Past Projects

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A Hope, Prayer, and a Dream

Main Street Projects, is pleased to present A Hope, Prayer, and a Dream, a presentation of public art in which seventy-seven national and international photographers join in for a collective photographic presentation encompassing an entire city block of Main Street for the duration of Houston’s 2016 FotoFest Biennial.

For this artistic execution artists Laura Corley-Burlton and Marti Corn have curated a showcase that shares the work of photographers from all over the nation, including such noted artists as Anne Berry, Christa Blackwood, Tami Bone, Fran Forman, Ann George, Sandra Klein, Rita Koehler, Galina Kurlat, Louviere + Vanessa, Heather Oelklaus, Vicky Reed, Jennifer Shaw, Amanda Smith, Aline Smithson, and Keliy Anderson Staley. This presentation is very much inspired by a collective desire to reflect the very human response to the unrest and chaos that seems to be raging throughout the world today.

Utilizing the Main Street Project space, two vacant historic buildings located in the developing epicenter of Houston’s downtown art community, this team takes advantage of the original Alley Theater’s windows to showcase layered photographic installations and simultaneously debuts a photographic mural in the Mid Main Houston Art Garden.

This installation is hosted by Main Street Projects, a participating space in the 2016 FotoFest Biennial, is an alternative art venue for site-specific art installations in Mid Main Houston, located in the 3600 Block of Main Street.  A public celebration for the participating artists will be hosted on March 3rd, 2016 with an opening reception from 5:00 to 9:00 pm. Five percent of sales from the local businesses during the opening reception will go to support the Houston Center for Photography. This public-space presentation will be on view to the pedestrian public through the end of April 2016.

Main Street Projects is an alternative art venue in Houston, Texas for site-specific, contemporary art installations featuring local, national and international artists. It was founded in 2012 by artists Theresa Escobedo, Galina Kurlat, and  Rahul Mitra,  with the generous support of building owners Bob and Lane Shultz and Pete Gordon

Main Street Projects is funded in part by a grant from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance

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Cody Ledvina: White Painted Ladies

White Painted Ladies is an exhibition designed to invigorate the real and fictional aspects of Future Possibilities. All the essential “P’s” are included; pregnancy, photosynthesis, and painting.  

In 1995, David Bowie designed wallpaper for Laura Ashley for the War Child Fashion event. A few years ago, Cody Ledvina painted his blue women white. In 2015, Allison van Heugten placed the white painted ladies in the original Alley Theatre’s window niches for Main Street Projects.  

Cody Ledvina  was born in 1984 in Houston, Texas and currently lives and works in London, UK. He co-­‐founded the Joanna, an unconventional art space, and The Brandon, an experimental project in the form of a gallery. Cody regrets to leave you with nothing more than an unfinished account of his recent activities as an artist. Please use your imagination.   

Allison van Heugten is an architectural designer in Houston and has worked with Diverse Works and The Brandon to develop exhibitions. She is interested in creating spectacle moments within the city’s existing infrastructure.     A public celebration for the participating artists will be hosted on September 3rd, 2015, with an opening reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.  

Main Street Projects is an alternative venue in Houston, Texas for site­‐specific installation featuring local, national and international artists. It is run by Brandon Dimit, Theresa Escobedo, Galina Kurlat and Rahul Mitre with the generous support of building owners Bob and Lane Shultz and Pete Gordon.

This presentation by Main Street is funded in part by a  grant from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

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Heath Flagtvedt: Go Wash Your Bowl

“the title of this show is taken from perhaps the most famous zen buddhist koan, which can be described as teaching parables.

koan are very old, mostly very short [verses], which seldom, if ever, are directly [resolved].

they are not proper riddles, but situations and stories with which to shape your awareness.

i find that my experience with them and my experience with western art have been very similar. and for good reason:

truly fine art is seldom a one-liner with a call and response and neither are koan.

for many of us, in viewing art we see not only what was made but the awareness that made it. sometimes, it is more the latter.

duchamp said that great thing about the artist having no control over their art besides making it; society takes what it wants. i think that’s right. in many regards, it’s just not important what i say about my art…

Here is what I don't do in my art (as quoted from carolee schneemann’s interior scroll): take one clear process, follow its strictest implications, intellectually establish a system of permutations, [and/then] establish their visual set.

but if you want to know what i think i am up to, i am giving birth.

i exert my conscious influence over my state of mind rather than the materials. when i am successful, the making happens of itself without much rational interference. our existence is much bigger than we can rationally contain or convey.

beauty, sometimes despite our best efforts, is born and not made.”

- Heath Flagvedt

This presentation by Main Street is funded in part by a  grant from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

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Roberta Harris Reconsidered

Main Street Projects Roberta Harris Reconsidered

April 2, 2015 – April 25, 2015 Opening Reception and Block Party: April 2nd, 3700 Block of Main, 5pm - Midnight

Main Street Projects is pleased to present Roberta Harris Reconsidered as its April 2015 installation in the Windows on Main. This month’s pubic art installation, presented collaboratively with co-curator Catherine D. Anpson, offers a sample of artworks that span the course of Houston artist Roberta Harris’s five-decade career. The exhibition will be presented in conjunction with Mid Main Houston’s April First Thursday monthly block party, which invites a diverse audience to engage civically with local businesses to the benefit of local non-profit Camp for All.

“Harris’ arsenal extends from some very convincing Pattern-and-Decoration painting to lyrical Post Modern sculpture making, as well as some rather wild canvases filled with figuration and an exuberant visual language that even in reproductions, jumps off the page.”

-Catherine D. Anspon

Roberta Harris was born in Passaic, New Jersey and grew up in Houston, Texas. She was selected for the Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Harris studied at Parsonʼs School of Design and Hunter College in New York. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are included in numerous private and corporate collections including MTV Corporation, New York and Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, among others. Harris has instructed at Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston. She has been a visiting lecturer at the Kimbell Art Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Brookhaven College, Dallas, Texas; the University of Houston, Houston, Texas; the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, and has served as an Advisory member of the Art and Architecture Panel, Texas Arts Commission; Houston Arts Festival; Cultural Arts Council of Houston and the Art League of Houston. Currently, Harris’s work can also be seen in a career retrospective at the Katy Contemporary Arts Musem, through April 19th, 2016.

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Darwin Arevalo: Telegraph

Main Street Projects Telegraph Darwin Arevalo Opening Reception: Thursday, March 5th, 6 to 9pm

Main Street Projects is pleased to present Telegraph, a public mural and installation by Houston artist Darwin Arevalo.

Telegraph is a dynamic mural installation to be executed in collaboration with Main Street Projects and El Rincón Social in the developing arts and cultural district of Midtown, Houston known as Mid Main Houston. This mural will be installed on the wall of the Art Garden, located at the 3700 block of Main Street. This large-scale public artwork will be presented in conjunction with public art installations from a stable of artists from El Rincón Social, a studio space in Houston’s East End Warehouse District. The mural will debut at Mid Main Houston’s March First Thursday monthly block party, which invites a diverse audience to engage civically with local businesses to the benefit of CHI St. Luke’s Health Guardian Angel Fund.

As a developing arts hub in Houston, the Midtown Management District and Mid Main offers fresh connectivity to neighborhoods that foster other evolving community arts and cultural centers, including those in the East End and 3rd Ward, soon to be connected by the Metro Rail. In an attempt to establish discourse with the public and its changing city surroundings, and in considering this new connectivity, Telegraph has invited fellow Houston creatives Drew Bacon and Sonia Rodríguez to participate in the execution and presentation of the mural.

Telegraph is inspired by ideas of communication and connectivity, or lack thereof, and is an explanation of action taken to evaluate the complex influences of modern media. The mural is a multi-dimensional commentary on media saturation and how far removed from our sense of identity, reality, and living context we are. Through multi-disciplinary and multi-media artistic execution, the ultimate goal of this installation is to convey a sense of balanced disconnect, of participatory alienation that is pervasive in contemporary information exchange. Saturation of imagery and layered artistic mediums enable the mural to highlight and reflect the ever and increasingly changing community and local landscape while maintaining the mediums employed as message.

Darwin Arevalo received his BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute. During his time in Kansas City he participated and worked in community based non-profit organizations for inner city youths and programs as an art educator, lead artist, and lead muralist, while also showing in local galleries. He hopes through his work to engage with the local community on the street level and to contribute to the development of a progressive and innovative artistic environment in Houston.

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Woven Houston

Main Street Projects Woven Houston: Diverse Young Translations December 4, 2015 – January 10, 2015 3617 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77002

Main Street Projects is pleased to present Woven Houston, as its December 2014 installation in the Windows on Main.

Houston is often described as a place of collections- of ethnicities, traditions, ideas, and interests. Though Houstonians may come from significantly different experiences and backgrounds, they are having a collective experience by living here, which helps define a new kind of culture.

2D Design and Art Appreciation students from HCC have will look critically at this intersection of past and present and create “handicrafts” using contemporary material and technology to record their experiences. Together they will present a portrait of Houston, a place diverse as well as unified, by exploring a 21st century idea of making and craft. The Students will be creating textiles that embody the familial, metropolitan, urban, or suburban essence of this place.

A public celebration for the participating artists will be hosted on December 4th, 2014, in conjunction with Houston Mid Main Houston’s December First Thursday, with an opening reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Proceeds from the November First Thursday event will go to support the local non-profit Houston Tomorrow.

Participating Artists:

2D Design Students: Iridian Casique Oscar Ayala Emmanuel Meza Katy Argueta Eileen Munoz Fabian Brims Jasleen Sarai

Art Appreciation Students: Bessy Almendarez Brittney Andrews Rafael Calvo Ronald Cooks Idalia Cruz Nora Epitallo Mariana Gaytan Gina Johnson Brittany Joseph Mohamed Kanazoe Renee King Githin Kurian Samantha Miles Marcus Montgomery Yesenia Moreno Norma Pereznegron Saif Pirani Rosa Puente Glenda Rodriguez Xavier Roquemore Lucero Solis DyVondrea Ward Velma Wiley

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Perpetual Praxis

November 6 - 30, 2014 Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6th, 6 to 9pm

Main Street Projects is pleased to present Perpetual Praxis, an evolving, public space installation devised by five Houston-based creatives, painter Amy Beth Wright, sculptor Michael Simmonds, chemist and craft enthusiast Diana Nash, and mechanical programmers Adam and Evelyn Sunderland. Perpetual Praxis weaves together elements of each artist’s respective lifelong practice to create a thoroughly multi-disciplinary and collaborative installation.

Taking inspiration from the patterns that occur in traditional Ojos de Dios, mandalas, and maypoles, this collaborative explores the cyclical kinetics of hand-made objects used in different rituals.  Part hand, part automation, this colorful site-specific installation includes theatrical elements of light, shadow, and movement that progress over the month of November. 

Utilizing the Main Street Project’s space, two vacant historic buildings located in the developing epicenter of Houston’s downtown art community, this team takes advantage of the original Alley Theater’s windows to showcase kinetic light sculptures that emphasize both performance and formal elements of painting and sculpture.

A public celebration for the participating artists will be hosted on November 6th, 2014, in conjunction with Houston Mid Main Houston’s November First Thursday, with an opening reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. 

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Angelbert Metoyer

Launching his artistic career in 1994, Angelbert Metoyer was given two exhibition rooms at Project Row Houses: a community arts center based in Houston. In 1995, he was included in exhibitions concurrently at Project Row Houses and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Having created and exhibited his artwork world-wide since, Metoyer’s dynamic artistic creations not only represent Houston the international art arena, but also speak to a broad audience of viewers and illuminate on a broad spectrum of subject matter.

Through his artistic practice, Metoyer considers objects as the representation of moments and drawn images as the formalization of memories. He has explored his own family history within the context of the narrative of this country and has created works that investigate the cultural complexity of America’s past His explorations act as a powerful conduit to reflect ancestral memories. 

Angelbert Metoyer’s work will next be exhibited at Deborah Colton Gallery in a solo-exhibition, “Seasons of Heaven,” November 22, 2014 through January 3, 2015 

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Alfredo Scaroina

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Tres Hombres

On Thursday, June 5th, 2014, Main Street Projects will featured artworks by three Houston artists: Daniel Anguilu, Darwin Arevalo, and Fernando Ramirez.

Main Street Projects is an artist-run collaborative in Houston, which has hosted over 150 local, national and international artists. Main Street Projects brings art into urban surroundings, engaging the street and allowing accessibility to all who pass by. Artists are invited to create site specific installations on an outdoor wall in the Art Garden and in window displays of vacant buildings, one of which was the original home of the Alley Theater. While these buildings will evolve with upcoming renovations, Main Street Projects plans to expand its public artwork projects throughout the Mid Main neighborhood.

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Paper View

Main Street Projects is pleased to present "Paper View," and exhibition of multimedia works from artists Drew Bacon and Margaret Braun. Drew Bacon was born and raised in Houston. In 2012, He completed a BFA at Pratt Institute. After graduating he began experimenting with animation. The current form is a mix of stop motion and digital animation, and is being made on the pages of an antique dictionary as patterns, lines and figures emerge an abstract narrative unfolds and refolds upon itself. The practice spreads a singular work of art through traditional media on paper out on to the internet through pixels, and into public space through projections. Margaret Nicole Braun is a visual artist, poet, and jewelry maker currently residing in Houston, Texas. Margaret grew up in Southampton, New York. She attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated cum laude with a BFA in general fine arts in 2012. Since graduation, Margaret has been traveling the country, continuing her education with “real world studies.” Her current work uses processes of drawing, writing, papermaking, printmaking, and sculpture. Margaret has exhibited in New York, Maryland, Texas, and Florence, Italy. "Paper View" is presented in conjunction with Mid Main Houston's May First Thursday event supporting Bike Houston. Main Street Projects is an alternative art venue in Houston, Texas for site-specific, contemporary art installations featuring local, national and international artists. It is managed and operated by artists Theresa Escobedo, Galina Kurlat, and Rahul Mitra, with the generous support of building owners Bob and Lane Shultz and Pete Gordon.

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Daniel Anguilu

*image courtesy of Alex Barber

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An Orna-MENTAL First Thursday

Main Street Projects, in collaborative effort with Mid Main Houston, The Tinderbox Craft Collective, and My Flaming Heart, is pleased to present the Inagural Mid Main Holiday Orna-MENTAL First Thursday, featuring festive artwork installations in the Main Street Projects art space by Arts Pop Up, Sharon Kopriva, Sherry Owens McKay Otto and more! Proceeds from the evenings

Sharon Kopriva is a native Houstonian and practicing artist with more than thirty years of experience in creating art influenced and informed by religious, often Catholic, themes. Her work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Her Holiday-themed Orna-Mental installation on Main Street of her notable sculptural nuns and dogs makes light of her sometimes dark imagery with irony, humor, and cheerful holiday ornamentation. 

Sherry Owens, a native Texan, lives and works in Dallas.  With work exhibited throughout the American Southwest and internationally, Owens is best known for her meticulous crepe myrtle sculptures and large-scale outdoor works in steel and bronze. Informed by observations in nature, she constructs nest-like objects using found natural materials to create dense chaotic forms as well as open drawings in space. Her installation at Main Street Projects, Sands of Time, alludes to sand in an hourglass and the visualization of passing time or time passed. The suspended manila and linen cones and the sand create a visual metaphor for our time on earth and the quick passage of each day of a life.

McKay Otto was born in Wharton, Texas near Houston and raised with a keen appreciation for the arts. He lives and works in his studio near Wimberley, Texas. His artwork explores themes of light, simplicity and silence in drawing and painting.  He has exhibited his work extensively in Texas metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio as well as in NYC, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, and Aspen. Otto regards his paintings as meditations, to be experienced rather than read. His work combines the quiet concentration of meditation with a focused intensity that creates alternative worlds. Otto’s Orna-Mental installation is no exception, in true Holiday spirit, bringing to the site a sense of purity and peace that permeates the window barrier and approaches the audience viewing from the street.

A public celebration for the participating artists was hosted on December 5th, 2013, in conjunction with Houston Mid Main’s December “Orna-Mental” First Thursday, with an opening reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Proceeds from the December First Thursday event will go to support local non-profit The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art.

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Consider All Things: Hiyme Brummett: Decoration

Consider All Things Hiyme Brummett and Raul Gonzalez Opening Reception: Thursday, October 6th, 2013, 6-9pm

Hiyme Brummett is an American artist currently working in Houston, Texas. Influenced by his love of African pottery and historic maps, Hiyme employs an ancient way of storytelling. He “paints memories, some dreamed up, others wished forgotten” – landscapes remembered and imagined.

Hiyme Brummett: Decoration 

The Gurunsi tribe of West Africa inspires the mural I have executed. They have used traditional methods for centuries executingbeautifulpatterns of marks and symbols to tell stories and decorate the exterior of their homes. I have taken their ancient traditions out of context and presented them in an urban setting thus allowing me to display a poetic graphic story of my own design and experiences.

Below is a poem relating to my mural:

Paintings 2013

I wish to tell you a story said the young man. I hope you find wind in seashells and gold in the water. The map is only showing you little and later these images will explode with color and false tragedy. A painting of mine has left on a cargo ship sailing for the North Coast of Africa. When it wishes to arrive it will contain colors and marks made by handless children I grew up with at a younger age. I hope the home it has found will be brilliant like the many dreams I have had of walking barefoot along simple jungles shaking from snakebites.  

I wish to tell you a story said the young man. I hope you find wind in seashells and gold in the water. The map is only showing you little and later these images will explode with color and false tragedy. A painting of mine has left on a cargo ship sailing for the North Coast of Africa. When it wishes to arrive it will contain colors and marks made by handless children I grew up with at a younger age. I hope the home it has found will be brilliant like the many dreams I have had of walking barefoot along simple jungles shaking from snakes from snakebites.  

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Consider All Things: Raul Gonzalez: Great Expectations

Consider All Things Hiyme Brummett and Raul Gonzalez Opening Reception: Thursday, October 3rd, 2013, 6-9pm

Raul Gonzalez says of his artwork that it is a “blend of reality, fantasy and nostalgia… paintings that are created with acknowledgement of past and current movements in fine art” but that also take into account modern technologies and societal trends – often using evidence of these contemporary behaviors as medium, whether it be the availability of a multitude of duct tape colors or video as an immediate mode of communication.­

Raul Gonzalez: Great Expectations

Great Expectations spawned by reflecting on my own aspirations for success in my art career. I am constantly seeing and listening to athletes and hip hop artists talk about “doing it big” or “being the next king”.  My response is, I want the same damn thing.  I realize that success, in any aspect of the word, requires hustle, determination and failure.  Successes are often balanced with struggles and obstacles.     While the pursuit of success is key in building a strong foundation for one’s future; one must be reminded of challenges that lie ahead. Much of my work has been to encourage the passion for a strong work ethic. Now it seems fitting, with recent successes in my own art career, that I must share the challenges.  Nothing comes easy, nor is anything straight and direct.   Great Expectations has two meanings. One, it’s about wanting more than you already have. I grew up in a lower class family, where bills were rarely paid on time and for a period of time I only had one pair of shorts and maybe two pairs of jeans to choose from.  My pursuit for success is grounded in the desire to be able to provide for my future family and any relative that needs any sort of financial help.  Breaking the cycle is hard, but ambition can set you free.  Secondly, I have the desire to create something truly extraordinary in the history of fine art. I am constantly referring to past great artists who had strong impacts on the course of art’s progression.  While I respect and admire such artists, it’s time to set the bar higher and create a body of work that has a voice in the history of art. For the exhibition, I will have two installations. They will include paintings that are created with acknowledgement of past and current movements in fine art but also takes into account modern day technologies, whether that be the availability of new duct tape colors or video as a mode of communication.   Alongside this body of work will be the introduction of the “Bull” print series, which is comprised of several new woodcut prints.  This series was Inspired by the Houston Texans’ “Bulls on Parade” defense line, Picasso’s poster prints, bullshit and the upcoming “Running of the Bulls” in Houston.  Each print will be hand-pulled, signed and numbered

 Image: All Things Considered, 2013

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David Adam Salinas: Time + Process

Time + Process Works by David Salinas and Bret Shirley Opens Thursday, August 1st 6-9pm

David Adam Salinas: Artist Statement

Photography has a history of being a medium that is most often associated with clarity, free from any artifacts from which it was made. My aesthetic approach is to highlight the process of analog photography with chemistry and the paper it is printed on.  It is important for me to have my hand in making my photographs throughout the entire process. I use solvents and paints combined with custom developing recipes to manipulate the images in the same way a painter would approach a canvas. I am drawn to combining traditional darkroom photography techniques with my own style to produce a final image that weaves the subject matter of the photograph with the final treatments of my processes. I currently abstain from digital photography, in order to convey a mood that is emphasized through my hands on chemical process. 

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Praxis: Elicia Garcia: Structure of Media

Praxis A selection of photography from the University of Houston Student Photography Association Opening Reception: Thursday, June 6th, 2013, 6 - 9pm

Through her site-specific installation Elicia Garcia explores our desire to quantify memory with imagery sampled from newspaper pages. The result of this exploration is this subsequent compilations of arranged social memory.

Structure of Media (Compression of time), 2013

Elicia Garcia: Artist Statement

Newspapers are traditional information structures that amass public data while simultaneously generating communal memory.  My interest is to explore our desire to quantify memory particularly in newspapers, and the subsequent arranged social memory compiled as a result.   

I made this work by physically removing hundreds of boxes from printed newspapers, leaving behind the lattice used to separate information.  The absence of information suggests the essence of its presence.  My concern is how this material is re-contextualized by way of its substructure and consequent futility. The resulting voids suggest a social memory that documents our world. More importantly it provides insight into ourselves.

With each art piece, a memory is called into question – be it our everyday pursuits or the value of cataloging.  Unlike the moment captured by a photograph, these layouts resonate a much slower record; one that mirrors the conciseness of our society.