Interpreting Nature
Stunning Art Show Focuses on Bayou, Water, Bees, and Plants
Sept. 25, 2016
Artists and the natural world is the theme of an inspiring show of photography, drawing, and painting in the lobby gallery of Williams Tower, 2800 Post Oak Blvd, through October 21.
Curator Sally Sprout has organized an exhibition of the work of four artists living in Houston who are “profoundly influenced by the relationship between human beings and the natural world.”
The artists are Penny Cerling, Janice Freeman, Dixie Friend Gay, and Allison Hunter.
It is worth noting that for her paintings Janice Freeman appropriates the photographs of Buffalo Bayou taken by her husband, Geoff Winningham, for his landmark book, Along Forgotten River.
Below are some images from the show, which is free and open to the public and titled “Kaleidoscope: Approaching Nature.”
Penny Cerling, “Blanket Flower”
Janice Freeman, “Birds of the Bayou”
Dixie Friend Gay, “Stone Shore”
Allison Hunter, from the “Golden Bees” series
Then And Now
The View From the Bridge
June 13, 2016
Okay, it was a trick question. We asked our readers to identify the location of Geoff Winningham’s lovely black-and-white photo of Buffalo Bayou taken in 1998. And we asked for a photo of the same view now.
Shoulda been easy. The photo was published in Winningham’s beautiful photographic study of the bayou, Along Forgotten River, which traces our Mother Bayou from its source in the Katy Prairie to its end in Galveston Bay. And the photo was identified, of course.
Except that somehow the identification in the book was wrong, says Winningham. He went out and checked himself last week. The photo was taken looking upstream from the Waugh Bridge, not the Montrose Bridge. Still, the view doesn’t look much the same. The river seems to bend differently now, after the “channel conveyance improvements” by the Harris County Flood Control District starting in 2010. Not so many trees either. Here’s the way it looks now. Still lovely.
View of Buffalo Bayou looking upstream from the Waugh Bridge. Photo by Anonymous, June 13, 2016
And here is the way it looked in 1998.
Buffalo Bayou from the Waugh Bridge. Photo by Geoff Winningham, 1998.
Anonymous photographer wins a Save Buffalo Bayou bumper sticker, which everyone should have. Get yours by donating to Save Buffalo Bayou, and help us promote responsible flood control that works with nature rather than against it.
Can You Identify This View of Buffalo Bayou?
Take a Photo, Win A Prize
May 29, 2016
Where was this photo taken? And how does the bayou look there now?
Somewhere on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Geoff Winningham prior to 2001.
Okay, it’s not difficult. It’s in Geoff Winningham’s beautiful book of black-and-white photographs of Buffalo Bayou. Winningham, who teaches photography at Rice University, spent five years from 1997 to 2001 chronicling Buffalo Bayou from its beginning in the Katy Prairie to its end in Galveston Bay. The book, Along Forgotten River, published in 2003, includes accounts of early travelers in Texas from 1767 to 1858. The book can be purchased here.
Send us your shot of this location on Buffalo Bayou as it looks now. We’ll publish the best of what we get and send the winner a Save Buffalo Bayou bumper sticker.
We’re going to make this a regular series so keep looking.
… Often along these shady banks have I rowed my little skiff and wondered if ever some Bard had consecrated its border shades by a correspondent flow of song … — J.C Clopper’s Journal and Book of Memoranda for 1828, Province of Texas, quoted in Along Forgotten River by Geoff Winningham.
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