Pick Three Plus One

EXCERPTS, Stephanie Gonzalez, Eli Ruhala, and Taner's Funk Kitchen

Welcome to Pick Three Plus One, a twice-a-month public post highlighting stellar gallery and museum exhibits in Houston, TX, plus one other band, book, film, or whatever that has captured my attention.

1. EXCERPTS at Lanecia A. Rouse Gallery

(Mark Francis, We Hurt, 2024, Wax pastels, mulberry paper, rice paper, acrylic gouache, and card stock on watercolor paper.)

On view, Feb 8-16, 2025 at Lanecia A. Rouse Gallery is EXCERPTS, featuring works by Houston-based artists Sarah Fisher, Mark Francis, and Margo Lunsford. The exhibit is described as a collection of “layered narratives - fragments of stories told through texture, color, and form,” a description that may have more to do with the freedom with which these artists create work from a wide variety of techniques and materials. Fisher is known for her mixed-media portraits of friends, famous figures, and herself created out of hundreds of gold, dry-cleaning identification stickers; while Francis uses ink and colored pencils, along with decorative paper, glitter, earrings, and jewelry to celebrate everyday people in extraordinary ways; and fragmentation is put to use quite literally by Lunsford so refract and re-assemble faces and physiques of her subjects, perhaps speaking to her own multiracial, Caucasian-Hispanic American identity, and the many faces all of us, regardless of our ethnic heritage, choose to wear or discard over time.

2. Stephanie Gonzalez, Antes y Despues

(Stephanie Gonzalez, Not to Worry Mother is Here, 2019, mixed media; studio photo by Stephanie Gonzalez.)

I’ve lived in Houston long enough now to say I can’t always remember exactly how or when I met or became aware of artists whose work I especially love. After some thought, I remembered I first met Stephanie when I presented an experiential lecture for a class of MFA candidates on the relationship between writing about music and art. Later, in 2022, I wrote about Stephanie for Houston CityBook, and since then, have kept in touch via Instagram and her eblasts. Her industry and passion for art making is inspiring, and one of the joys of writing about art is the privilege of seeing an artist’s work develop, evolve, and go off in new directions over time.

Feb 6 through March 8, 2025, at Houston Christian University, you can see what I’m talking about in an exhibit of Stephanie’s mixed media paintings, two distinct bodies of work she calls “Antes” (before) and “Despues” (after). And on April 5, 2025, her solo exhibit Energetic Landscapes: The Art of Consciousness opens at The Jung Center of Houston.

3. Eli Ruhala: Significant Otherness

(Eli Ruhala, Significant Otherness (detail), 2023, site-specific installation.)

Significant Otherness is a site-specific installation created by Eli Ruhala for the Art League Houston; I believe it first went up in 2023 at The Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, TX. (This is what I’m gathering from the artist’s website.) Using mold-resistant drywall and lumber, materials that connect back to Ruhala’s history with construction and symbolize the comforts of “home,” the installation is a dream-like, multi-dimensional reverie and reflection on “the complexities of queer life in conservative Texas.” Dog lovers will want to check this out. On view: January 17 – April 11, 2025.

+ One: Taner’s Funk Kitchen

So, not too long ago, while mindlessly scrolling and clicking one YouTube video after another, I stumbled across and immediately subscribed to Taner’s Funk Kitchen, which is basically Taner (who is, I think, based in Hamburg?) in his kitchen, bobbing his head to a variety of vinyl-only DJ sets, usually with a guest on the decks, and usually cooking something in real time. (Wine is often poured as well.) The sets range from early 90s house, to slow jams from Prince, to experimental rhythms laid down by tuesdifferente while Taner makes chicken tacos. The set I’ve shared above is a personal favorite, with just Taner on his own, sharing a chill and mesmerizing selection of deep cuts from Sade. Bon appétit!