Spring Issue Release!

Thursday, April 14^th, 7pm at the Jung Center: Gulf Coast releases 28.2, its newest issue—a real beauty—and the latest volume of Unsung Masters focusing on the work of Beatrice Hastings!

Past spring launch events have included an ekphrastic poetry slam, an artists and authors roundtable on the future of the book, and this year’s launch features a reading with local heroes Lupe Mendez and Nishta Mehra, two of our 28.2 contributors, who will read work inspired by treasures found in the University of Houston Special Collections and archives. Ben Johnson and Erika Jo Brown, co-editors of this year’s Unsung Masters volume, will read from Hastings’s work.

Hastings is a fascinating early modernist who used multiple pen names and personas to write about her life and time, including taking Ezra Pound to task. It won’t quite be a séance, but will be fresh and inspiring. Beer, wine, cupcakes, and kiki-ing to follow.

Here’s the Facebook invite and event information from our website.

Please feel free to share widely!

*These collaborations with Unsung Masters, the UH Libraries, and Special Collections are made possible by a generous Innovations Grant through the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, which is funded in part by the Houston Endowment, Inc.

2016 CounterCurrent Festival!

Gulf Coast has created a reading room as part of this year’s CounterCurrent Festival. From April 12th-17th, visitors to the MATCH galleries can browse issues and cover art from our 30-year history, books by artists in the festival, and writers in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Attendees at the “Current Conversations” lecture series will also receive a broadside/letterpress cover created by Workhorse Printmakers and Spindletop Design. The lectures begin on Wednesday the 13th.

See you on Thursday and at the festival!

Good Evening Friends Of Olivewood just an update on events happening at the cemetery:

A Big Thank You to all of the groups and individuals who came out for the Big Clean Up in February, the Oddfellows provided us with a wonderful lunch, the Omega’s from the Rho Beta Beta Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Faternity and Mr.Andrew McGee were this year recipients of the Bernice McBeth award; and Mr.Paul Jennings is the winner of our raffle of two one way e- passes from South West Airline.

First Saturday Clean Up-this Saturday from 9-12 with weather permitting, The Oddfellows will be out working on mowing, cleaning grave sites, and pulling out brush. Please bring lawn tools, bug spray,wear long sleeves, long pants, and closed toe shoes.

Third Saturday Clean Up– April 16th, The National Museum of Funeral History will sponsor a Day of Service at Olivewood from 8-12 with weather permitting. The museum located at 415 Barren Springs Dr. is presenting the “Honoring Olivewood” Exhibit until May 29, 2016. This beautiful collection of photographs were taken by Ms.Kasey French who at the age of 16 was volunteering with her church group and asked how could she honor those interred in the cemetery, she decided to bring Olivewood to the public through photography. For more information on the exhibit please visit the museum’s website at nmfh.org

Feel free to share this e-mail with your family, friends, church, schools, and organizations looking for a volunteer or community service opportunity

Kindest Regards

Margott Williams-Volunteer Coordinator

www.descendantsofolivewood.org

Saturday, February 8, 2016, 7 pm – “Don’t Blink” by Robert Frank

Friday, February 9, 2016, 6 pm – “Life-Raft Earth” by Robert Frank
This screening is free! Use the “Get Tickets” button to reserve your spot.

Presented by filmmaker Laura Israel

The MFAH has served as the repository and distributor of films by legendary photographer Robert Frank (born 1924) for more than three decades. This relationship has led to the preservation of essential works in the artist’s filmography, as well as hundreds of screenings and retrospectives around the world.

About the Presenter
Laura Israel started editing award-winning commercials and music videos while a film student at New York University. She formed the editorial company Assemblage and worked on projects involving David Byrne, Ziggy Marley, New Order, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, and Sonic Youth, among others. Windfall, her directorial debut, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won top prize at Doc NYC. A New York Times Critic’s Pick, the paper called it “urgent, informative, and artfully assembled,” and Israel was named in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2011 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Don’t Blink – Robert Frank premiered in the main slate of the 2015 New York Film Festival. Included as one of Artforum’s top 10 films of 2015 as well as one of Film Comment’s top 10 unreleased films, Don’t Blink also screened at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival.

Don’t Blink – Robert Frank

The Museum hosts one of the first public screenings of the new feature-length documentary Robert Frank – Don’t Blink prior to its national release. Several years ago, Robert Frank consented to a request from Laura Israel, his trusted longtime editor and collaborator, to serve as the subject of a new film. Culling from many years of conversations while working and watching his films together, Israel brilliantly creates a portrait described by the New York Film Festival as “a lively rummage sale of images, sounds, and recollected passages, unfathomable losses, and friendships that leaves audiences a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.”

Life-Raft Earth

This screening is free! Use the “Get Tickets” button to reserve your spot.

Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand and his friend Hugh Romney (aka Wavy Gravy) asked photographer Robert Frank to document “The Hunger Show,” a weeklong fast staged by the Portola Institute in California. This “happening” was designed to make the problem of world hunger and malnutrition a personal matter for participants and observers. Life-Raft Earth records the October 1969 event, which took place in a parking lot in Hayward, California. A fascinating time capsule, this short film is shown in a newly restored 16mm print created with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Laura Israel, Frank’s longtime editor, introduces the screening.

Rather than highlighting one of our many fantastic community partners, this month the HHA would like to take this opportunity to invite all of our Partners to our HHA Community Partners Summit to be held Saturday April 2,1016 from 10:00-1:00 at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Houston Hobby Airport.

Representatives from our Community Partners are invited to collaborate on networking, marketing, and educational opportunities and to share success stories and concerns for the Houston history community.

There is no charge to attend and light refreshments will be provided.

Organizations are encouraged to bring advertising materials to share with other community partners as well as a calendar of events that can be included in HHA resources.

Please contact info@houstonhistoryalliance.org for more information.  We encourage you to REGISTER HERE!

The sixth annual HHA Symposium will be held Saturday October 1, 2016 at MATCH, 3400 Main St., Houston.  The conference will celebrate the long and diverse musical history of Houston ranging from Zydeco to Blues to Country and Tejano.

HHA is proud to partner with The Jung Center, The Houston Blues Museum, Houston Arts Alliance, and The Continental Club for the 2016 Symposium and our program lineup is sure to appeal to a variety of interests.  Our program will include musical historians Joe Nick Patoski, Rick Mitchell, Dr. Robert Morgan, and Lizette Cobb as well as panels on Sugarhill Studios, onsite musical performances, and post-conference performances at the Continental Club.