TIME TO PAINT the town! This season, a trio of art fairs hits Houston, beginning with the Houston Art Fair (formerly the Houston Fine Art Fair), where nearly 50 local and international galleries exhibit Sept. 29-Oct. 2 at Silver Street Studios. On the same weekend, the Texas Contemporary event is held Downtown at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Opening-night festivities include a collaborative performance with the Houston Ballet’s Oliver Halkowich and multi-media artist Chris Doyle. And a week later, the semi-annual Bayou City Art Festival returns to the streets of Downtown with hundreds of outdoor booths.
Clare Leppert and Clementine, the Cavachon. Leigh Leppert and Benny, the Bernedoodle.
HOW DID YOU come together as a team? This fall, we are celebrating the introduction of an exciting real estate collaboration between Clare Leppert, longtime Houston Realtor®, and daughter Leigh Leppert. Clare shared a 20+ year real estate partnership with her mother, Bette Carpenter, until Bette’s death in 2016. Having worked solo for several years, Clare in 2021 was awarded Houston Business Journal’s No. 2 Luxury Realtor® in Houston. Leigh, who has been working in marketing for the past decade, has always shared a passion for real estate and watched Clare successfully balance family and career. We are excited to re-create the next generation of a mother-daughter duo at Compass!
Tell us about your business. What’s unique about your partnership and how does the relationship benefit the business? Clare’s experience in the luxury market for the last 20+ years is enhanced by Leigh’s fresh take on marketing and insight on the ever-evolving Houston neighborhoods. We recognize that real estate is so much more than just “the house.” Exceeding client expectations, marketing, negotiating, hand-holding, and successfully maneuvering in changing markets are what we do best.
What is the Leppert Ladies’ secret to success? We take a family approach to real estate. Clare and Leigh provide a combination of grit and grace, constantly striving to protect and honor clients’ privacy and to prioritize clients’ best interests.
What makes your partnership effective? Clients benefit from the expertise of not one but two Realtors! Clare is a top-producing, seasoned agent in the luxury market who grew up in River Oaks and knows the tried and true Houston neighborhoods. Leigh offers knowledge about current marketing and advertising strategies and is a connoisseur of Houston hotspots and happenings.
What can Houston expect from this duo? We specialize in assisting clients in all seasons of life. From leasing or purchasing for the first time to empty-nesting and beyond, Clare and Leigh will be there! Our goal is to be your real estate partner for generations to come.
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MFAH Installs Two Provocative Paintings in its Foyer, Presenting Them Together as a 'Portrait of Courage'
Jan. 26, 2023
Wiley's 'Judith and Holofernes'
THE ENERGY IN the foyer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Caroline Wiess Law Building is quite lively, thanks to the installation of two provocative paintings, painted 400 years apart — one by Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian 17th-century female artist, the other by Kehinde Wiley, a contemporary, Nigerian-born queer Black artist. Each depicts the grisly climax in the Old Testament Book of Judith, in which the widow Judith decapitates the Assyrian general Holofernes, thus saving her besieged Jewish city of Betulia.
Presented together as Portrait of Courage and installed on opposite walls, each painting is a masterpiece in its depiction of violence made all the more shocking perhaps because the subject with the sword is a strong, beautiful woman. Portrait of Courage opened Jan. 26 and is on view through April 16.
MFAH associate curator of European Art, James Anno, and associate curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Anita Bateman, were tasked with the installation of the paintings, both titled "Judith and Holofernes." “There are many layers and narratives that any particular object proposes,” says Anno of his and Bateman’s roles as curators. “We get to choose what aspect we want to put our finger on and say, ‘Let’s follow this story.’ This is a case where we’re doing that. We’re selecting aspects of the work that dialogue with each other in a sense that’s relevant to us right now.”
Wiley, whose portrait of President Barack Obama along with Amy Sherald’s portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama exhibited at MFAH in Spring 2022, is well known for his heroic portraits of Black men and women, who are not professional models, posed in historical settings and exhibiting gestures appropriated from Old Master paintings.
In Wiley’s "Judith and Holofernes," Judith is modeled by Treisha Lowe, dressed in a blue gown, its color close to that of the dress worn by Judith in Gentileschi’s painting, her left arm at a downward diagonal clutching not the head of a marauding general, but that of Wiley’s studio assistant, who is female and white. Including his assistant may be another allusion to the complex role of an artist assistant during the Baroque era of painting, but Lowe’s dramatic hairstyle, carefully applied makeup, and tattoo are thoroughly contemporary. She stands with just a hint of onstage theatricality, the colors of her ensemble and fingernails complemented by an opulent backdrop of flowers and traces of blood on a sheathed sword.
'Judith and Holofernes' by Gentileschi, left, and Wiley
Meanwhile, there’s nothing understated about Gentileschi’s Judith; this is a woman who is not afraid to get her hands bloody. With a little help from her maidservant, Judith holds the struggling Holofernes firmly by his hair with her left arm while using a sword in her right to calmly saw off his head. Gentileschi’s Judith may be a self-portrait; Gentileschi painted this after she had been raped by a family friend, who was brought to a trial in which Gentileschi was tortured with thumb screws to ensure she was telling the truth.
It is heartening to see museums stepping up via their curatorial decisions to challenge the male, Euro-centric narrative of the history of art and societal definitions of whose bodies are “beautiful” and worthy of being painted. But Anno, Bateman, and MFAH director Gary Tinterow all point out that this is something artists throughout the ages have always done.
“You have these artists who have always been at the vanguard of what they’ve been doing, whether they be African American contemporary artists or a 17th-century woman painter, then you have these people who may not understand what they’re doing in the moment,” says Bateman. “But culture catches up to what they’re doing,”
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Rendering courtesy of RYDE
EXACTLY EIGHT YEARS ago, friends and business partners Ashley Gooch and Andrew Pappas were putting the finishing touches on their brand-new cycling studio, RYDE, in the River Oaks Shopping Center on West Gray. Back then, Houston's boutique-fitness scene was just heating up, but the duo was certain they were on to something.
Fast forward to 2023, and the RYDE co-founders are once again finalizing a build-out — but this time, things look a little different. The brand's stunning flagship studio will open in April on West 11th Street in the heart of the Heights. The elevated, freestanding building, designed by Boucher Design Group and constructed by O'Donnell Snider Construction, boasts ample on-site parking underneath, along with dedicated bike racks — a nod to its location just a couple blocks off the Heights Hike and Bike Trail.
Renderings show a grown-up take on industrial-chic interiors, with walls of glass, cement floors and exposed support beams, and an eye-catching graffiti-style mural. The RYDE team commissioned Los Angeles-based artist Amber Goldhammer — represented by Houston's own Christopher Martin Gallery — to create a vibrant, layered, wall-size painting that can be seen from 11th Street.
RYDE Heights will offer the brand's signature 45-minute, rhythm-based spin classes in a new studio space outfitted with a custom, immersive sound and lighting system, and nearly 50 high-end Stages SC2 indoor cycling bikes. Clients can expect amenity-laden locker rooms with top-of-the-line products a la Aesop hair, body and skincare goods, and coveted Dyson blow-dryers.
Plans for the Heights studio have been in the works for more than three years — a long chapter filled with "hard work, passion and meticulous attention to detail," says Pappas in a statement. “The RYDE team is dedicated to pushing the limits of what a fitness experience can be. Our new Heights studio is a testament to that commitment, offering an unparalleled, high-energy indoor cycling experience in a stunning, expertly designed space. We are excited to welcome the Heights community to our new home and elevate their fitness journey.”
Gooch and Pappas
RYDE instructors CJ Martin, Caroline Wagner and Chris Younger
A rendering of RYDE Heights
A rendering of the locker rooms at RYDE Heights
RYDE River Oaks
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