Both artists will be present during our opening reception on March 17th at 5:30pm.
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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.
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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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Christine Laptuta’s desire to not just take a photograph, but to tell a story about an imaginary narrative is what has led to an amazing series of landscape photographs that are more than just a picture of a beautiful forest or valley. Christine shoots with a primitive camera that has a manual rewind that allows her to produce multiple images without frames on one strip of film. Unlike most photographs that are a snapshot of a single moment, these photographs tell the story about a journey she has taken over a longer period of time.
One of her inspirations on memory is a book called Travels with Herodotus by Kapuscinski. The book talks about Herodotus, one of the first historians to travel and record history by way of stories people told and how they were interpreted. The stories demonstrated how people would both hear a narrative and re-tell it and it would never be quite the same .For the author of the book, memory is about man’s struggle against time, against the fragility of memory and its ephemerality and perpetual tendency to erase itself and disappear…” Christine further elaborates on her images…. “In my photographs, I am exploring the notions of time, space, place and the illusion of memory.
About the Artist
Christine Laptuta was born in Toronto, Canada and now lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honors in Painting and Printmaking from York University, Toronto. Laptuta is included in the permanent collections exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Portland Art Museum. She is a recent recipient of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for 2nd place: Nature Category, and was a featured artist for Fotofest’s International Discoveries II exhibition.
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 20th and 21st 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.
]]>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.
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 26th, 2011)— From February 26th through March 26th, 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 26th 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 20th and 21st 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 26th of February at the Gallery located at 1724 Richmond Avenue, Houston TX 77098.
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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