San Diego. A growing passion for art eventually took him to Paris and Black Mountain College, in North Carolina—where his pals included Cy Twombly and Merce Cunningham—and in 1951 he had his first solo show, in New York. From that point on, he churned out works in a range of media (newsprint, Plexiglas, junkyard finds), constructions (painting-sculpture hybrids, solvent transfers, silk-screen prints), and themes (isolation, pop culture, challenge to authority), doing so with such imaginative flair that by the time he died, at age 82, his obituary in the New York Times hailed him as “irrepressibly prolific.”
Though Rauschenberg’s last visit to Port Arthur was in 1984 (he spent his final decades in Florida), just about every major museum in Texas now owns works of his, and you’d be well served to seek out a few key pieces. Start in his hometown, at the Museum of the Gulf Coast, to see 21 signature originals, including Can House, a collage of tarnishes on brushed aluminum that he donated in honor of Ann Richards. Then make your way to Houston’s Menil Collection, which has several of his defiantly abstract early works, such as Crucifixion and Reflection, a layered piece that includes newsprint and enamel paint. From there, stop by San Antonio’s McNay Art Museum for a look at Black Mail, one of his distinctive “combines,” a mash-up of oil paint, solvent transfer, and mirror on canvas. Finally, head to the Dallas Museum of Art, where his vast eighteen-by-sixteen-foot Skyway, an array of iconic sixties images (from astronauts to John F. Kennedy), towers over diners in the cafe.
•••••
THE ART SCENE
A CONSTELLATION OF SOME OF OUR VISUAL AND VISIONARY MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Fairfax Dorn, 36, and Virginia Lebermann, 42
Co-founders of Ballroom Marfa, Marfa
Since converting an old dance hall into a sleek contemporary gallery in 2003, Dorn and Lebermann have helped perpetuate West Texas’s allure as an arts destination with concerts, film screenings, and dance performances. Their latest project, still in the works, is a drive-in theater in Vizcaino Park.
Rick Lowe, 50
Founder of Project Row Houses, Houston
In the early nineties, the artist and activist spearheaded an effort to buy more than twenty abandoned shotgun houses in Houston’s Third Ward, turning some into exhibition and workshop spaces for visiting artists and others into residences for single mothers. PRH, which showcases new artwork every four months and now hosts after-school classes for local kids, has revitalized the neighborhood.
• Lowe found the inspiration for PRH in the work of late muralist John Biggers, who came to prominence after the Harlem Renaissance and later founded the art department at Texas Southern University.
Margarita Cabrera, 38
Artist, El Paso
It’s been her experience as an immigrant—she moved to the U.S. from Mexico at age eleven—and her proximity to the border that have shaped Cabrera’s sculptures, which range from a series of cacti made from Border Patrol uniforms to soft vinyl replicas of domestic appliances made in maquiladoras. Last December she formally launched Florezca, a for-profit corporation that employs Latin American immigrants to make and sell traditional crafts. A ten-year retrospective of her work runs through August 2013 at the El Paso Museum of Art.
• This fall Cabrera will be working on an installation for Austin’s Mexican American Cultural Center that incorporates alebrijes, Oaxacan wood carvings of fantastical creatures.
Annette Lawrence, 46
Artist, Denton
Using mundane household items—brown paper bags, a year’s worth of junk mail—Lawrence crafts conceptual collages that probe notions of race, gender, and time. A professor of drawing and painting at the University of North Texas, the New York native is best known for her intricate, site-specific string installations, which she has exhibited in museums around the country.
• Lawrence’s installation String Works originated in 1994 at Project Row Houses.
• A Lawrence-designed vortex of steel cables stretches above a VIP entrance at Cowboys Stadium.
Vernon Fisher, 68
Artist, Fort Worth
With more than eighty solo shows and works in upward of forty museums, Fisher is easily one of the state’s most internationally acclaimed postmodern artists. The arc of his four-decade career, which has gone from abstract paintings and text-saturated faux blackboard canvases to narrative-driven multimedia pieces (often featuring pop-culture icons like Mickey Mouse and Dairy Queen), was celebrated in a retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth last fall.
James Magee, 65
Artist, Cornudas
For more than thirty years, the sculptor—known for his scrap-metal reliefs and the folksy oil paintings created by his alter ego, Annabel Livermore—has been constructing his magnum opus on two thousand acres east of El Paso. The Hill, a four-building complex filled with texture-rich installations (think steel, wood, cinnamon, flower petals), was opened to the public (by appointment only and for $250 a head) last year and is being hailed as “one of the most extraordinary artworks of our time.”
Joseph Havel, 57
Director of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The sculptor was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and named the 2010 Texas Artist of the Year by Art League Houston. Since 1991 he has overseen the Glassell’s Core Program, one of the world’s most prestigious residency fellowships for artists and critics (David Aylsworth, Francesca Fuchs, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Annette Lawrence, and Katrina Moorhead are alums). “It used to be difficult to have an international career based out of Texas,” he says. “Now we get applicants from all over the globe.”
Trenton Doyle Hancock, 37
Artist, Houston
Hancock, who was raised in the East Texas town of Paris, has been racking up the accolades for his shockingly bright and often dense prints, drawings, and collages, which tell the tale of the Mounds, a group of mythical “half-
human, half-plant mutants” he dreamed up in college. He’s been featured in the Whitney Biennial twice; in 2000 he became one of the youngest artists ever included in the show.
• Hancock created a 45-by-98-foot mural for Cowboys Stadium.
Teresa Hubbard, 46, and Alexander