June 13, 2016
Can you give us a debrief on what the OFF ROAD series is about?
As an online magazine, we connect our audience with the Texas art scene via a purely virtual platform. Last
year we decided to go “Off Road” from the Internet, and host live events with artists—now instead of the
intermediary of critics (i.e. us), we’re giving artists direct contact with our readers in live settings. We’re also
“shooting for the moon” in terms of whom we’re inviting—we want to bring some of the great minds of our
time to Houston.
What was the impetus behind the “no rules, no limits, and no podiums” style of OFF ROAD and how does it align philosophically with Glasstire?
The Internet is the Wild West of media, and we’ve been on the Internet since its earliest days (founded in 2000, launched in January 2001). From the beginning, Glasstire was designed to be an irreverent, entertaining, jargon-free zone of honest conversation about visual art in Texas. Wherever the spare, serious, deadly boring “academic” arts journals were—we wanted to be as far away from that space intellectually, stylistically, and certainly in terms of the pleasure and joy of art. Isn’t that why we were all attracted to art in the first place? To have some fun? And so we’ve extended that editorial ethos into this program by inviting legendary artists who are warm personalities and great speakers, and giving them free rein to craft their presentation however they want to.
April 30th is around the corner what can we expect from the speaker, William Wegman and why did you select him?
Last week on Glasstire I wrote a piece about seeing William Wegman’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006—like many of our readers probably, I was unaware of his amazing body of work beyond the photographs of his weimeraner dogs. Did you know Wegman is a contemporary of Bruce Nauman, and was making similar (but shorter and snappier) black and white videos in his studio in the late 60s and early 70s, just like Nauman? His drawings, too, are my favorite of his work—spare, fearless, and dead clever, without hitting you over the head with his humor.
Wegman is known to be a great speaker, and our audience can expect a funny and engaging talk that will include some of his older video work. He’ll also be signing his new book Paintings, which is about (yes) his paintings, after the talk. It’s going to be a great afternoon.
Who is on your radar for future OFF ROAD conversations and what themes do you hope to explore?
We’ve got some very exciting projects in the work for the next season. We’re looking at the broader culture and ways to connect artists with non-artists. Stay tuned!
Where do we go to purchase tickets?
http://glasstire.com/offroad
Tickets are $25 / $10 for students and artists. Come!
Come!
