Houston Artist’s Newest Exhibit Inspired by Colorado’s Wild Side
Houston Artist’s Newest Exhibit
Local artist Janice Freeman would like it very much if you didn’t refer to her work as “trippy,” especially the new stuff she’ll be displaying this weekend. “I don’t like the word ‘trippy,’ really,” the Austin-born, Houston-based artist tells CultureMap. “I think it’s more symbolic — visually symbolic. It’s a lot more symbolically distinctive from my other works, but it reflects on my origins.”
Freeman will be showing off her latest batch of artwork in “Janice Freeman UnCaged,” an exhibit on view at a Cothren Contemporary pop-up. It’ll kick off on Saturday, September 17 with an RSVP-only, opening cocktail reception at 6 pm. People will then be able to view the paintings by appointment only through Saturday, November 5.
It took her a year to come up with her first section of elaborate, surrealistic pieces (“There was a body of five, with nine small pieces that go with it,” she says), and an additional five months for some recent work inspired by her time in Colorado.
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With myriad Houstonians making second or third homes in Colorado and summering there, Freeman’s works — at once serene and vivid — should speak to many Bayou City residents who are fond of the Centennial State, from which she draws inspiration.
“It’s about how I’m inspired by place, you know,” she explains. “If I’m in Colorado. I’m inspired by place to make these beautiful, lost drawings while I was on the La Plata River, and I’ve done watercolors and large-scale paintings of these walks in water. And they become a giant abstraction or small renderings of watercolors of water and rocks. And, then, if I’m inspired by place on the other works, the fantastical work, it’s because I lived in Mexico for so many years and I grew up on the border of Mexico… It’s about how things can go either way in life.”
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“Janice Freeman UnCaged” runs from Saturday, September 17 to Saturday, November 5 at a Cothren Contemporary pop-up, 5016 Allen St. For more information, visit Cothren Contemporary online.
Originally posted in CultureMap
