Prepare for wrestling at Zine Fest Houston 2018
HOUSTON — Zine Fest Houston (ZFH) 2018 will take place Sat., Nov. 17, 2018, from 12-6pm at Lawndale Art Center. The theme of this year’s festival is wrestling and programming includes a screening of Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring by Chris Bournea. ZFH is a free event and open to the public.
Other presentations include “Audio Zine: How to Create Successful Podcasts Using Zine Skills,” a reading and discussing with Latinx Zinesters in Texas, a Doomsday Wrestling grudge match, lectures on healthcare options for freelancers/artists, workshops on teen and youth zine making and DIY animation, and Jennifer Mathieu will present “From Riot Grrrl to YA Author: How Zines Changed My Life and Birthed a Book!”
Featured food vendors at this year’s fest include Moon Rooster Food Truck, Somos Semillas Vegan Kitchen, and Poodle Floss Cotton Candy.
The festival’s organizers are: illustrator and cartoonist Maria-Elisa Heg, who has participated in shows at the Blaffer Art Museum, CentralTrak (Dallas), Hardy & Nance Studios, Matchbox Gallery, and the Caroline Collective; Anastasia Kirages, who publishes zines under an open-ended imprint called Modernizm, and whose work has been included in shows such as The Zine Society Library at CentralTrak (Dallas), ZINESHOW at Tymutopiyapres (Lviv, Ukraine), and Amsterdam Zine Jam; Evan McCarley, performance artist, musician, and photographer, who co-facilitated CounterCrawl, performed with Continuum Performance Art, was a member of the artist board for Lone Star Explosion International Performance Art Biennale, and co-founded Experimental Action Performance Art Festival; and Sarah Welch, author of “Endless Monsoon” and “Holdouts,” collaborator with Mystic Multiples, and member of the Diverse Works Artist Advisory Board, who has exhibited at Box13 Artspace, Rice University’s Emergency Room Gallery, Lawndale Art Center, and Alabama Song, and was awarded a Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant and Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award.
According to their website’s mission statement, ZFH is dedicated to providing opportunities and space for zinesters, artists, and self-publishers to present DIY works and participate in an alternative avenue for commerce. Through year-round educational programming, publications, and a free annual festival, ZFH seeks to empower independent artists, lift up marginalized voices in the creative sphere, and promote equitable conditions for its creative community to thrive.
This year, as part of this mission, ZFH announced the launch of the shane patrick boyle Memorial Grant for Emerging Zinesters (spb Grant), which provided an artist stipend to an LGBTQ+ creator to attend this year’s festival.
The spb Grant honors ZFH founder shane patrick boyle, who passed away unexpectedly in 2017. “We are proud to launch this special initiative honoring shane, who always encouraged creative expression and embraced the unique members of Houston’s DIY community,” said ZFH organizers Heg, Kirages, McCarley, and Welch. “We hope to keep his legacy alive by providing support to emerging LGBTQ+ creators.”
For more information, visit the Zine Fest Houston website at www.zinefesthouston.org
(Information from event’s website)
A Passion for Gardens: A Writer’s Garden Literary Symposium sold out for Nov. 14
DALLAS — The Women’s Council of the Dallas Arboretum presents A Passion for Gardens: A Writer’s Garden Literary Symposium and Luncheon beginning at 9:30 a.m. Wed., Nov. 14, 2018, at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.
For twelve years, “A Writer’s Garden” has presented outstanding authors and speakers with extensive histories in gardens, architecture and art, and stories of extraordinary individuals and events. The 2018 program will present Carolyne Roehm, internationally recognized style icon and gardener, along with Colta Ives, renowned art historian and landscape designer.
Roehm has been a part of American design culture for more than four decades, with a storied career spanning the world of fashion, decorative arts, gardening, entertaining and publishing. Finding a mentor in Oscar de la Renta, Roehm worked alongside the couture great for ten years before launching her own fashion house in 1985. A discerning eye and passion for beauty led her into the world of flowers, where her books on the subject have been hailed as the best in their field. She is the author of thirteen books, including Flowers and At Home with Carolyne Roehm.
Roehm’s bestselling lifestyle titles have been a source of inspiration, pleasure and education for thousands of readers. Now for the first time, she shares lessons from her life in style, from her small-town Missouri childhood to her New York fashion career that began with Oscar de la Renta and culminated with her eponymous line in her thirteenth book, Design & Style: A Constant Thread.
During her long career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Colta Ives has organized more than twenty exhibitions and authored nearly as many scholarly books on artists and art, among which are The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections, and Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings.
Following her retirement from the Metropolitan Museum with the title curator emerita, Ives was invited to return to the museum as a guest curator to mount an exhibition she conceived on the historic botanical boom of the nineteenth century and its effect on French art, culture and gardening practices.
That exhibition was the realization of Ives’ book published earlier this year, Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence. Its story of the spectacular transformation of Paris into the beloved city of tree-lined boulevards and public spaces we know today is told through the works of artists for whom the greening of the city provided inspiration. The book is an engaging portrait of the power of horticulture to shape both the physical and creative world.
For the past twenty years, the major goal of the Women’s Council has been the design, construction, funding, and endowment of a garden at the Dallas Arboretum. Phase I of A Woman’s Garden opened in September 1997 and Phase II in March 2006.
A Writer’s Garden is the annual fall fundraiser, and proceeds go directly to the maintenance and growth of A Woman’s Garden.
This year’s symposium is sold out; to put a name on the waitlist for tickets or for more information, visit https://womenscouncildallasarboretum.org/
(Information from organization’s press release and website)
Annual Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Festival runs November 3–13 in Houston
HOUSTON — From the inner workings of the TV industry to a staged reading of a Yiddish play, the 2018 Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Festival, at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, brings book lovers a variety of literary greats and their stories.
The 46th annual festival kicks off Saturday, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m. with Nell Scovell, writer, producer and director, talking about her memoir, Just the Funny Parts … and a Few Hard Truths about Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club. Scovell is known for her work on “The Simpsons,” “Late Night with David Letterman,” “NCIS” and “The Muppets.” Scovell created and was executive producer on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” The second woman to write for Letterman, Scovell in 2009 publicly called out the lack of gender diversity in late-night TV. Her memoir follows an earlier collaboration on the bestselling book Lean In with author and executive Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote the foreword.
The Nov. 3–13 festival features talks and events for literature fans, sports enthusiasts, theater-goers and history buffs. On Sunday, Nov. 11, at 4 p.m., Ben Reiter, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, will discuss his new book, Astroball, which tells the inside story of how a group of outsiders found a new way to win.
Houston native Stephanie Wittels Wachs will talk about her new book, Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love and Loss, on Sunday, Nov. 11. at 7 p.m. The author’s brother, Harris Wittels, a comedian who wrote for TV’s “Parks and Recreation,” died from a heroin overdose.
Rachel Kadish is this year’s featured author for the Community Read Program. Monday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m., Kadish will discuss The Weight of Ink, a story about an unwell historian who has a passion for Jewish history and an emigrant from Amsterdam in the 1660s, who becomes a scribe for a blind rabbi.
On Saturday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m., there will be a staged reading of Issac Goldberg’s 1918 English translation of Sholem Asch’s controversial Yiddish play, “G-d of Vengeance.” The play tells the story of a family’s efforts to leave behind a dark past so their daughter can marry into a local Jewish family. The Grammy-winning composer of the Klezmatics, Lisa Gutkin, will perform her own work with local musicians Donald Jacobs and Villie Schumann. New music will be premiered at the event.
New this year, Tablet magazine will record its Unorthodox Podcast live from the Kaplan Theatre on Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 7:30 p.m. The weekly podcast, hosted by Mark Oppenheimer, Stephanie Butnick, and Liel Leibovitz, offers a fun take on Jewish news and culture.
On Monday, Nov. 12, at 7:30 p.m., Catherine Price, author of How To Break Up with Your Phone, shares a plan for creating healthy habits for using technology. Local experts will join Price for a panel on technology and parenting.
For more information and the complete schedule, please visit www.erjcchouston.org.
(Information from organization’s press release)
