LOCAL Houston | The City Guide November 2017 | Page 38

MUSEUM DISTRICT
HIGHLIGHTS
zone 2
HOUSTON CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY CRAFT
For Hire: Contemporary Sign Painting in America
4848 Main St. | 713.529.4848 | www.crafthouston.org
As recently as the 1980s, storefronts, murals,
banners, barn signs, billboards and even street
signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint.
But, like many skilled crafts and trades, the sign
industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled
promise of quicker and cheaper. This fall,
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC)
explores the rich history and current renaissance
of hand-lettered signs in For Hire: Contemporary
Sign Painting in America. The exhibition show-
cases a range of contemporary sign painters
who use traditional methods to create banners,
sandwich boards, paper signs, murals, fictional
advertisements and more. Some pieces will be
installed from the start of the show, while others
will be created in the gallery, during public
hours, over the course of the exhibition. This will
allow visitors to witness, firsthand, a variety of
sign-painting processes.
38
L O C A L | 11 . 2017
zone 1
THE MENIL COLLECTION
Mona Hatoum: Terra Infirma
1533 Sul Ross | 713.525.9400 | www.menil.org
zone 2
CZECH CENTER MUSEUM
Vedem – The Secret Magazine
of the Terrazin Ghetto
4920 San Jacinto St. | 713.528.2060 | www.czechcenter.org
The work of London-based artist Mona Hatoum
addresses the growing unease of an ever-ex-
panding world, one that is as technologically
networked as it is politically fractured by war
and exile. Since the 1980s, Hatoum has
investigated place, the body and a minimalist
language of form through her sculptures, per-
formances and installations. Her work explores
how shifting geographic borders and institu-
tional structures limit, if not violently define,
how we comfortably find a home in the world.
She powerfully creates a sense of precarious-
ness through a remarkable variety of materials
that are as beautiful as they are dangerous.
The fragility of blown glass, strands of hair,
woven thread and delicate beads are often
juxtaposed with the menacing severity of steel
plates, barbed wire and knife blades.
Vedem, a multimedia art exhibition, decon-
structs and reinterprets the literary work of a
secret society of Jewish boys, who created the
longest running magazine in any Nazi camp.
The exhibit includes dynamic wall panels,
vinyl art or custom vinyl wallpaper, a ceiling
banner and four videos. Also included are 56
high-end facsimile of artifacts, ephemera, the
800 pages of the original Vedem’s magazine
and four videos of never-before-seen footage.
The exhibit is complemented by an innovative
workshop that combines creative activism with
a journalism lesson. The workshop is designed
to teach middle-school through college stu-
dents both the historic context of Vedem and
the art of creating a ‘zine, or hand-made mag-
azine, as a symbol of creative expression, and
a way to explore one’s identity through socially
engaged creativity.