies, and the State Fair of Texas, where she helped create the Women’s Building. Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas sheds new light on an often overlooked artist.
