ABOUT THE ARTIST | MORE IMAGES FROM THE SHOW
A native North Carolinian, Michael Houston has lived and worked in New York for the past six years. He received a BFA with High Honors in Studio Art from Dartmouth College and has worked as an artist in San Francisco, CA, Siena, Italy, and Calcutta, India. Houston works in various media, including painting, printmaking, instrument building, film and video.
Houstonıs style of punk surrealism revolves around a steadily growing stable of images that tread the line between abstract and representational. Inanimate products of industry, twisted science and fantasy are brought to life and collide on vinyl scrolls, aluminum panels, ink drawings, woodcuts and silk-screen prints. These narratives are often presented in glossy, highly charged color schemes, and reflect Houstonıs fascination with the tactile, absurd, and shiny.
Houston has exhibited extensively in the United States, and his work is in numerous domestic private collections as well as in Sweden, Japan, and France. Recent solo exhibitions include the Green Gallery in Brooklyn, the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC, Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC, and 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA. Recent group shows include "Billboards" (H&M Gallery, New York), "Mutations" (Mastel & Mastel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY), "New Talent" (Signal66, Washington, DC), "Pyre" (Decatur Blue, Washington, DC) and "Young New Yorkers" (June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland, ME). Michael is represented in New York by mixedgreens, an online gallery. His work was recently featured in their Meat Market Art Fair and Exhibition at Space 101 in New York, and is consistently displayed on the website.
Michael has worked extensively with a group of collaborators dubbed the Barnstormers. Together, they have painted murals on some fifty aging rural tobacco barns, as well as on various farm equipment and houses. The group has also produced four large-scale time-lapse painting videos, which use a digital time-lapse photography technique to capture a constantly changing collaboratively painted image. The DVD entitled "Apostrophe," the third motion painting by the Barnstormers, was commisioned by the Japanese company Gas. Another, entitled "The Number 9," was commissioned by the childrenıs TV show "Sesame Street." The most recent is a visual letter to the president. The Barnstormers have also mounted two large-scale painting installations in New York, at Smack Mellon Gallery and Fishtank Gallery. Their work has been featured on NPRıs "Morning Edition," as well as in Scrawl Too, Tokion Magazine, Relax, Elemental, FlashArt, The Fader, and Mass Appeal.
Houstonıs collaborative efforts continue in the field of printmaking. Together with master printer Martin Mazorra, he co-founded an alternative pirate press called Cannonball Press. Together they publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artistsı work, and display it on the web at cannonballpress.com, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to allow talented artists who might not otherwise be able to make prints to explore the medium, and make affordable high-quality prints.
Michaelıs recent directing debut, a short documentary about a fellow artist called ³Chuck Makes A Woodcut,² was accepted into the Florida Film Festival, the Antimatter Festival, The Nomad Film/Video Festival, and the GenArt Summer Arts Festival. The film tells the story of one manıs effort to cut and print an eight by twelve foot woodcut print.
Houstonıs awards include residencies at the Saltonstall Arts Colony (NY), the MacDowell Colony (NH), the Virginia Center for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as grants from Rauschenbergıs Change, Inc. and the Experimental Television Center. He is also the recipient of the Marcus Heiman Award for the Arts and the P.O.D. Award at Dartmouth College. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Triangle Independent, the Spectator, Tokion, Relax, the Sanford Herald, and the Durham Morning Herald.