Arts Rescue Mission -Aid For Aging Artists

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.

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 2026 Visual Artist Richard Stout Book Project (Goal Fall 2027) 09/27/2025 Works courtesy of Foltz Fine Art , with approximately have 1781 Known works & more than 1800 ephemerals in our archive of this seminal Houston artist. I you have any more images or documents please click her e to attach files and let us know in the sign-up comments what you would like to add to this community effort. THANKS! Richard Stout project: Press Ephemerals / Art Rescue Mission / 64 Objects / 09-25-2025 GALLERY 1. Load More Richard Stout project{ Personal Ephemerals / Art Rescue Mission / 66 images 09-25-2025 GALLERY 3. Load More Richard Stout project. Known Works / Examples / Art Rescue Mission / 39 works / 09-25-2025 GALLERY 2. Load More Richard Stout project. Archiving - Gallery & Studio / Art Rescue Mission / May 2019 GALLERY 4. Load More RESTORE - SHELTER - PROVIDE - PRESERVE PLEASE NOTE: ARM NEEDS COMMUMITY INPUT: Help us tell Richard Stout's Story. Identify the stories and individuals in THIS GALLERY. You can also add to this community library by CLICKING HERE and sending us your Richard Stout 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 Preserve Funded through subscriptions to oversee ARM preservation initiatives. Click Here to find out more. / Project Manager 16 hrs./week MORE INFO From years of experience, it became evident that while family members often don't retain and pass along crucial documents such as articles, exhibition records, and professional correspondence, and these 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 involves photography, scanning, tagging the photos, and tagging the scanned images, and then putting them together in an Excel file chronologically. We are recreating a life and there are lots of judgment calls while setting up an Excel file which oftentimes has more than a 1700 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. Preservation Works hand in hand with our PROVIDE program and our desire to create books about artists. As we mentioned above, this chronology recreates a life. From childhood friends and family photos through their life's journey , artists oftentimes have some of the most interesting stories to tell. Interesting work for us, and engaging content for you. Provide Funded by the "Station Cabaret" dinner and jazz in October. Click Here to find out more. / Project Manager 16 hrs./week MORE INFO Our aim here is to support projects that give writers, musicians, composers, and artists the time to pursue their passions in later years, time they never had while balancing careers and family. While we are preserving artists’ stories and works in our Preservation program, we are also creating the foundation for providing new opportunities. A carefully built archive doesn’t just keep history safe, it supplies the raw material for biography, scholarship, and celebration. Imagine a book that chronicles an artist’s journey: part memoir, part catalog, part testament. That book is both preservation and provision, a bridge between past accomplishments and future recognition. The same way the ARMON Awards sustain our Shelter program, our fall event—the Station Cabaret, an evening of dinner, jazz, and creative presentations in a spirited Halloween atmosphere, funds our Provide program. Through it, we give artists in their later years the chance to share their story, renew their visibility, and shine once more. In every program, the goal is the same: to ensure that artists, who have given us so much, are never forgotten, neglected, or left without support. To see how we set the stage for this event Click Here . To earmark your donation to our PROVIDE program Click Here. "Four Hands" RESTORE / SHELTER / PROVIDE / PRESERVE 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 (Click On Images To Expand To Full Screen) (Click On Red Projects To View Progress)

Sign in and post documents for Goggle and artworks for gifting and exchange to family and friends Research Exchange for The Creative Arts Health & Opportunities Health & Wellness Over 50 Art Placement & Gifting Research Residency Opportunities INFORMATION RESOURCES FOR THE CREATIVE ARTS 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 researches opportunities and institutions that support the preservation, acquisition, and documentation of artistic work across various disciplines. Rescue Station will send out monthly updates to our list and will inform other non-profit organizations. Rescue Station Visual Arts Information: • Institutions accepting gifts of art for their collections. • Firms actively placing artworks for acquisition. • Provide contact information for relevant departments. • Offer an abbreviated history of professional activities within their collections. Performing Arts Information: Similar research is conducted for performing artists, identifying institutions and organizations that: • Support archival preservation of performances, scripts, and recordings. • Offer grants and funding for ongoing projects. • Maintain artist registries for historical and professional reference. • Other Creative Disciplines Writers, Musicians, Filmmakers, And Other Creative Professionals: • Opportunities for submissions and funding for creative projects. • Institutions and archives that preserve works in various artistic fields. • Contacts for organizations that support the legacy and visibility of artists’ work. This resource area is continually updated to ensure Visual & Performing Artists have access to information that helps sustain artistic legacies and connect with institutions that value creative contributions. The lock box? We oversee our research with respect and care. Your ideas, and input to our continual investigation with images, documents, & stories are invaluable! Be a Community Researcher: Contact us by clicking on the lock box below Your ideas will appear on line as soon as we check them out. Leave your ideas or suggestions in the comments section when you sign in. You can also send us images there and links you want us to investigate. You are our eyes and ears so please help the community with health tips, opportunities to grow, or what we need to our agenda to Aid Aging Artists.

Her work often begins with the thing left behind: a tool, a book, a flower, an earring, a cord, a child’s toy, a piece of cloth, a lock of hair. These are not props, and they are not simply found objects waiting to be made strange by art. In Bedgood’s world, ordinary things already carry strangeness. They have absorbed touch, labor, use, grief, affection, accident, and time. They become evidence that a life was lived near them. 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. 6, p. 1 June 08, 2026 Jill Bedgood:” What Remains” Dan M. Allison, Mission News, 06-08-2026 (word count 1,410, images 9) Vestiges of Existence at Andrew Durham Gallery June 6 - August 1, 2026 The first time I saw Jill Bedgood's work was her show Cantos of Light at Volker Eisele's Art Scan gallery in 2019. She's been hanging memories you can physically hold, building an art of remnants, thresholds, relics, and witnesses since the late 80s. Her work often begins with the thing left behind: a tool, a book, a flower, an earring, a cord, a child’s toy, a piece of cloth, a lock of hair. These are not props, and they are not simply found objects waiting to be made strange by art. In Bedgood’s world, ordinary things already carry strangeness. They have absorbed touch, labor, use, grief, affection, accident, and time. They become evidence that a life was lived near them. That may be the thread connecting Barnacles of Existence, her 2020 exhibition at Women & Their Work, to Vestiges of Existence, which opened June 6, 2026, at Andrew Durham Gallery in Houston. In Barnacles, Bedgood thought about what people save when there is almost no time to choose. After Hurricane Harvey, that question was not abstract. What do you take if you have fifteen minutes? The expected heirloom may not be the thing that matters most. For Bedgood, one answer was her father’s handmade extension cord, assembled from parts, rigged and taped together, then hung in a circle on the wall of his shop. It was useful, homemade, imperfect, and beautiful. Almost like a drawing. That earlier work helps frame Vestiges of Existence. Bedgood is not interested in objects because they are precious in the marketplace. She is interested in what they hold: labor, love, grief, family, usefulness, survival, and the residue of human touch. A button, a caliper, a book, a flower, a lock of hair, or a small toy may become a way of asking how a life is measured, what remains after use, and how objects continue speaking after their original purpose has passed. In Barnacles Calipers, 2020/2023, cast plaster, powder graphite, marble dust, and watercolor turn measuring tools into something nearly fossilized. The work is pale, almost archaeological, as if utility itself had been unearthed and preserved. Calipers are instruments of exactness, but in Bedgood’s hands they point toward a more difficult measurement: not size, but worth; not distance, but the span between generations. That question of measurement appears again in Book: Caliper: Between, 2026, where the form of the book becomes a vessel for tools, memory, and inheritance. Bedgood has long been drawn to books as devotional structures, especially the Book of Hours, where prayer and time are organized into a rhythm of days, seasons, and spiritual obligations. In her work, a book may be a clock, a reliquary, a ledger, or a place where experience is pressed into silence. The Durham exhibition also includes works from her Decay series, including Decay: Protea, 2025, and Decay: Astromeria, 2026. These are flowers after the bloom, or perhaps flowers caught between bloom and disappearance. They are not sentimental botanical studies. Drawn in charcoal, graphite, and watercolor, they carry the weight of transformation. Their beauty has not vanished, but it has changed temperature. What was alive becomes image, trace, and memory. In Decay: Protea, the flower seems to emerge from darkness, its petals folded into something almost bodily. It feels less like a still life than an apparition. The flower is no longer only a flower. It becomes a face, a wound, a mask, a burial object, something seen at the edge of light. That edge, the place between states, appears again and again in Bedgood’s work. Even Song Morning Light, 2017, brings that threshold into clearer view. The title alone gives us the tension: evening song and morning light, ending and beginning, fading and return. The work uses acrylic and graphite on plaster embedded into canvas, with pale lunar circles and quiet marks arranged across a long horizontal field. It feels like a devotional chart, a weathered sign, or a map of passing time. Light is present, but it is faint, almost rubbed into the surface rather than painted onto it. That matters, because Vestiges of Existence is not only about darkness. Bedgood speaks openly through difficult histories, grief, illness, violence, and mourning, but she does not leave the work there. She is interested in what survives after the terrible thing has happened. She is interested in the witness that remains. This becomes most direct in the works using human hair. In Weep, 2026, long black strands hang over plaster wrap and charcoal like a curtain, a body, a procession, or a group of figures seen from behind. The hair is not symbolic in some distant, generalized way. It is human hair, collected by the artist over time. That fact matters. Hair still carries the presence of the body after it has left the body. At the gallery, Bedgood traced her interest in hair back to Victorian mourning traditions. In the nineteenth century, locks of hair were preserved in lockets, jewelry, wreaths, and corsage-like memorial objects. Family members might contribute hair after a death, and that hair could be worked into tatting, lace, and elaborate commemorative forms. These objects were intimate memorials, handmade records of loss. They were also strange. Hair carries that double charge. It can be beautiful and creepy, sentimental and bodily, sacred and unsettling, private and political, all at once. Bedgood understands that charge. Hair has long been tied to memory, grief, family, childhood, femininity, religious imagery, cultural identity, illness, and shame. People save a baby’s first haircut. They keep a lover’s hair in a locket. They preserve hair after someone dies. At the same time, hair can be used as a tool of control or humiliation. Forced head-shaving has been used as punishment in wartime, under authoritarian regimes, and as a public act of shame. Illness changes the meaning again. Alopecia and chemotherapy make the loss of hair visible, vulnerable, and sometimes unexpectedly powerful. That range of meanings gives the hair works in Vestiges of Existence their emotional force. Hair is not decoration here. It is evidence, relic, witness, and emotional material. It belongs to the body, to family, to mourning, to beauty, to fear, and to history. It can suggest tenderness in one moment and violence in the next. Some of these works began after Bedgood spent time abroad, where she became deeply affected by the history of Germany, World War II, the Holocaust, and the way sites of violence can later be absorbed into ordinary public life. She spoke about encountering a community garden that had once been the site of a pogrom and massacre. What does it mean for a place of killing to become a garden? What remains in the soil? What does a tree witness? What does the sky remember? That experience led Bedgood to think about nature as witness: trees, earth, night, stars, and constellations silently holding the memory of what happened there. In several works, the act of looking upward becomes important. One piece is titled North Star. The image of the night sky suggests direction, survival, orientation, and perhaps the last thing one might see when looking up. The ground may hold violence, but the sky still offers a point of reference. The darkness in these works is real, but Bedgood does not want the work to remain only in grief or horror. She spoke of wanting light to come through. That is important. These works are not illustrations of trauma. They are acts of processing, looking, remembering, and transforming. They hold the complicated beauty that can emerge from memory without pretending the wound is gone. In speaking about Germany, Bedgood also described how travel forced her to reconsider what she thought she knew about European history, the Berlin Wall, postwar divisions, and the lingering presence of violence in the landscape. Like many Americans, she realized how little of that history had truly been taught. The works grow out of that mixture of historical research, personal reflection, museum visits, sketching, memory, and material experimentation. That sense of witness also deepens a work such as Loss: Brahma Jumper Child’s Toy, 2026. The image of the toy is quiet, almost ghosted into the surface, but it carries the shock of recognition. A child’s toy is never only a toy once it has been touched, dragged, slept beside, forgotten, or lost. It belongs to play, but it also belongs to memory. In Bedgood’s hands, it becomes another fragile survivor, another object that seems to ask why some things remain visible while others disappear. The same question runs through Food Insecurity: Starvation, 2026. Here Bedgood’s attention turns toward the material reality of need. Hunger is not an abstraction. It is bodily, political, historical, and present. The work’s surface is worn and gray, with language almost buried beneath the image, as though the words themselves have been scraped, weathered, or starved of certainty. Like many of the works in the exhibition, it holds together image and evidence, public condition and private vulnerability. What makes Bedgood’s work so quietly powerful is that she does not separate these registers. Family memory, historical violence, devotional time, natural decay, illness, hunger, mourning, and beauty are not treated as separate subjects. They overlap. They cling to one another. A flower can become a body. A caliper can become a measure of inheritance. A book can become a reliquary. A toy can become a witness. Hair can become a record of presence. Seen this way, Barnacles of Existence and Vestiges of Existence are not isolated exhibitions, but parts of a long conversation. Barnacles asked what objects cling to us. Vestiges asks what remains after we are gone. Both bodies of work are rooted in the same understanding: that ordinary things are never merely ordinary once they have passed through human life. (9 images Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen) Jill Bedgood, interview for her show March 2020 at Women and There Work, Austin TX Loss: Brahma Jumper Childs Toy - 2026 - Charcoal on plaster wrap over canvas, 16 x 22 in. Decay Protea - 2025 - Charcoal, graphite, watercolor on paper - 30 x 22 in. Jill Bedgood, interview for her show March 2020 at Women and There Work, Austin TX 1/9 Her work often begins with the thing left behind: a tool, a book, a flower, an earring, a cord, a child’s toy, a piece of cloth, a lock of hair. These are not props, and they are not simply found objects waiting to be made strange by art. In Bedgood’s world, ordinary things already carry strangeness. They have absorbed touch, labor, use, grief, affection, accident, and time. They become evidence that a life was lived near them. Bedgood’s art is a contemporary memento mori, but it is warmer and stranger than that phrase alone allows. It is not only a reminder that we die. It is a reminder that we leave evidence. We leave tools, marks, repairs, ornaments, habits, fragments, stains, and stories. We leave things that may look worthless until someone who understands memory picks them up. In Vestiges of Existence, Jill Bedgood does exactly that. She gathers the fragile remains of use, loss, and touch, and lets them speak again. Sources: 1. https://www.jillbedgood.com/ 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8JStI1zJfE Jill Bedgood | Barnacles Of Existence, Women & Their Work Gallery, March 7, 2020 3. Additional from Andrew Durham Gallery, Houston TX Bedgood creates multi-media art that reflects her questioning of the duality of human nature, and the transitional moments between. She has a BFA: painting/art history, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and MFA: U-Texas-Austin, mixed media sculpture. Residencies: Contemporary at Blue Star SATX Kunstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Residency-Berlin 2023, Rockefeller Foundation Center-Bellagio Italy, Visiting Artist American Academy-Rome-Italy, MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Awards : New Forms Regional Initiatives Grant/ Rockefeller-Andy Warhol Foundation-National Endowment for the Arts, Mid-America-National Endowment for the Arts Award Sculpture, Art Matters Inc.-NYC, Native Plant Society of Texas Annual Award. Exhibitions include the Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, ArtScan Rudolf Blume Gallery-Houston, G Contemporary-Houston, Austin Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, Women & Their Work-Austin, Lawndale Art Center-Houston, The Contemporary at Blue Star-SATX, University of-Texas-Arlington, ArtSpace 111 FWTX. Reviews: New York Times, The New Art Examiner, High Performance, Sculpture, BE Berlin Magazine, ArtLies, Houston Chronicle, CNN online, NPR. Bedgood is/ has been a Professor, Adjunct Faculty at Austin Community College, U-Texas Austin, Trinity University, Texas State University San Marcos, and Visiting Artist University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She lives-works in San Antonio, Texas.

After The Last Sky: The Texas Biennial at a Crossroads By Dan M. Allison | Arts Rescue Mission, October 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 2 After The Last Sky: The Texas Biennial at a Crossroads Dan M. Allison, MissionNews, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Oct.14, 2025 A Homegrown Experiment The Texas Biennial began in 2005 as a stubborn act of independence. A small circle of Austin artists, Rachel Koper, Jon Lawrence, Shea Little, Arturo Palacios, Joseph Phillips, and Jana Swec, wanted to create a statewide platform without waiting for large museums to make room. They built it from the ground up: ad-hoc venues, borrowed walls, volunteer energy, and an open call that cast a wide net across Texas. In those early years, the Biennial felt scrappy but electric. It was less about prestige and more about possibility: could Texas artists be seen together, not as isolated city scenes but as a shared conversation? The answer, as it turned out, was yes. By 2011, the project merged with the Austin nonprofit Big Medium, giving the Biennial institutional support and a broader reach. A “Participating Organizations” model was introduced, inviting museums, artist-run spaces, and collectives across Texas to align exhibitions under the Biennial banner. The event was no longer just an Austin project, it became a statewide platform. The 2013 edition proved the concept’s power. Curators Bill Arning, René Paul Barilleaux, K8 Hardy, Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler, Annette Lawrence, Christina Rees, Dario Robleto, Noah Simblist, Jeremy Strick, Clint Willour, and others helped mount exhibitions in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and Marfa. It was ambitious, messy, and alive, a Texas-sized experiment in shared visibility. Over time, the rhythm wavered. Some editions scaled back (notably 2017, centered again in Austin); others disappeared entirely (2019). The 2020 edition was postponed by the pandemic until 2021. Yet every cycle, when it resurfaced, it carried the same conviction: that Texas deserved its own survey, defined by its artists rather than outside institutions. 2021: A Distributed Biennial The 2021 Texas Biennial, curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza, marked a structural shift. Instead of a single venue, it spanned major institutions: Artpace, Ruby City, the McNay Art Museum, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with FotoFest in Houston. The scope widened further through a bold eligibility expansion, not just artists living and working in Texas, but also “Texpats” (Texas natives working elsewhere) and artists whose projects engaged Texas themes from afar. The Biennial had grown from a regional showcase into a platform for Texas in dialogue with the world. It was both a survey and an invitation: how far can “Texas art” reach before it stops being Texan? The Last Sky The most recent edition, 2024’s The Last Sky, pushed the model further. Curated collaboratively by Erika Mei Chua Holum, Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, and Coka Treviño, it rejected hierarchy in favor of collective curatorship and thematic depth. The title, poetic and ominous, suggested both fragility and renewal, a meditation on thresholds and shared futures. The curators broadened participation to include performance, cultural preservation, time-based media, and socially engaged practice. Venues stretched across Houston and the Gulf Coast: Blaffer Art Museum, DiverseWorks, Sawyer Yards, The Journey HTX, Lanecia Rouse Tinsley Gallery, and the Houston Climate Justice Museum, among others. In Corpus Christi, K Space Contemporary joined the network, reinforcing the Biennial’s growing reach beyond Austin. For visitors, The Last Sky read less like a single show and more like a constellation, a set of overlapping practices, voices, and geographies. That diffusion was both its strength and its challenge. The Biennial’s Enduring Questions Nearly twenty years on, the Texas Biennial carries both weight and wear. It has elevated hundreds of artists, brought curators and critics into conversation with Texas art, and created moments of recognition for communities often overlooked by larger institutions. But it also raises difficult questions: Scale vs. focus: Does statewide scope strengthen or dilute impact? Consistency vs. flexibility: Can a Biennial that sometimes skips years sustain credibility? Geography vs. cohesion: How do you connect an exhibition stretched across multiple cities? Curatorial voice vs. collective chorus: Should the Biennial present one unified vision, or remain a platform for many? These are not unique to Texas. From Venice to New Orleans, every biennial wrestles with similar tensions. But in Texas, vast, diverse, and contradictory, the stakes feel uniquely local. The Biennial’s challenge has always been to balance independence with identity, ambition with accessibility. Artists’ and Institutions’ Perspectives For artists, the Biennial has long represented both opportunity and uncertainty. Inclusion brings exposure, catalog presence, and the possibility of national attention. But with irregular scheduling and shifting leadership, many artists struggle to plan around it. The question “When is the next one?” has no reliable answer. For institutions, participation brings collaboration and shared audiences. Museums and nonprofits benefit from statewide promotion and cross-pollination. Yet participation also demands resources, curatorial hours, staff, and budgets. For smaller organizations, those costs can be prohibitive. Sustaining the “Participating Organizations” model requires a stable financial foundation, something increasingly rare in the state’s arts ecosystem. The Crossroads: 2026 and Beyond After The Last Sky, the Texas Biennial stands at a genuine crossroads. The next open call, expected for 2026, has not been announced. Behind the uncertainty lies a larger development that could reshape the Biennial’s future entirely. Big Medium’s Closure On February 21, 2025, Big Medium’s Board of Directors announced the organization’s permanent closure after more than two decades of service to the Austin arts community. In its public statement, the board cited years of financial hardship and the inability to sustain operations under current conditions. “After more than 20 years of proudly serving the Austin arts community,” the statement read, “Big Medium’s Board of Directors has made the incredibly difficult decision to shut down operations. This has not been an easy choice, but it comes after many years of financial hardships and tireless efforts to renew and rebuild with limited resources.” The statement continued: “Major sponsors, including the City of Austin, have redirected their funding priorities, leaving significant gaps in our budget. Despite best efforts to secure alternative funding, the hurdles have become insurmountable. Retaining staff and raising the necessary funds to sustain Big Medium in a healthy way has proven untenable. As a result, we have decided to cease all programming and close our current location.” Big Medium’s closure leaves the Texas Biennial without its founding organizational home. As of October 2025, neither the Biennial’s website nor its partner institutions have announced new leadership or future plans. The absence of an administrative anchor raises the question: Can the Texas Biennial survive without Big Medium, and if so, under whose stewardship? (Click On Images To Expand To Full Screen) Diverse Works Installation View, River on Fire, 2024 Texas Biennieal 2024 - Sawyer Yards 5 Texas Biennieal 2024 - Galveston Arts Center Diverse Works Installation View, River on Fire, 2024 1/8 Biennial or Triennial? This uncertainty reignites a question already circulating among artists and curators: Should the Texas Biennial remain biennial, or evolve into a triennial? Supporters of the biennial model argue that a two-year rhythm maintains momentum and visibility. It keeps Texas artists in the public eye and the conversation fresh. Detractors counter that the pace is unsustainable, financially, curatorially, and institutionally, especially without a host organization. A triennial model, they argue, could allow deeper research, better funding, and stronger artist support. Some propose a hybrid solution: a major triennial survey alternating with smaller biennial programs, residencies, or traveling exhibitions in the intervening years. Such a model could preserve continuity while allowing time to rebuild infrastructure. A Broader Reflection The Texas Biennial’s story mirrors that of Texas art itself: independent, resilient, and perpetually in flux. What began as a grassroots experiment has evolved into a touchstone of statewide identity, an effort to define what “Texas art” can mean in a century shaped by migration, climate, and cultural hybridity. Its fate now depends less on geography than on imagination. Whether resurrected by another nonprofit, adopted by a museum consortium, or reinvented as a digital-first model, the Texas Biennial’s next form will inevitably reflect the same impulse that sparked it in 2005, artists creating space where none existed. Two decades after its founding, the Texas Biennial remains an idea worth fighting for, even as its structure falters. If The Last Sky marked the end of one era, it also opened the horizon for another. Texas has never waited for permission to make art. And perhaps that’s the enduring lesson of the Biennial: that even in the absence of an institution, the creative spirit of a place can still find its own way to gather, to show, and to be seen.