Pick Three Plus One

Tracing the River at Mitochondria Gallery; Energetic Landscapes at The Jung Center of Houston; New American Paintings; and beautiful music by Travid Halton.

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. Tracing the River Back at Mitochondria Gallery

(Chika Idu, Euphoria, oil on canvas, 2024.)

Thanks to a recent article in The New Yorker about Houston’s West African food scene, I learned the number of people of Nigerian ancestry living in the Houston metropolitan area more than doubled between 2010 and 2022, from more than twenty thousand to nearly fifty-three thousand. With such an influx of culture, comes food, and at restaurants such as ChopnBlok, West African culinary traditions are infused with the elements of Black Southern cooking. Meanwhile, in recent years, more and more galleries dedicated to showing and promoting emerging and established artists in Africa and the diaspora have opened across Houston’s sprawling landscape, including Mitochondria Gallery.

Opening Saturday, April 5, at Mitochondria, is Tracing the River Back, a group show of new paintings, collages, and sculptures by nine African artists: Izere Antoine, Matthew Eguavoen, Dusabe King Christian, Ejiro Fenegal, Odeyemi Oluwaseun, Manzi Leon, Benjamin Niyomugabo, Alex Peter Idoko, and Chika Idu. On its website, the gallery’s description of Tracing the River Back is poetic, and will no doubt resonate with many in Houston’s growing African communities: “This exhibition invites us to trace the rivers that run through our histories, to listen to the land that remembers us, and to find, perhaps, another way home.”

Tracing the River Back is on view through May 2.

2. Stephanie Gonzalez at The Jung Center of Houston Gallery

(Art by Stephanie Gonzalez, from Energetic Landscapes: The Art of Consciousness.)

Okay, okay. I’m a bit biased here . . . Yes, I’ve touted artist Stephanie Gonzalez and her art previously on this platform, but her new show, Energetic Landscapes: The Art of Consciousness, on view at The Jung Center of Houston Gallery April 5 through May 14, came up so fast, and looks so cool, I just had to give her and the art shout.

One of the many things I love about Gonzalez’s work is that she never stops experimenting with her medium, and it’s a welcome challenge for an arts writer to try and keep up! In a short Instagram reel, Gonzalez says in this body of work, she’s “trying to express what an energetic landscape would look like.” To achieve that, Gonzalez is exploring some unconventional tools and techniques, including diluting clothing dye with a homemade solution to produce an earthy, rust-like color, like dirt sampled from an archaeological dig on another planet. True to the exhibit’s themes of inner and outer landscapes and consciousness, she’s also makes use of glow-in-the-dark paint. Small flashlights are available to visitors to shine on the paintings and see colors they wouldn’t see otherwise.

Also opening and on view at The Jung Center Gallery is Dreamscape: The Garden of Your Mind, a collection of lovely, but far-from-serene non-camera photographic images of plant life by Melody Locke.

3. New American Paintings #174, curated by Anita N. Bateman, Ph.D.

(Lillian Warren, Holding Up the Sky, acrylic, oil, and charcoal on mylar, 2024.)

Not a gallery show, but a digital exhibition of works by 40 supremely talented artists, including a few folks I’ve written about. This is the latest issue of New American Paintings, juried by the brilliant curator, writer, and historian, Anita N. Bateman, who recently moved on from her position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to the Harvey B. Gantt Center. During the relatively short time she was in Houston, Bateman implemented a forward-thinking, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and community-centric vision for the city’s art institutions and gallery spaces that was inspiring to witness and write about. Bateman has a great eye and a generous spirit, and more than a few Houston artists are represented in this issue of New American Paintings, including Lillian Warren, Mathieu JN Baptiste, and Guadalupe Hernandez.

And you can download the issue for free!

+ Travid Halton

Travid Halton is the pen name of Houston singer/songwriter Jacob Hilton, whose music I was introduced to during my time at Houston CityBook. The nom de guerre is a portmanteau of his mother’s and father’s names, Tracy Hall and David Hilton, and his 2024 album, Obsessions, explores his experiences with childhood trauma and obsessive-compulsive disorder. If that sounds like a “downer,” it’s not. The music throughout, composed for bass, pedal steel, trumpet, cello, and violin, is quite beautiful, and by the second half of the album, there is that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Hilton has an intimate and engaging voice which he uses to great effect, whether evoking a bucolic joy of childhood imagination, or the contained panic of an adult coming to terms with past trauma. (Fans of Iron and Wine, Jacob Dylan, and maybe David Sylvian should check him out.) Hilton also plays resonator guitar, dobro, steel-string acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano.

On May 1, Hilton/Halton will release Gunner’s Daughter, a four-track follow-up to Obsessions. I have an advance copy and yes, it’s excellent. A surprising, yet perfect complement (or coda?) to Obsessions. You can pre-order Gunner’s Daughter on CD, cassette (Yes! Cassette!), or vinyl, and of course digital download.