DeSantos Gallery is one of the first art houses to make use of QR Codes (Quick Response Codes), which is now a major marketing tool. The codes provide people with information on products and services in a very quick manner. The popularity of QR Codes skyrocketed especially after the latest smartphone models have included QR scanner applications. Carlos DeSantos, the gallery’s creative services manager took advantage of the QR Codes hype by launching the Free Art Giveaway offer. He says, “Scanning the QR code gives a novel twist to this promotion; Most QR codes that people scan only send them to an information page about a product or service. I believe we are one of the first, if not the first, in the Houston area to provide a free gift of art for just scanning a QRC.”

First Featured Artist: Cara Barer

The first brilliant artist to share her talent and give away her masterpieces is Houston’s very own local celebrity artist, Cara Barer. Barer is currently on exhibit at DeSantos, and she’s first on the list to provide the fine art print giveaways. An established photographer whose subject is the distorted pages of books, Barer has had a very strong following in the Houston area, though she has had art exhibitions all over the United States and as far as Canada. A celebrated photographer since 1994, art lovers would surely love owning a Barer masterpiece. Patrons of the DeSantos Gallery also have the opportunity to win one of Barer’s 36” x 36” limited edition prints.

The free artwork is limited to the number of prints provided by the artists.

The Gallery invites you to preview the collection at a special evening   reception from 5:30pm until 8pm on Saturday the 25th of June at the Gallery   located at 1724 Richmond Avenue, Houston TX 77098. San Francisco-based   installation artist [5]Liz Hickok recreates famous skylines and landmarks   using Jell-O as her construction material. “Remade in an unexpected   material, seemingly permanent architectural structures are transformed into   something precarious and ephemeral,” she explains in a recent interview with   [6]Inhabitat. “Their fragility quickly becomes a metaphor for the transitory   nature of human artifacts.” Click through to check out her jiggly versions   of New York City, San Francisco, and the White House.

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The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has 2 of Laptuta’s photographs in its permanent collection and this exhibit offers Houston art collectors the opportunity to meet the artist and view additional photographs from her collections.

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Artist Statement
It’s all about the land, its mystery, its ambiguity, its disruption and rhythm.

It’s about obstacles, changes in light, time passing, doubt, a circle with no beginning or end, the continuity of infinite repetition.

I go to places that inspire me. I compose imaginary narratives of journeys l take. I like to explore the notion of time, space and the illusion of memory.

It’s about getting in touch with my intuition, and having a dialogue that challenges me .I pay attention to the transitory moments of natures multi faceted forms, and the beauty and chaos that is always in flux.

Ultimately, it is a journey of discovering the subliminal qualities of a particular place and time.

By using a primitive camera with a manual winder, l am able to compose my narratives in camera by shooting continuous frames on one strip of 120 film with no interruption.

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Houston, Texas (January 26^th, 2011)— From  February 26^th through March 26^th, the DeSantos Art Gallery will reveal the veiled secrets held within icy containers in a special exhibit featuring the photographs and sculptures from artist Judy Haberl’s Hidden Agendas.  The DeSantos Art Gallery invites you to preview the collection at a special evening reception from 5:30pm until 8pm on Saturday the 26^th of February at the Gallery located at 1724 Richmond Avenue, Houston TX 77098.

The DeSantos Art Gallery makes a rare exception by including Haberl’s sculptures alongside her photographs in this exhibit.  The photographs in the series Unutterable feature vase-shaped ice sculptures and purse-shaped sculptures Haberl crafted with ice and rubber.   Haberl encases normally hidden and private items within the containers that are obscured yet reveal private, Hidden Agendas within the translucent ice and rubber.  “I have been fascinated for a long while by the terrain of secrets and the implications of being contained.”  Judy Haberl shares the history of the series.  “Everyone has a private, secret side and the ice obfuscates our ability to know exactly what is there.”  The ice sculptures quickly melt away and are destroyed when Haberl photographs them, leaving only the rich, 40” x 30” C-prints as evidence they once existed.   She has worked with ice as her sculpting medium for many years and after creating several ice purses and photographing them, she began working with translucent rubber to preserve some of the sculptures, which until then always remained only as images in her photographs.

About the Artist

Judy Haberl was born and raised in Northern Colorado and received her BA at the University of North Colorado before moving East.  She received her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in Massachusetts and currently resides in Newtonville, Massachusetts.  She is the professor of sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston and has developed highly reviewed art courses, including one she co-wrote and taught entitled Image and Object with photographer and colleague Laura McPhee.  Her solo exhibition of Unutterable at the Gallery Kayafas was voted Best Photography Show in Boston by the Boston Art Awards.  She is included in the current Discoveries traveling photography exhibition by FotoFest and it was through the FotoFest 2010 Biennial where DeSantos Director, Gemma DeSantos, first saw her pieces and reached out an offer to represent her work here in Houston, TX at the upcoming exhibit.  One of her most notable series entitled Freeze consists of cast ice sculptures photographed using the Moby C Polaroid camera, Edwin Land’s unique room-size showpiece in New York, to film the sculptures and create a portfolio of enormous 40” x  90” Polaroid photographs.   She has been featured at numerous galleries and exhibitions the DeCordova Museum, Gallery Kayafas, Akin Gallery, The M.A.C. Center, Dallas, the Cultural Center, Havana Cuba and many others.  Her complete bio is available on her website at JudyHaberl.com.

About DeSantos Art Gallery

The DeSantos Art Gallery is one of only two fine art photographic galleries in Houston and is dedicated to bringing fine art photography, both traditional and contemporary pieces, to the Houston community.  In 2003, DeSantos moved into a new location after unveiling a custom constructed stucco and glass 4 story building designed by architect Fernando Brave.  The gallery is located in the rapidly evolving artistic community near the Menil Museum, University of St. Thomas, and Houston Museum District.  The DeSantos Gallery represents both American and International photographers and prides itself in selecting fine art photographers from the 20^th and 21^st century regardless of short-lived trends.  The DeSantos Gallery also provides art consulting services, education and lectures on fine art photography and provides expert guidance to individual and corporate buyers regarding photography purchases and placement.

Copyright 2011 Sarah M Worthy

Provided by The DeSantos Gallery.  All Rights Reserved.

The DeSantos Art Gallery invites you to preview the collection at a special evening reception from 5:30pm until 8pm on Saturday the 26^th of February at the Gallery located at 1724 Richmond Avenue, Houston TX 77098.

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About the Artist

Judy Haberl was born and raised in Northern Colorado and received her BA at the University of North Colorado before moving East.  She received her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in Massachusetts and currently resides in Newtonville, Massachusetts.  She is the professor of sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston and has developed highly reviewed art courses, including one she co-wrote and taught entitled Image and Object with photographer and colleague Laura McPhee.

Her solo exhibition of Unutterable at the Gallery Kayafas was voted Best Photography Show in Boston by the Boston Art Awards.  She is included in the current Discoveries traveling photography exhibition by FotoFest and it was through the FotoFest 2010 Biennial where DeSantos Director, Gemma DeSantos, first saw her pieces and reached out an offer to represent her work here in Houston, TX at the upcoming exhibit.  One of her most notable series entitled Freeze consists of cast ice sculptures photographed using the Moby C Polaroid camera, Edwin Land’s unique room-size showpiece in New York, to film the sculptures and create a portfolio of enormous 40” x  90” Polaroid photographs.   She has been featured at numerous galleries and exhibitions the DeCordova Museum, Gallery Kayafas, Akin Gallery, The M.A.C. Center, Dallas, the Cultural Center, Havana Cuba and many others.  Her complete bio is available on her website at JudyHaberl.com.

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DeSantos Gallery was selected to review photographer portfolios for the prestigious FotoFest 2010 Biennial and it was during reviews that Gemma DeSantos, the gallery Director, decided to invite Bontempi, Schlesinger and Vrba to exhibit at the Gallery.  In the first opening of 2011, the DeSantos Gallery combines these artists’ most recent sets within a united theme of a “Memory”.  Each artist’s series displays a traditional look and style, while also evoking a more contemporary and modern feeling.  The sets enhance each other while simultaneously highlighting the different styles of the artists.  The pieces of the 3 different artists are pulled together by their shared visions of memories: of people, objects, youth.

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“We are passionate about art and photographic art here at DeSantos and wanted to celebrate our success in bringing great artists to Houston with a theme that took a look back, and since photographic art is still sometimes looked at as a young medium and our Gallery features a majority of Contemporary pieces – we wanted to begin the year with an exhibit that brought that feeling of moving forward and the excitement of what is still to come for the medium also.” Explains Gemma DeSantos around how she chose the theme and collections for this unique exhibit.

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About the Artists

Francesca Bontempi grew up in Italy and received her M.F.A. degree from the Roman School of Photography in 2004 and her BA in Photography and Cinema from the First University of Rome in 2007.  She has mentored under photographic greats including Ernesto Bazan and Gianni Berengo Gardin, and currently holds a position at La Casa Del Quartiere in Rome as a Photography Professor.  Her recent work includes both more contemporary Giclee prints with her series Sofia and the Others and more traditional Silver Gelatin prints as in her Time Tables series.

Jennifer F. Schlesinger was raised in Connecticut and received her B.A. in Photography and Journalism from the College of Santa Fe in 1998.  She has several years of experience as a professor with photography programs including the CSF Marion Center for Photographic Arts and the SITE Santa Fe Contemporary Art Museum.  She has won numerous awards for her work in photography and her work has been featured in several print journals.  Her most recent collection Object Diaspora is a series of toned silver gelatin prints that were photographed using a pinhole camera.   Schlesinger experiments with a long exposure and lots of light and movement to try and capture the “spirit” or Memory of the items’ previous owners.

Lori Vrba is a native Texan and studied at the Glassell School of Art located here in Houston Texas.  Her photographs are shot using an old Hasselblad and then developed by hand in her traditional home darkroom where she does all of the processing, printing and toning herself.  She uses a unique toning solution consisting of a heavy dilution of selenium and tea to bring out the personality and detail of her artwork.  Her work has been featured around the globe, including at the 2009 Lishui Photo Festival in China, Foto 8 Summer Show in London and most recently in a very unique custom installation of her recent Piano Farm silver and toned gelatin print series in New Orleans in 2010.

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