Pick Three Plus One

Michael Collins at Foltz Fine Art, Ann Johnson at FLATS, Robert Rauschenberg at The Menil Collection, and Misha Penton at The Silos at Sawyer Yards.

Welcome to Pick Three Plus One, a semi-regular series of posts highlighting stellar gallery and museum exhibits in Houston, TX, plus one other special event, band, book, film, or whatever that has captured my attention.

1. Michael Roque Collins at Foltz Fine Art

(Michael Roque Collins, Floating Worlds Series: Garden of Stone Wings, oil on linen, 80 x 120 inches, 2022-23)

On view October 24 - November 29 at Foltz Fine Art is Michael Roque Collins: Floating Worlds, Paintings and Works on Paper, 2015-2025. It is the first hometown solo exhibition for Collins in over a decade and a welcome and rare opportunity for Houstonians to immerse themselves in three bodies of work, each created within a specific timeframe: Reliquary, the earliest body of work, which Collins once described as “The beginning of the rest of my life as an artist;” Transmission of Light, produced throughout the months of the COVID-19 pandemic; and his most recent series, Floating Worlds. Collins has had over 50 solo exhibitions at nationally and internationally recognized gallery and museum venues, and been favorably reviewed in a variety of international arts publications, including as Art News, Art In America, and Art Forum. (I am currently working on an article about Collins and the Foltz Fine Art exhibit for Glasstire.)

At age 70, as oceans rise and coral reefs disappear, as our planet continues to burn, Collins is making more art than ever before. David Bowie famously said, “Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you should have always been.” Jungians called this long and winding process “individuation” — a reconciliation of seemingly incompatible opposites of the psyche. These extremes aren’t resolved in Collins’ paintings, and there are existential questions to consider when confronted with a staircase of skulls or a whirlpool of corpses. But Collins has always found the poetry in ambiguity and is more than happy to let the viewer surmise a painting’s meaning through their personal experience with the work.

2. Ann Johnson at FLATS Presents

(Ann Johnson, Jermaine 8th generation, transfer print on poured concrete, 2025)

I have always been impressed by the work of Houston interdisciplinary artist Ann Johnson, and have encountered her work in a variety of venues across Houston. In 2022, her installation See Me, a series of portraits of Johnson and fellow artists Lovie Olivia, Delita Martin, and Rabéa Ballin, using a transfer printmaking process on vintage and aged metal ironing boards adorned with gold leaf and installed in the Main St. Windows of Lawndale Art Center, was a part of the multi-year, multi-artist Sankofa Project, curated by Tierney Malone. Johnson is represented by Hooks-Epstein, but her most recent exhibit, Still Here, is at FLATS. Still Here features a continuing series of images, many based on vintage photographs, beautifully rendered and printed on handcrafted bricks.

Johnson’s materials acknowledge the historic brick-paved streets of the Freedmen’s Town in Houston’s Fourth Ward. Founded in 1865 by former slaves, its founding residents used handcrafted bricks to line Freedman Town’s streets, and wood from cypress trees to build their homes. Still Here speaks to a crucial component of Houston and our country’s post-emancipation history, and the value of preserving history and honoring our ancestors.

Still Here continues through February 2026.

3. Robert Rauschenberg at the Menil Collection

(Robert Rauschenberg, Whistle Stop, 1977. Combine painting, mixed media on five panels, 84 1/8 x 180 1/2 x 8 in. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Museum Purchase and Commission, The Benjamin J. Tillar Memorial Trust.)

Currently on view through March 1, 2026 at The Menil Collection is Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s. The exhibition moves through three major, interrelated series from the 1970s: the Venetians, the Hoarfrosts, and the Jammers (You gotta love those titles!), along with a selection of props and costumes created and designed for separate collaborations with choreographers Merce Cunningham (Travelogue, with music by John Cage) and Viola Farber. (Brazos River, with music by David Tudor.) Silent, video loops of performances of both dances are included in the exhibition.

Rauschberg’s influence on contemporary art is so expansive, and up to the present day provides a lingua franca between artists of all ages and ethnicities. His innovative combination of printed images transferred onto or hidden behind draped, stretched, and suspended fabrics is echoed in Christopher Paul’s current exhibit at Lawndale Art Center of totemic, mixed media self-portraiture.

Encountering Rauschenberg’s alternately eerie and whimsical combines — surreal fragments that might just as easily wash up on a beach before dawn after a long night of revelry (think of the closing seaside scenes in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita) — can feel strange within the walls of a major museum. Yet the installation here is so thoughtful and transformative, its low, warm lighting deepening the dreamlike atmosphere. Stepping into the galleries, you feel as if you’ve entered another world.

It’s a safe bet that every Houston-based artist, gallery director, and art lover who subscribes to Night and Day has already seen this exhibit. But if not, run, don’t walk to the Menil Collection, and prepare to have your mind quietly blown.

+ Misha Penton at the Silos

(Misha of the Mishaverse with her robot accomplice!)

And coming up this Saturday, October 25 at 3 pm, and Saturday, November 8, at 3 pm, singer-composer-painter-poet-filmmaker Misha Penton presents Vox Machina: Voice, Body, Memory. Performances take place in the former grain towers at The Silos at Sawyer Yards. Using her classically trained voice, flute, and electronics, and accompanied by special guests Shelby Craze and Tempest McLendon of 6 Degrees Dance, Misha will transform the resonate (and spooky) architecture of the silos into an immersive experience of sound, stories, and movement, “where ancient stories and emerging technologies converge in the human form.”

I’ve witnessed Misha’s brand of sonic and performative magic firsthand, and look forward to stepping into this world she plans to conjure up.

The performances are free and funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.