Watch These Artists Come Together at Sawyer Yards
The Silos at Sawyer Yards took over what used to be the Riviana Rice plant.
Image: Courtesy Silos at Sawyer
What happens when you combine choreography, spoken word and visual arts? You wind up with Connecting the Silos—a multidisciplinary group show hosted at the Silos at Sawyer Yards with special artist talks set for Saturday.
Participants are all graduates of Fresh Arts’ Artist INC program, an eight-week crash course meant to imbue creatives with business skills specific to their art practice. The program ended in May, but the artists from the cohort wanted a way to present their work, much of it done in partnership with artists outside their individual disciplines.
“Their desire to work together and present a collaborative show is such a testament to how this program helped artists learn from each other and grow in their craft,” says Angela Carranza, program and service manager for Fresh Arts.
Saturday's talks are an extension of the ongoing Connecting the Silos exhibition that features collaborative works by 27 Houston-based visual and performing artists. The show's material ranges from music to photography to paining to fashion.
“The exhibition has been on display since November 1,” says Carranza, “but Saturday’s event allows people to see the spoken word and dance performances that grew out of Connecting the Silos.”
The physical silos are located in the Washington Avenue Arts District, home to one of the country’s largest concentration of working artists’ studios. Open in 2015 in the former Riviana Rice packaging plant, the complex offers 80,000 square feet of studio space, where more than 120 established and emerging artists work. It’s also home to SITE Gallery, where 34 chambers intersect to form a 9,000-square-foot honeycomb space for exhibitions and performances.
On Saturday, everyone leaves their physical and disciplinary silos to coexist in one space. While visual artists have the opportunity for their work to hang in an exhibit hall, the same isn’t true for a poet or choreographer. The program begins with a dance performance by Roberta Paixao Cortes and culminates in a discussion by the artists who created the exhibition's pieces.
“This really lets the audience see how artists grow as they collaborate with each other,” Carranza says. “And it’s a chance to discover the breadth of artistic disciplines in Houston.”
Connecting the Silos: Performances & Artist Talks, Dec. 9 at 5 p.m. Free. The Silos at Sawyer Yards Gallery 100, 1502 Sawyer St. More info via Facebook.
