Arts Rescue Mission -Aid For Aging Artists

This area provides ongoing research and essential information for artists, collectors, and professionals in the creative arts. Entries are made both by ARM and users with information to share. Rescue Station actively looks for info and institutions that support good health acroos various disciplines. Rescue Station will post monthly updates to our subscribers and assosiates. Arts Rescue Mission Bylaws Click Here For Bylaws PDF Why Vitamin Interaction Matters More After 60 Enzyme Efficiency Declines As we age, the body becomes less efficient at converting vitamin D into its active forms. Magnesium is the cofactor that makes those conversions happen — so deficiencies hit harder in seniors. Bone & Fracture Risk Vitamin D helps absorb calcium, but without magnesium the calcium can be poorly directed — potentially building up in soft tissues instead of bone. Adequate magnesium improves bone density and reduces fall risk by supporting muscle function. Heart Health Vitamin D deficiency is linked with cardiovascular issues. Magnesium deficiency worsens arrhythmias, high blood pressure, and vascular stiffness. Together, D₃ + magnesium optimize vascular health and reduce calcification risk. Recommended Intakes (for 60+ Adults) Vitamin D₃ Mayo Clinic RDA: 70+ years old → 800 IU (20 µg) daily Common clinical practice: Many doctors recommend 1,000–2,000 IU daily for seniors, especially in northern latitudes or for those not getting much sun. Upper safe limit (without doctor supervision): 4,000 IU daily Magnesium RDA for 60+: Women → 320 mg/day Men → 420 mg/day Typical supplement range: 200–400 mg/day (often magnesium citrate or glycinate for best absorption and fewer stomach issues) Vitamin K₂ (MK-7, optional): 90–180 µg daily (helps direct calcium into bone, away from arteries) Balance Guidelines for Aging Artists Always pair vitamin D₃ with magnesium (through diet or supplement). If taking 1,000–2,000 IU/day of vitamin D₃, aim for at least 300–400 mg of magnesium/day. Calcium balance matters too: Vitamin D increases calcium absorption, and magnesium helps direct calcium into bones rather than arteries. Check medications: Magnesium can interact with some heart meds and antibiotics. Vitamin D can interact with certain diuretics and high-dose calcium regimens. Practical Daily Combo Example for 60+ Adults Vitamin D₃: 1,000–2,000 IU (25–50 µg) daily Magnesium (citrate or glycinate): 200–400 mg daily (split into 2 doses for comfort) Calcium (if diet is low): 500–600 mg, but always paired with magnesium + D₃ Vitamin K₂ (MK-7, optional): 90–180 µg daily (helps direct calcium into bone, away from arteries) Bottom line: For people over 60, Vitamin D₃ and magnesium are a team. Without magnesium, vitamin D activation slows down; without vitamin D, magnesium’s bone and heart benefits are muted. Together, they protect bone, muscle, and cardiovascular health. If you ad vitamin K to your routine, you've got majic.

Friends, Patrons, and Witnesses By the early 2000s, Richard had stepped away from the gallery circuit and begun hosting exhibitions at home. Those gatherings were legendary, part salon, part history lesson, and always crowded with old friends and new admirers. In 2006, I photographed one of those evenings: Gertrude Barnstone, Toby Topek, curator Sally Sprout, collector Bob Card, the room glowed with that particular blend of intelligence and mischief that defined Houston’s art world in its prime. P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s Vol. 1, Issue 3, Oct. 14, 2025 page 1 Richard Stout: The Watchmaker of Houston Modernism Dan M. Allison, Mission News, Oct. 14, 2025 I first met Richard in the mid-1980s when he came for breakfast and to sit with his friends Dick Wray, Lucas Johnson, and Don Foster at Pat and Chet's 11th street café. Richard did not participate but the others taught me that real artists get good and pisssed before noon, take a nap, and paint long into the night. Every morning it was the same routine, and Pat would come to our table with a full round of beers at 9:00 in the morning, and we would proceed to empty their cooler of Shiner beers before lunch. The 11th St. Cafe sold more beer before lunch than most little garage-pool-table bars did in the Heights all day. This was an unbelievably valuable finishing school, where I really got a feel for the history of Houston's early art scene as well as learned my place in the moment when I mistakenly said something about “my career," and everyone just fell out of their chairs laughing. I had to buy another round, as Dick Wray leaned across to Richard and said the words that summed up they're deep friendship when Richard was going on and on about something, “Richard, I asked you what time it is, not how to make a watch” If you let him, Richard would take the stage and pontificate, until someone called a timeout. I didn’t work with Richard Stout, until one afternoon in 2004 when he walked through the door of my printmaking studio, Texas Collaborative Arts on 11th Street. At the time, the place was buzzing. Terrell James and I had just finished a round of as-big-as-we-could-get monoprints. Rick Bartow had been in for his own series, New York’s Cora Cohen was collaborating with me long-distance, Nancy Kienholz and I were experimenting on my computer with lenticular graphics, and James McGee was building a digital collage edition.
That was the spirit of the shop, a mix of experimentation, improvisation, and a refusal to follow the traditional rules of printmaking. Richard fit that spirit perfectly. A New Kind of Collaboration What began as a straightforward monoprint session quickly evolved into something far more complex, a multi-plate, color-separated photogravure project. Initially Richard struggled with the immediacy of making monoprints, and we had to come up with something else. Our first 3 mornings ended up with a predictable launch at the 11th St. Cafe, while we scratched our heads and tried to figure out where we could go with a printmaking project for Richard. We decided on polymer photogravures and used a scan from one of his recent paintings to create the matrix For his edition. Richard approached each technical problem as if it were an aesthetic riddle worth savoring. He was generous, articulate, and above all, curious. Working with him felt like being pulled into a long, intricate conversation about process, history, and the improbable intersections that make up a life in art. Lunches were part of the deal. And if you were lucky enough to have lunch with Richard, you didn’t so much talk as listen. His mind worked like a web of tiny gears, each turning another, which is why Dick Wray’s old joke about the watch still held true. I thought back to the 1980s, when I was haunting the West Gray Street neighborhood, working on my own etchings at David Folkman’s Little Egypt Enterprises, I’d had the good fortune to meet Houston’s established generation, artists who had defined what contemporary art meant in Texas. Richard’s stories reached back another two decades beyond that, into the formative era of Houston modernism. The Early Years Richard Stout arrived in Houston around 1960, a young painter from Beaumont, already steeped in color and space, drawn toward abstraction. He had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, lived briefly in Mexico City and San Francisco, and absorbed a global sense of what painting could be. But his roots in Texas, and in that distinctive light and humidity of the Gulf Coast, never left him. In a 17-page narrative found later in his archive, he recounts how his mother, Bess Stout, discovered the house on Bonnie Brae Drive in 1963 “while going to get fried chicken.” That house would become his home and studio for the next fifty-seven years, a one-man citadel of painting in the heart of Houston. The stories that unfolded from the documents I was archiving connected him to an astonishing array of figures: Dorothy Hood, Jack Boynton, Dick Wray, John and Dominique de Menil, early Museum of Fine Arts directors James Johnson Sweeney and Philippe de Montebello, patron Bill Lasiter, and gallery owner Kathryn Swenson. They were not merely names but the scaffolding of a new cultural identity in Texas, and Richard was there, brush in hand, as it was being built. Bridging Generations When I hosted an exhibition for him at Nau-haus Gallery in 2009, I realized how completely he bridged the first and second generations of Houston’s contemporary art movement. He wasn’t an outsider looking back; he was the connective tissue, the living archive linking the 1950s pioneers to the restless innovators of the 2000s.I had visited his home a few times, usually for one of his informal “house shows,” but it wasn’t until late 2019 that our paths crossed again in an unforgettable way. Glenwood I was at Glenwood Cemetery, doing something I probably wouldn’t have done without a woman’s persuasion, attending a guided tour of the graves. Richard was there, too, moving slowly across the uneven ground. He looked unsteady. As he passed in front of me, I felt that odd premonition that something was about to go wrong. A few steps later, he lost his balance, and I caught him as he fell back, and before he hit the ground. It was a small moment, the kind that sticks. I thought, Oh no, not him too. By then, I was in that age bracket where funerals had become part of the social calendar. Many of the figures who had defined my early years, David Brauer, Nancy Kienholz, Jim and Ann Harithas, Marshall Lightman, Perry House, Dick Wray, were gone. Even the gamblers of Birraporetti’s Lucas Johnson and Bob Camblin, who could out-bluff me at liar’s poker while mocking my “art career”, had passed into legend. The Studio Visits After that day at Glenwood, I began visiting Richard almost daily. His studio was only a block from my own home, and I started photographing his work, cataloging it piece by piece. He was in reasonably good spirits, though plagued by a condition that caused his blood pressure to drop suddenly, sending him crashing to the floor without warning. Once, I asked what it felt like in those few seconds before he fell, whether he had any time to react. He said nothing, raised an eyebrow, and brushed a pile of books off the table between us. That was his answer. We shared a birthday, just two days apart, his on August 24th, mine on the 22nd, and we’d planned a joint party. I told him I’d get him a bright red football helmet for the occasion, something to keep his head safe from those falls. He laughed, and we went out for hamburgers at the 11th Street Café, just like old times. The Long View Richard’s understanding of art, and of Houston, was encyclopedic. He’d lived through the city’s metamorphosis from provincial outpost to international player. He remembered when Dorothy Hood wrote from Mexico City, warning that “the pickings are slim” and that “it’s harder to ask someone to pass the greatness than to pass the salt.” Her solution: “Well, we should start a revolution then!” In a way, they did. Houston’s postwar art scene became its own revolution, built on stubborn independence and quiet ambition. Richard was one of its most articulate voices. His 1965 painting Escarpment entered the Museum of Fine Arts’ permanent collection under Sweeney’s directorship, a sign that local modernists were no longer just regional curiosities. They were defining the language of abstraction for Texas itself. (Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen) The Young Richard Stout in his Beaumont Studio 1957 Richard Sout, untitled, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 80 in. Bill Lasiter, Bob Card & William Revees, 2010, Richard's first solo show at William Reeves The Young Richard Stout in his Beaumont Studio 1957 1/31 Friends, Patrons, and Witnesses By the early 2000s, Richard had stepped away from the gallery circuit and begun hosting exhibitions at home. Those gatherings were legendary, part salon, part history lesson, and always crowded with old friends and new admirers. In 2006, I photographed one of those evenings: Gertrude Barnstone, Toby Topek, curator Sally Sprout, collector Bob Card, the room glowed with that particular blend of intelligence and mischief that defined Houston’s art world in its prime. Gertrude, another of my great mentors, had once told me during the Bosnian war that I had no choice but to act because “you know the roads.” That conversation led directly to the formation of Artist Rescue Mission and my six-week trek through war-torn Bosnia delivering relief supplies. Houston’s art community has always been like that, intertwined, morally awake, unwilling to look away. Critical Acclaim When Richard exhibited again at Nau-haus Gallery in 2009, Houston Chronicle critic Douglas Britt wrote that he “could kick himself for having missed” an earlier opportunity to see a two-person show of Stout and Boynton. Britt went on: “Stout’s paintings are so fresh and exuberant that I’m having a little difficulty remembering what else I saw. He’s hijacked the show, it belongs to him.” He also noted the sparse, theatrical hanging of the exhibition, paintings suspended several inches off the wall, casting dramatic shadows, “all but shouting ‘ta-da!’” For a critic known for his dry restraint, that was as close to a standing ovation as you could get in print. Richard’s later exhibitions, particularly those organized by William Reeves and now represented by Sarah Foltz Gallery on Westheimer, reaffirmed his position as one of the central figures of Texas abstraction. Foltz herself, trained under Julie Kinzelman, has done a remarkable job preserving and promoting his legacy. The Passing of the Baton Richard Stout passed away on April 5, 2020, at his home on Bonnie Brae Drive, the same house his mother had found fifty-seven years earlier. He left behind a body of work that moves effortlessly between serenity and storm, structure and improvisation. For those of us who knew him, or came to know him late, he represented something rare: continuity. He embodied the lineage of Houston art, not as a relic, but as a living bridge. When I think back to those lunches, to the stories that spiraled from Beaumont to Positano, from the Menil salons to our burgers on 11th Street, I realize that every word, every anecdote, was part of a single, intricate construction, a life built with the precision of a watchmaker. Epilogue In his earliest known pastel from 1946, a young Richard warns family members not to disturb him while he works. Even then, he understood that making art was not a pastime but a calling. His archive, now preserved and digitized, bears witness to that lifelong discipline.I sometimes joke that I’ve already spent too much time explaining how I’ve made a watch. But maybe, when it comes to Richard Stout, that’s exactly the point. The gears are still turning, in the studios he inspired, the archives he left behind, and the conversations that continue across Houston’s art community.

Arts Rescue Mission was founded as a non-profit by Houston artists Gertude Barnstome and Dan M Allison in 1994. ARM held it's first fundraiser at to aid the artists in Sarajevo during their civil war in May 1994. Allison re-established the ARM in January of 2025 as an outreach 501c3 dedicated to aiding aging visual, performing, and literary artists, through crowdsource funding, award presentations, and awareness events. P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s Curator Jim Edwards, art historian David Breuer, and gallery owner Dan M Allison, with BB the wonder dog, d. m. allison gallery, 2015 Yes, we're asking you for your input, stories and images, for our content. We like it all, and it doesn't need to be a show, performance, or book review. Tell a good tale, something you have on Substacks, something you posted on Facebook, and we'll take a look. If it matches up with our values and Aesthetics we will format your images and pictures and put them up in the Mission News that gets broadcast to 3,000 subscribers four times a month. It will become part of our permanent record and search on Google. Click Hereto Contribute Please send us your text, stories, images, and any related documents to your story and we will take a look. Please load them up here on our Upload, and Signup Page. First from us to get it started, and then from you if you care to share. We think it will make a difference knowing that there are others who have tried difficult circumstances, pitching in to mend a wing on a broken angel. ARM efforts in 1994 for the Performing, Visual, and Literal Arts in Sarajevo demonstrated what artists can do when they get together, even across and ocean. Nobel Prize winning Oslobođenje News Services in Sarajevo was instrumental in the success of our mission at that time. "The Mission News" will be a regular feature at ARM summer and winter as brunches where we can share our stories, and invite speakers we would like to hear from. We will be hosting two storytelling brunch events Winter edition and Summer edition in January and June. We are just getting it organized and definite dates and times will be announced in the Spring of 2026. Please send your stories and an images and if we like'm we'll post them as credited content to our pages in The Mission News. artsrescue2025@gmail.com or you can post to our signup & upload page here Oslobodenje News founders hume where the Nobel Prize winning paper was founded in 1943 as an anti Nazi publication. M I S S I O N N E W S I N D E X Maggie Hills, Hopscotch - Inman Gallery, Intimacy, Memory, and the Wild Beasts, April 10, 2026, Vol. 2, No.4, p.1 Jim Richard, Modern Fragments, Inman Gallery Interiors, Collage, and the Theater of Taste, April 10, 2026. Vol. 2. No. 3 p.1 Tommy Fitzpatrick: Elsewhere, Inman Gallery, Building, Breaking, and Coming Home. April 8,, 2026. Vol. 2, No.2, p. 1 Inman Gallery - From Houston’s Art Frontier on Travis Street, Inman Gallery Stands As One of the City’s Most Enduring, March 30, 2026. Vol. 2, No.1, p. 1 Jeff Jennings, Engineering a Sextant D. M. Allison, January 12, 2026 Vol. 1, Issue 9, P. 1 The Front Gallery on Bonnie Brae D. M. Allison, January 1, 2026, Vol. 1, Issue 8, P. 1 Mike Kirby, His Mission, His Vision, on Hosting Patrick Renner Ground Swell, D. M. Allison, December 18, 2025, Issue 7, P. 1 Tuan Andrew Nguyen on the High Line, New York, ARM Reporting December 22, 2025, Issue 7, P. 2 Artist John Atlas, Pirate of the South Pacific D. M. Allison December 15, 2025 1, Issue 6, P. 1 David Breauer - He Shot For the Moon, Vodka, Pop Art, Pantsing the Masters, Remembering Sage and Houston Historian David Brauer, D. M. Allison Nov. 27, 2025, Issue 5, page 1 Don’t Shoot the Clowns ....Or the Machines. D. M. Allison, Nov. 13, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 4, page 1 Dust From Our Fathers: The art of Ricardo Ruiz, D. M. Allison, Nov. 13, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 4, page 1 I got the band BLONDIE busted by ART POLICE! by Will Turner, 07-12-2026 (word count 1,141) Sam Gianukos, Artist With A Pencil. D. M. Allison, Vol. 2 No. 8, June 30, 2026 June Poe, Orbiting, d. m. allison, Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 1, June 08, 2026 Jill Bedgood, "What Remains" Vol. 2, No. 6, p. 1, June 08, 2026 Dr. Rockit, Rockit Like Quixote, Vol 2, No.5. p.1 , d. m. allison, June 2, 2026 Pat Colville at Moody Gallery and Does Anybody Drive a Green Toyota? Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 1 May 5, 2026 How The Houston Underground Survived to Become History. Notsuoh at 30 Years. Pirtle, Topchy, Hixon, and Lowe Remember.(some) of Their Journey d. m. allison, Vol 2, No.4. p.1 , May 23, 2026 Mary Baxter, Random Moments from South Country Mary Baxter: Painting the Edge of Memory, April 11, Vol. 2, No. 5, p.1 Noah Harari Nexus The Information Flood and the Art of Staying Human, D. M, Allison, Oct. 21, 2025. Volume 1, Issue 3, page 1 My Halloween Birthday by Mark S. Smith Oct. 26, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 3, page 2 Deb Grotfeldt,“I grew up with a little brother; we were the son and daughter of migrant workers in south Texas.” D. M. Allison, October 21, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 2, page 1 Jim Edwards: The Quiet Architect of a Regional Vision D. M. Allison, October 21, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 2, page 2 Richard Stout, The Watchmaker of Houston Modernism, Vol. 1, Issue 3, Oct. 14, 2025, page 1 The Future of the Texas Biennieal, D. M. Allison, Oct. 14, 2025,Volume 1, Issue 1, page 2, University of Houston special archives visit with Christian Kelleher, D. M. Allison, Oct. 14, 2025, Volume 1, Issue 1, page 1,

A Visit with University of Houston Special Libraries with archivist Christian Kelleher, by D.. M. Allison, Oct. 1, 2025 P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s Vol. 1, Issue 1, Oct. 14, 2025 page 1 A Visit with University of Houston Special Libraries with archivist Christian Kelleher D.. M. Allison, Oct. 1, 2025 Parking at the University of Houston is a small adventure of its own. I recommend the Elgin Street Garage—it’s a long walk from there, but worth it. That walk sets the stage, really, for the kind of visit you’re about to have when stepping into the library’s archive wing. At the center of that visit is Christian Kelleher, the archivist. He landed his position not only because of his strong academic credentials from the University of Texas, but because he is one of the most personable and generous hosts you’ll ever meet. In my case, I can honestly say he made what might have been a routine archive consultation feel like a meeting of the minds. Christian has been studying Houston’s art history for more than a decade. My own vantage point stretches back to 1980, when I was already in the thick of the city’s art scene. He comes at it from observation and scholarship; I come at it from lived experience and participation. Somewhere between those two perspectives, our conversation found a rich middle ground. The Reception and Its Treasures Stepping inside the library’s reception area is an experience unto itself. At first, I mistook the neat rows of lockers for gym storage—imagining students checking in before a racquetball match. In truth, they serve a much stricter purpose: to ensure that purses, bags, or any potential carriers stay outside the vault of irreplaceable works. Even in this threshold space, treasures are on view. Works by Robert Hodge, Dorothy Hood, and Mel Chin anchor the reception, while inset displays under glass reveal archival gems, a 1996 edition of the Houston’s Gay Yellow Pages, and a Fritz Leiber Hugo Award, among other objects that remind us how varied and layered Houston’s cultural fabric has been. Inside the Reading Room Once inside the reading room, the atmosphere shifts from guardhouse to temple. On display during my visit was a massive 30 x 40 in. silk-bound book of lithographs, the enigmatic Art Guys Codec, and a selection of Ant Farm posters and blueprints, including material from their legendary House of the Century, perched by Marilyn Oshman’s Lake Mo-Jo bird sanctuary. This wasn’t just a peek into history; it was a reminder that archives don’t have to be silent warehouses, this one was humming with invention and even mischief, the residue of artists who thought in ways that reshaped Houston. I was having fun because I was getting to tell Christian's stories about way back when and drinking champagne and smoking dope with Marilyn Oshman In the Ant Farm’s House of The Century That still resides at the head of Lake Mo-Jo, or telling him about my experience making a photogravure with artist Susie Paul, sharing how sick she was in her last days when we made “Clair with Fly,” along with what the circumstances were she took that picture, now in the U of H Special Libraries, of her sister while they were drinking beer and installing a show at Lawndale art and performance back in the 80s. Christian was the perfect audience, and followed up with more details I didn’t know. Back and forth for an hour, what fun! Talking About Richard Stout One purpose of my visit though, was to go over the logistics of handing off Richard Stout’s archive, from his son Stefan’s home, Richard’s studio and where he resided for the last 10 years of his life are on the back of the property. We'll do it later this month, however it's a matter of everyone's schedule. Richard has a show up at Sarah Foltz’s gallery at the time of this writing, and Stefan is stage director for the Houston Symphony with a Helter-Skelter patchwork of job-related scheduling, so things get complicated real fast. Luckily, I live 1 block away from Richard's former studio. What’s the Proper Archive Format? I’d finished Richard Stout’s archive by the end of the pandemic. I had put a team together during the pandemic his I was getting nowhere fast trying to do it by myself, and as fortune would have it there were several individuals glad to make a few bucks during the pandemic. I’d let my friends know, that were helping to accomplish this task, what the formats were for file image names, and document image names, but I've never been formally trained. I had queried Christian before my visit and was anxious to get his instruction about what the U of H Library is looking for when they receive archives from third parties. It was really my first question after our initial greeting. But I would have to wait. Once the tour was complete, he led me to a small lecture room. I sat down on the front row of our imaginary class and Christian Kelleher took to the podium left of a big screen, the lights dimmed, and class began. This was going to be a show; I thought about popcorn as he queued up a Power-Point presentation. I was back in school. The rules, it turns out, are simple, for visual art; date first, then artist, title, media, and size, for documents; date first, then standard bibliographic format. Christian reassured me, “Dan, we have individuals with doctorates who’ve trained for years to handle these details once things arrive.” That kind of patience and professionalism is exactly what makes their system hum. I didn't ask for details, but I believe that they are better funded than any other archive in Texas that's not a major museum. It is certainly well run under Kelleher. Archives for Everyone - The Poetry of Archiving Perhaps the most impressive thing Christian showed me was not what’s already in the collection but how it’s being shared. Unlike other archives locked away behind paywalls or specialized research portals, the University of Houston is working hard to make their holdings searchable through Google, democratizing access so anyone, not just credentialed scholars, can find Houston’s history. Thinking about it, it was one of my concerns when creating Arts Rescue Mission Station on the web. So, there is a portal on the ARM Station for users to upload documents and image files. It's an open source, resource for the community to help us create books about our artists in Texas. That accessibility struck me as crucial, not only for the mission I’m undertaking with ARM but for the whole art scene. Christian had already instigated a Google search availability for their Special Libraries, something I believe that’s different than other archives, so we surely did have a meeting of the minds. For nearly two hours, Christian gave me his time, and I left both grateful and inspired. (Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen) Christian Kelleher, Murals of Tibet, U of H Special Libraries, 09-11-2025 U of H Library Parking 09-11-2025 Art Guys MFAH Sculpture Garden Christian Kelleher, Murals of Tibet, U of H Special Libraries, 09-11-2025 1/20 Christian Kelleher, U of H Special Libraries, 09-11-2025 One of the truths I’ve come to see is that archiving is much more than filing “known works” and career clippings. It’s about telling the story of an artist’s journey, back to grandparents, childhood photos, awkward high school snapshots, the moments in college that tipped the balance toward a life in art. Because archives are organized by date and not name or title, a kind of narrative emerges on its own. The simple act of chronology creates poetry. I never imagined I would take such delight in this kind of homework, but it turns out that once ordered, these lives read like stories waiting to be told. I might point out here that this is how Ken Burns makes his documentaries, and the Smithsonian sprang to life after the January 6th insurrection and collected every broken gavel, twisted flagpole, and piece of rope to recreate the story and give us a credible account of the incident later on. Archiving is important. Leaving with Air Under My Wings After our meeting, I walked back across campus, enjoying the day and the sight of students streaming off to classes, job interviews, and bright futures. I couldn’t help but think back to my own student days at Sam Houston State University in the 1970s, when protest posters lined the campus. Today’s scene is quieter, but no less alive with possibility. That walk, and the time with Christian, left me with air under my wings, fuel for the mission of Arts Rescue: to preserve, shelter, restore, and provide for the artists who’ve built Houston’s cultural story. We are organizing groups through Arts Rescue Mission to visit the University of Houston archives. When you come, you’ll see firsthand what I mean: it’s more than a collection, it’s a living, breathing history of art in Texas. Stay tuned. You’re in for a treat. d.m. allison 10-01-2025

Arts Rescue Missiion, with special permissiion from the director or archivist, allows users to sell some part of the collection they are working with. These posts are up for no more than 30 days. Archive & Book Projects Fall Project 2025 Visual Artist Perry House PLEASE NOTE: ARM NEEDS COMMUNITY INPUT: Help us tell Perry House's Story. Identify the stories and individuals in these galleries. You can also add to this community library by CLICKING HERE and sending us your Perry House photos and stories. Our publications are open source and rely on the community for input. On the sign up page you can upload images, text or PDF files, and tell us what you remember from way back when. Even if you are already a subscriber the sign-in and load page will keep track of who's sending us information so we can give you credit for your contribution. A t this time, the images are only identified by number. Use this number to let Arts Rescue know what image you are referring to, We need your help adding to this community effort. We'll have a BIG party when the book comes out. (More on that latter) THANKS! Our Book Store - 31 Avaiable (Click On Red Projects To View Progress) Active Archive Book Project Proposals Are In Red Richard Stout Perry House Ibsen Espada Rock'n Robin Guitars Jesse Lott Red Shack Music The 1984 Show Jim Edwards This book is dedicated to all the artists that have come before and deserve to have their journey shared and story told. CLICK ON COVER TO VIEW 104 pages $37.50 8.5" x 11" - Softcover w/Glossy Laminate ISBN: 9781649949998 Our First Publication Proceeds from the sale of Perry House Editor’s Edition, a full-color, glossy paperback 8.5 x 11 in., 101 pages, perfect bound, will directly support the production of a forthcoming expanded volume. The 1st edition hardcover 9.5 x 13 in., 200 pages, clothbound with full-color dust jacket, scheduled for release in summer 2026. This initial book is available now as a print-on-demand edition, with a special limited run of 100 signed copies by author and editor D.M. Allison. Signed editions will be available at an event to be announced. Purchasing this publication is considered a charitable contribution to Arts Rescue Mission, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. (Click On Images To Expand To Full Screen) RESTORE - SHELTER - PROVIDE - PRESERVE Pictured above, Houston based artist Perry House In his studio, Second Ward, Houston TX, 2014. Perry House was a really great artist and a great friend to all that met him. I'm proud to say a friend of mine. We met in 1982 when I moved in across from the 11th Street Cafe at the corner of Studewood and 11th Street. Every morning Perry, Dick Wray, Lucas Johnson, Don Foster, and once a week Richard Stout taught me how to be a real artist, which they insisted meant drinking all the beer in Chet and Pat's 8 ft. beer cooler that ran behind the serving counter in the cafe. This went on for several years. Almost 30 years later I became his art dealer, one of the highlights in my days as a gallerist. As the days and years caught up with my friend, I wished I could have done more for him in the moment. As a gallery I was able to do an extensive 100 page catalog on Perry before he passed, and ARM will endeavor to publish a bigger full size color book about this great talent in 2028. Here are a few of the images from our archive on Perry House, his method, and his studio. - DM Allison Perry House / 57 Works / 1970s - 2000s / Posted 09-26-2025 GALLERY 1. Load More Perry House / 63 Works / 2000s - 2015 / Posted 09-26-2025 GALLERY 2 Load More

Event information, and seating, ticket prices for the Arts Rescue Mission fundraiser raising funds for Shelter the ARM program to subsidize artists in the Performing, Visual, and Literary arts. Awards Evening Entertainment & Awards Seating Chart and Event Stages Purchase Tables and Chairs Message In A Bottle 1994 Seating and Tables, ARMON Awards, March 1, 2025 General Admission Awards Night Pay By Check Here Buy Tickets and Tables Now 8 Chair ARMON Circle Table 8 Circle of Friends Reserved Table VIP Single General Admission Trudy Lynn 9:00 PM Concert Tickets

Arts Rescue Missiion, with special permissiion from the director or archivist, allows users to sell some part of the collection they are working with. These posts are up for no more than 30 days. ARM Featured Visual artist 2026 (This page is a placeholder and meant to be a fun look at what one artist has been doing with his friends since Oct. of 2024 as he was putting his ideas together and some the journey from inspiration to explanation we will announce several selected individuals in different genres selected by our Advisory Council before our next ARMON AWARDS event scheduled for April in 2026. ) Back to ARMON Awards Visual Artist Nad M Nosilla Ok, since we were just starting out and didn't have enough interest for a real fundraiser in 2025, you are stuck with our director goofing around and creating a placeholder for the 2026 season. Here are some of the avatars he created of his friends for the site. Artistic Background and Style Nad M Nosilla, is noted as a general contrarian, printmaker, sometimes songwriter, and a giver of great wisdom if he has enough Irish Tea. Personal Insights: As a young artist in my twenties I was a flash out of the pan, but now I need GPS to even find the stove. While my mind is swimming with intention, time is chipping away at my mortal coil. . Online Presence: This is where the featured arts or artist would would leave information about there galleries, websites, or collections. 1/2 Family and Exhibitions A 1978 Huntsville Item article featured a family group art show featuring cousins that included Fritz Gumberwitz Sr. and Little Abner Gumberwits alongside other family members, highlighting the family's artistic contributions to the Piney Woods of East Texas. Fritz Gumberwitz Sr.: Gumberwitz was a commercial artist in the city of Cut & Shoot during the 1960s. He also worked for Fingers Furniture in Houston as layout artist, contributing to their advertising and promotional materials. His work was recognized for its creativity and impact on the company's branding during that era. Little Abner Gumberwits: Little Abner was active in the Houston art scene during the 1970s., and participated in local art exhibitions in Cut & Shoot Museum of Rodeo History, wile winning many first and third place ribbons at the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. His work was appreciated for its unique style and engagement with contemporary rustic scenery featuring deer drinking for local wooded streams.

For decades, architecture has been Tommy Fitzpatrick’s central subject matter, looking to the build environment as rich terrain to reflect the impermanence of human ambition. Elsewhere presents recent paintings in his latest ‘Dwellings’ series. Inspired by American vernacular architecture, his work explores the home as a built structure, a refuge and a shelter, through muscular paint application and sensitive color study.  P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s .... U s u a l l y Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 2 April 8, 2026 Tommy Fitzpatrick: Elsewhere, Inman Gallery Building, Breaking, and Coming Home d. m. allison, April 8, 2026 (word count 1,694) For decades, architecture has been Tommy Fitzpatrick’s central subject matter, looking to the build environment as rich terrain to reflect the impermanence of human ambition. Elsewhere presents recent paintings in his latest ‘Dwellings’ series. Inspired by American vernacular architecture, his work explores the home as a built structure, a refuge and a shelter, through muscular paint application and sensitive color study. Continually engaging the contradiction between flat pattern and illusionistic depth, Fitzpatrick uses architectural methods, tools, and materials in the studio to harmonize his process and subject matter. He begins by pouring acrylic paint onto the canvas – not unlike pouring cement – then using trowels and spatulas to shape, cut, and disrupt the congealed surface. Heavy-body acrylic polymers reinforce the paint’s structural integrity so that the paint itself protrudes in relief, creating peaks and divots that cast their own shadows and highlights. What may once have been roofs, windows, or glass now exist in an impasto ambiguity. In years past, Fitzpatrick used computer-aided design (CAD) software as the foundation for his compositions. However, these latest ‘Dwellings’ embrace a more analog workflow through freehand drawings and color paper collages. For each painting, Fitzpatrick creates several color studies using Sherwin-Williams brand house-paint color samples before selecting one palette to develop into the final work. The nested rectangles, which are read as abstractions of windows or doorways, harken the legacy of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square as generative color studies. Streamlined and elemental, the works on view mark an important formal shift for the artist. While past work often depicted specific (and often renowned) buildings, the ‘Dwellings’ instead show a simple pitched roof, residential house. The image is familiar, nostalgic even, and meditative when viewed serially, one home after another. Grounded in their solitude, these homes prompt us to look inward, asking where do we belong? Fitzpatrick writes: The home, as a built structure, is one of the most important places for humanity. It functions as refuge and shelter, a means of protection and survival. It is something people can universally understand, conjure, and project their own feelings and memories onto. Ultimately, these works are images of houses, but I hope the viewer feels invited to inhabit them, metaphorically entering the image as they would their own place of residence, or even the memory of one they once knew, into a space that carries the comfort of home. Tommy Fitzpatrick (born 1969, Dallas, TX) works from models, either handmade and photographed or constructed digitally, to make his paintings, which hold a careful balance between abstraction and representation. Working from these models, he translates volume, perspective and light into hard-edged pattern, pairing a geometric articulation of space with an insistence on painted surface and careful attention to color. This contradiction between flat patterns and illusionistic depth is the terrain Fitzpatrick has been exploring with increasing sophistication for decades. For more than three decades, Tommy Fitzpatrick has been working through one central idea: architecture, not just as structure, but as a record of human ambition, and just as importantly, its eventual unraveling. From the beginning, Fitzpatrick’s work has lived in a space between abstraction and representation. You might recognize a fragment, a roofline, a beam, a pane of glass, but it never settles into something fully descriptive. Instead, forms tilt, intersect, and fracture into a visual language that feels constructed rather than observed. His paintings don’t depict buildings so much as they rebuild them, piece by piece, from memory, speculation, and process. Early on, Fitzpatrick worked from tightly cropped photographs of architectural spaces, pulling out sharp angles and compressing them into dense compositions. But even then, there was a kind of resistance to simply representing what was there. He has said, half-jokingly, that “if there’s no roof, there’s no painting,” but the deeper question he was circling was how far he could push an image before it stopped being architecture and became something else entirely. That question led to a turning point around the mid-2010s. Instead of relying solely on photographs, Fitzpatrick began building small sculptures in the studio, temporary constructions that were never meant to be shown. These objects had weight, balance, and physical presence. They obeyed gravity. They cast shadows. He would photograph them obsessively, sometimes producing thousands of images, then slice those images apart and recombine them into a single composition. What resulted was a kind of controlled instability. Multiple viewpoints collapse into one surface. Structures appear to shift as you look at them, like something caught mid-construction, or mid-collapse. Fitzpatrick once likened this process to a “string game,” a fleeting configuration that only holds together for a moment before it changes form. The paintings carry that tension. They feel precise, even engineered, but never entirely secure. By the time of his 2017 exhibition Crystal Cities, that tension had expanded into a broader conceptual framework. Drawing inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealized utopian project of the same name, Fitzpatrick turned his attention to architecture that never existed, designs that were imagined but never built. That shift matters. Instead of responding to the physical world, he was now working with ideas, proposals, ambitions, futures that didn’t happen. The paintings from that period suggest fragments of a larger system: towers, corridors, structural grids, all rendered with crisp precision but suspended in uncertain space. They feel like artifacts from a future that never arrived, or ruins of a plan that was abandoned halfway through. There’s a deep engagement here with modernism, not just its visual language, but its belief that architecture could shape society. You can feel echoes of Bauhaus and Constructivist thinking in the way his forms interlock and extend beyond the frame. But Fitzpatrick isn’t celebrating those ideals so much as examining what happens when they break down. What remains is not a coherent system, but a field of fragments, what one writer described as a kind of “fallen utopia.” Materially, the work reinforces that idea. Fitzpatrick doesn’t just paint surfaces, he builds them. Acrylic paint is poured onto the canvas almost like concrete, then pushed, cut, and shaped using tools you’d expect to find on a construction site. The result is a surface that physically protrudes, with ridges and planes that cast their own shadows. These aren’t illusions of depth, they are depth. The painting becomes an object, somewhere between image and structure. At one point, Fitzpatrick even incorporated digital tools into his process, using CAD software to generate compositions before translating them into paint. It was a natural extension of his architectural thinking, constructing a space before building it physically. But even there, the interest wasn’t in precision for its own sake. It was in the gap between the idea and the object, between what is imagined and what is realized. Throughout all of this, one theme keeps resurfacing: impermanence. Buildings rise and fall. Styles come and go. What was once visionary becomes obsolete. Fitzpatrick’s paintings capture that cycle, not as narrative, but as condition. His structures feel both solid and temporary, as if they could shift or disappear at any moment. Which is what making the work in Elsewhere, his current exhibition at Inman Gallery, such an interesting turn. After decades of working with architecture as a public, often monumental language, Fitzpatrick has shifted his focus to something much more familiar: the house. At first glance, the change feels almost disarming. Gone are the sprawling, interlocking systems and speculative cityscapes. In their place are simple, pitched-roof structures, images that read immediately as homes. But the shift isn’t a retreat. It’s a distillation. The house is architecture at its most basic, most universal level. It’s something everyone recognizes, but it’s also something we projects onto. Memory, comfort, isolation, identity, they all live there. Fitzpatrick leans into that ambiguity. These are not specific houses. They don’t belong to a particular place or time. They exist somewhere between recognition and abstraction, inviting the viewer to fill in the rest. Formally, the work has become more streamlined. The compositions are cleaner, more contained. Where earlier paintings were dense and expansive, these feel focused, even meditative. (Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen) Tommy Fitzpatrick, High Noon, 2024, acrylic on canvas over panel, 72 x 48 x 2 in. Tommy Fitzpatrick Maggie Hills, Tommy Fitzpatrick, Kerry Inman, Jim Richard, March 2026 Tommy Fitzpatrick, High Noon, 2024, acrylic on canvas over panel, 72 x 48 x 2 in. 1/17 That question led to a turning point around the mid-2010s. Instead of relying solely on photographs, Fitzpatrick began building small sculptures in the studio, temporary constructions that were never meant to be shown. These objects had weight, balance, and physical presence. They obeyed gravity. They cast shadows. He would photograph them obsessively, sometimes producing thousands of images, then slice those images apart and recombine them into a single composition. Repeated shapes, rectangles suggesting windows or doors, create a rhythm across the surface. There’s a quiet dialogue here with Josef Albers, especially in the way color is used to structure space rather than describe it. That said, the underlying tensions haven’t gone anywhere. Fitzpatrick is still working between flatness and depth, between image and object. The paint still carries weight. It’s poured, cut, and shaped, creating surfaces that rise off the canvas and catch the light. But there’s a noticeable shift in how the work is made. Where earlier paintings often relied on digital models or complex photographic processes, the Dwellings move back toward something more direct. Freehand drawing, paper collage, and hands-on color studies replace CAD renderings. Fitzpatrick has even used house-paint samples, Sherwin-Williams chips, to build his palettes, grounding the work in the everyday materials of domestic space. It’s a subtle but meaningful change. The process becomes more immediate, more tactile, more in line with the subject itself. And the effect of that shift is a kind of quieting. The drama of fragmentation is still there, but it’s been softened. Instead of structures breaking apart, we’re looking at forms that hold together, barely, maybe, but enough. The repetition of the house image creates a rhythm that feels almost contemplative, like returning to the same thought from slightly different angles. If Fitzpatrick’s earlier work asked how we build the world, and what happens when those systems fail, Elsewhere asks something closer to home. Where do we belong within all of this? It’s a question that doesn’t resolve, and the paintings don’t try to answer it. Instead, they offer a space to sit with it, to move through these constructed images the way you might move through memory itself, recognizing something familiar without ever fully pinning it down. And in that sense, the work feels less like a departure than a return. Not to a specific place, but to a more fundamental idea: that architecture, at its core, is not just about structures. It’s about the human need to build, to inhabit, and to find meaning in the spaces we create.

Houston has always had places like this. Not many, but enough to form a quiet lineage. The Beer Can House, assembled by John Milkovisch, was never meant to be a destination; it became one because it insisted on its own internal logic. The Orange Show, created by Jeff McKissack, began as a private cosmology, an eccentric, handmade monument to health, optimism, and oranges, and only later accrued institutional meaning. In each case, recognition followed persistence, not the other way around. P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s Vol. 1, Issue 8, P. 1 Jan. 1, 2026 The Front Gallery on Bonnie Brae D. M. Allison, January 1, 2026 (word count 1065) At 1412 Bonnie Brae around the corner from where I live and easy to miss if you aren’t looking stands the home of Sharon Engelstein and Aaron Parazette. It is a modest house, set back from the street, more domestic than declarative. There is no marquee, no signage announcing cultural importance. And that, of course, is the point. Engelstein’s Front Gallery occupies exactly what its name suggests: the front of the house, sometimes the porch, sometimes the yard, sometimes a space that feels as provisional as it is intentional. It is not a gallery in the commercial sense, nor does it behave like one. It operates on conviction rather than market logic, on curiosity rather than calendar, and on trust, trust in artists, trust in process, trust that the right people will find their way there without being told. Houston has always had places like this. Not many, but enough to form a quiet lineage. The Beer Can House, assembled obsessively by John Milkovisch, was never meant to be a destination; it became one because it insisted on its own internal logic. The Orange Show, created by Jeff McKissack, began as a private cosmology, an eccentric, handmade monument to health, optimism, and oranges, and only later accrued institutional meaning. In each case, recognition followed persistence, not the other way around. The Front Gallery belongs to that family of places. It is an insider’s space, known first by artists and only later, if at all, by the broader public. It doesn’t announce itself as alternative; it simply is. Shows appear because Sharon believes in them. Artists are invited because something in their work asks for this scale, this intimacy, this lack of mediation. The gallery does not explain itself. It doesn’t need to. When I stopped by this evening, I had the time wrong, 1pm - 4pm, I thought 4pm - 7pm, I would have missed it anyway earlier in the day; I was cataloging Ibsen Espada in a storage locker. Sharon was away. The light was fading, the porch half in shadow, and for a moment my encounter with Aaron was an unscripted surprise, a "hey neighbor moment" rather than an art visit. That, too, is part of the Front Gallery’s grammar. You arrive as a person first, a viewer second. You look around not because you are told to, but because you are curious. Inside, the current exhibition, "Ni Howdy" by Lotus Bermudez, occupies the space without overwhelming it. The work draws from Bermudez’s Southeast Texas and Cantonese roots, blending ceramic traditions, personal history, and cultural memory. The wall text speaks of ancestry, geography, and the desire to open dialogue rather than close meaning. It is thoughtful, grounded, and generous. But the Front Gallery does not frame the work as a statement to be consumed; it allows it to exist as part of an ongoing conversation. That distinction matters. In a city increasingly shaped by fairs, openings, and short attention spans, the Front Gallery resists urgency. It does not chase relevance; it accumulates it slowly. Its influence is quiet but durable, passed along in conversations, recommendations, and word-of-mouth routes that don’t show up on maps. Engelstein has earned a reputation as a visionary not by branding herself as one, but by showing up again and again, with clarity and care. The Front Gallery is not a platform; it is a practice. It is a reminder that some of Houston’s most meaningful cultural spaces have always lived just off the main road, embedded in neighborhoods, sustained by belief rather than funding cycles. You don’t stumble into places like this by accident. You find them because someone you trust tells you where to turn, or because you’ve learned to look for the small signals, the porch light, the open door, the sense that something is happening quietly inside. And once you’ve been, you carry it with you, like a local landmark that doesn’t need a sign. About the show: "Ni Howdy" features a series of ceramic sculptures that the artist hopes will serve as a catalyst for dialogue. Celebrating the craft of ceramics. The work is a blend of the artists Texas and Cantonese Roots opening new perspectives on multicultural identities in Houston. These works, funded in part by the city of Houston and the Houston Arts Alliance through the Support for Artists and Creative Individuals Grant gave the time, focus, and energy to Express gratitude to Lotus’ ancestors and let her Express her voice and the work that has been floating around as dreams in her mind. The project opens perspectives of the identity by culture and geographic location. I have never extensively shared my heritage story artistically before and now I find myself wanting to create a series to explore my deep SE Texas and Cantonese roots. I am exploring sculptural ceramic forms that are influenced by growing up along Dickinson Bayou, my love of historical Southern ceramics (such as George Ohr and Texas Stoneware), and listening to stories of my hardworking, extended Asian family. My great grandfather was a coolie on two railroads and grandparents had the first Asian grocery/import store in Dallas, Jung's Oriental Food and Gifts. Now as ceramist, wife, mother, and business owner I am voicing my narrative of what it means to me to be Tex-Asian in the 21st century. What I will enjoy most about sharing my work with others is offering the next generation an understanding of the paths that were laid before them so they can blaze their own trail. (Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen) 1/20 Lotus Bermudez is a Southeast Texas native and multi-cultural third generation Chinese American with three decades of experience in ceramics. She is a ceramist, educator, clay community advocate and co-owns Third Coast Clay, a Houston based ceramic studio. Bermudez received her Master of Fine Arts in 2004 and was mentored by Huey Beckham and influenced by Luis Jimenez. She is a 2025 Jones Artist Award recipient from Houston Endowment, 2025 and 2023 artist granted from Houston Arts Alliance through the City of Houston, creator of the World's Largest Clay Tools sculpture sits on the board of the Texas Clay Festival. is a former Artist-in-Residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, worked on multiple ceramic public art installations with Houston SPARK Parks (two of which were with the Houston Museum of Fine Arts), and former chair of Empty Bowls Houston Engelstein’s Front Gallery occupies exactly what its name suggests: the front of the house, sometimes the porch, sometimes the yard, sometimes a space that feels as provisional as it is intentional. It is not a gallery in the commercial sense, nor does it behave like one.

Arts Rescue Mission's four tenets, Restore, Shelter, Provide, and Preserve. Preserve the history we preserve the artist. We document and catalog the history of our artists, making it possible to publish and preserve the artists and their work Rescue Mission Team at Work RESTORE - SHELTER - PROVIDE - PRESERVE Archiving is a major portion of what we do, and essential to our PROVIDE program seeking to establish legacies by publishing books and films about our artists and the lives they have led. Our efforts are not only in-house, but coordinate with other archives in the Texas Arts infrastructure like the University of Houston Special Libraries. Our Archive is open source as well, and seeks community input to preserve all available information. Please Sign Up For The Mission News! We are looking for a volunteer or volunteers (09-16-2925) to put in about 4 hours a week for this program. This will be a paid position as we move forward with our grant writing, and donations. If you are interested please contact us! artsrescue2025@gmail.com or contact us here. 4 Hands - 1 Purpose Preserve WE ACCOMPLISH THIS WITHOUT THE COST OF A PHYSICAL SITE ARCHIVING HELPS US HELP YOU WITH: Store & Move Physical Art & Collectables Organize help during a sudden illness or accident Document Collections for artists & collectors Placing Artworks Gifting Artworks & Collectables Posting Documents For Community Use Raise Awareness & Recognition For Artists 50 + Create a Website Wikipedia Listings Publish Books We have an on line staff consisting of a Director (Fulltime), a Secretary for Bookings, Events, and Correspondence (Fulltime), a Treasurer for Bookkeeping and Reports (part time), a Grants Writer overseeing donations, & subscriptions, a Technical Support Director who acts as our Web Master and Archiving, as well as a Wikipedia writer to document our Visual and Performing artists careers. Earmark your donation to our PRESERVE program here. Monthly subscriptions at any level receive a 50% discount on all event and table and chair reservations. •Director (Fulltime) •Secretary / Bookings / Events / Correspondence (Fulltime) •Treasurer / Bookkeeping / Reports •Grants, Donations, & Subscriptions: •Technical Support: Web Master, Arching & Gifting Over-Watch •Research: Gifting Art / Document / Resources & Assets for Artists •Project Manager: PRESERVE Dan M Allison Founder Arts Rescue Mission artsrescue2025@gmail.com 4. Preserve Program /A Lifetime of Work Saved for Future Generations Archiving a Lifetime of Artistic Work Purpose: To safeguard the documents, images, records, and materials that make up an artist’s full professional history ensuring a reliable archive for book and film initiatives, future appraisers, scholars, curators, and family members. Why Preservation Matters: While artwork is often saved by families, the essential paper trail articles, reviews, correspondence, exhibition paperwork, grant files, catalogs, and ephemera is frequently lost. Without these records, an artist’s life becomes difficult to reconstruct, their legacy becomes vulnerable, and their value in the historical record diminishes. What the Preserve Program Does: ARM assists aging artists by helping them secure and organize the materials needed to reconstruct a complete professional history. This is a detailed, multi-step process involving: Photography of artworks and archival materials Scanning documents, letters, articles, and records Tagging and metadata entry for every file and image Building chronological archives (often 1,000+ entries) using Excel or comparable systems This is painstaking, essential work and it is often neglected because of cost, time, and the complexity of managing a lifetime’s worth of material. How Preserve Is Funded: Supported through subscriptions specifically earmarked for Preservation initiatives. Includes a future Project Manager role (16 hrs./month) to oversee archiving tasks and coordinate with artists, as funding becomes available. Additional support comes from the Station Cabaret fundraising event each October. Why Preserve Exists: Because an artist’s legacy is more than their artwork — it is the complete story of a life lived in service to creativity. ARM ensures that story is not lost. Donate Preserve Funded through subscriptions to oversee PRESERVE initiatives. Project Manager 16 hrs./ month More Info Here. Preserve Funded through subscriptions to oversee ARM preservation initiatives. Click Here to find out more. / Project Manager 16 hrs./week From years of experience, it has become evident that while family members often retain and pass down artwork, crucial documents, such as articles, exhibition records, and professional correspondence, are frequently discarded or overlooked. We would like to ensure that such materials are preserved, providing a historical record of the artist and their work for future reference by appraisers, archivists, and researchers. This is a lengthy and expensive four-step process that's involves photography, scanning, tagging the photos and scanned images, and putting them together in Excel files chronologically. We are recreating a life and there are lots of judgment calls while setting up an Excel file which oftentimes more than a 1000 entries in a professional performing or visual artist's lifetime. This is essential work as the book closes on a lifetime of accomplishment but it's often neglected because of the expense. Click Here to earmark your donation to our PRESERVE program.

Arts Rescue Mission's four tenets, Restore, Shelter, Provide, and Preserve. 4 Hands - 1 Purpose Provide INSIDE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SPECEIAL LIBRARIES With Christian Kelleher, Director of Exhibitions and External Relations. RESTORE - SHELTER - PROVIDE - PRESERVE PROVIDING FOR AN ARTIST NOW TO PRESERVE A PIECE OF TEXAS HISTORY LATER We believe the best way to create a book about an artist is to a start with creating their archive. An archive, as you may know, is the collection of all the ephemeral personal effects from an artist's life that tell their story. Newspaper articles, reviews, publications, including online research along with interviews with the artist, fiends, associates, and critics digitized and filed chronological order. Archive files are sorted according to date, after that a good look at the artist's journey almost writes itself. We would like to ensure that such materials are preserved, providing a historical record of the artist and their work for future reference by appraisers, archivists, and researchers. This is a lengthy and expensive four-step process that's involves photography, scanning, tagging the photos and scanned images, and putting them together in Excel files chronologically. We are recreating a life. There are lots of judgment calls while setting up an Excel file which oftentimes will have more than 1000 entries in a professional performing or visual artist's lifetime. This is essential work as the book closes on a lifetime of accomplishment, but it's often neglected because of the expense. With the help of volunteers, your input into our archive, and our staff we are preserving arts history one artist and one book at a time. 3. Provide Program /Renewed Opportunity & Creative Second Act Creating New Opportunities for Writers, Musicians, Composers, and Visual Artists, with Book and Film Initiatives Purpose: To support aging artists as they pursue creative projects they never had the time or resources to complete earlier in life providing visibility, opportunity, and renewed career momentum in their later years by producing books and films. Why Provide Matters: Many artists spent decades balancing work, family, and survival, leaving little time for the projects closest to their heart. As public arts funding shrinks and the cost of living rises, the need for structured support in later-life creativity has never been greater. ARM’s Provide Program aims to fill that gap. What the Provide Program Does: Supports new creative work by aging writers, musicians, composers, performers, and visual artists. Develops opportunities for visibility — talks, readings, performances, catalog essays, interviews, and public presentations. Builds pathways for future recognition, including book projects, creative memoirs, catalogs, and career retrospectives that bridge past accomplishments with future celebration. Explores access to health-insurance options tailored for older creatives who often cannot secure traditional coverage due to freelance careers and limited employer-provided benefits. Connects artists to ARM’s Preservation Program, ensuring that new creative work is built on a foundation of properly archived materials. How Provide Is Funded: The Station Cabaret, ARM’s annual fall fundraising event — an evening of dinner, jazz, creative performances, and “All Saints Night” atmosphere — generates the core support for the Provide Program. This event gives artists a chance to: Share their story Reclaim visibility Present new work to an engaged community Shine again at a time when many feel unseen Goal: To ensure that artists who have shaped their communities for decades are never forgotten, never isolated, and always supported as they continue to create. Funded by the "STATION CABERET" dinner and jazz in October. / Project Manager 16 hrs./ month More Info Here. WE ACCOMPLISH THIS WITHOUT THE COST OF A PHYSICAL SITE ARCHIVING HELPS US HELP YOU WITH: Store & Move Physical Art & Collectables Organize help during a sudden illness or accident Document Collections for artists & collectors Placing Artworks Gifting Artworks & Collectables Posting Documents For Community Use Raise Awareness & Recognition For Artists 50+ Create a Website Wikipedia Listings Publish Books We have an on line staff consisting of a Director (Fulltime), a Secretary for Bookings, Events, and Correspondence (Fulltime), a Treasurer for Bookkeeping and Reports (part time), a Grants Writer overseeing donations, & subscriptions, a Technical Support Director who acts as our Web Master and Archiving, as well as a Wikipedia writer to document our Visual and Performing artists careers. Earmark your donation to our PRESERVE program here. Monthly subscriptions at any level receive a 50% discount on all event and table and chair reservations. •Director (Full Time) •Secretary / Bookings / Events / Correspondence (Full Time) •Treasurer / Bookkeeping / Reports •Grants, Donations, & Subscriptions: •Technical Support: Web Master, Arching & Gifting Over-Watch •Research: Gifting Art / Document / Resources & Assets for Artists •Project Manager: PRESERVE Dan M Allison Founder Arts Rescue Mission artsrescue2025@gmail.com Donate Provide Please Sign Up For The Mission News Funded through subscriptions to oversee ARM preservation initiatives. Project Manager 16 hrs./ month We are looking for a volunteer or volunteers to put in about 4 hours a week for this program. This will be a paid position as we move forward with our grant writing, and donations. If you are interested please contact us! artsrescue2025@gmail.com or signup here.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI isn’t really about technology—it’s about the strange, long, and occasionally idiotic ways humans have passed notes to each other for 70,000 years. Harari’s big idea is that civilization itself runs on information: gossip first, gods second, and Google last. P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s Vol. 1, Issue 3, Oct. 28, 2025 page 2 My Halloween Birthday by Mark S. Smith Oct. 26, 2025 My birthday is on Halloween. I’ve had 70+ opportunities to contemplate this special evening. As a child I did not understand the ruckus and felt it was a bit of drama in search of a backstory. Some years later as a tween, the holiday felt too much like a candy smash and grab and it left me feeling awkward at best. As an art student in NYC in my early twenties I experienced a true reckoning on my first chilly Halloween night. It was a transformative scene, a citywide stage set, a blowout montage of cultures that spilled into streets filled with laughing gas and long marching processionals of red Solo cups and squeals. Halloween was a street side pop-up symphony of Jazz, Salsa music, Irish Bars playing the Van Morrison, and Marvin Gaye’s Inner-City Blues pouring out of clubs with deep bass lines rolling across the city with sweet and bitter notes that lingered forever. All the time it was really fall that stole the show with crisp fluttering amber leaves, crystal-clear night lights and cold winds that made you stop and breath in slowly.. Many years later as an artist and art historian I more fully understood the network of global connections that fill in the missing Halloween storyline. You don’t have to be mystical or simply like to celebrate to appreciate the magic and mystery of Autumn. Looking at this tradition in hindsight we might respectfully update and pass forward what we have learned. Halloween is a fall celebration of the collective “us” in all our beautiful costumes and diversity. Look, touch and act with a kind heart and honor Mother nature as she offers up this special season. And my costume of choice is that of an artist at various stages of life looking straight ahead ….. My Blood Sunday: Vanilla Ice Cream, cold Blueberry juice and a shot of Cointreau. (Click On Images To Expand To Full Screen) Mark S Smith Smith in Studio Mark S Smith Blody Sunday Mark S Smith 1/10 Photo credits Mark S. Smith What Mark Writes About His Work: After decades as a studio artist, I have found a way of building a painting that perfectly suits my need to work with physical materials and processes that express my passion for color and abstraction. The process is slow and progressive layering. The pigment is spread in controlled layers using very thin and flexible aluminum blades, surgical grade Teflon scrapers and an assortment of large and small soft synthetic bristle brushes. As the paintings evolve, the color is sometimes washed away with a mist of water, smeared carefully with rags and scrapers and heated with controlled temperature so a top layer of colors can be added. In essence, what I do allows me to work in quick sweeping gestures and equally in slow and nuanced detail. In this process, paint can flood, move, and drift over the surface with organic energy. The painting process hints at the feeling of slow geological movement, metamorphosis, and surface topography. Every artist has a unique process and a period of reflection before starting a new body of artwork. I do months of research exploring a topic I find interesting and challenging. Usually it’s related to music, architecture, the natural sciences or cultural history. It’s detective work that leads to unfamiliar places, expanded ways of thinking, and refreshes creative potential. refreshes creative potential. The process starts by studying, reading, and collecting digital images that are added to the large digital image library I started years ago. The library is also a photographic archive of my own paintings and is always growing. To date, there are over 20,000 images. Next, I use specialized software, a digital stylus and a touch sensitive pad (Corel and Wacom) as well as digital drawing media to manipulate, deconstruct, “recombine” and rebuild the images as nonrepresentational and abstract fields of color, shape, texture and pattern. The new images are a carefully considered blend/mix of my art with the new researched subject matter. These recombines become prototypes and studies for making physical paintings. At the end of the day, the measure of joy or success is always reflected by my surprise and wonderment. Each body of work is based on a thematic concept inspired by music, architecture, or science. Explore their stories.