FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 10, 2007

Program contact: Karen Farber
713-743-2623 (office)
kfarber@uh.edu

This semester, four groups of University of Houston students undertook bold experiments, but they weren’t conducted in a lab. Instead, student artists from different disciplines (theater, dance, music, art and creative writing) banded together to develop innovative exhibitions that now are ready to be unveiled to the public.

These multi-disciplinary projects were created as part of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at UH’s “Collaboration Among the Arts” course. Now in its third year, “Collaboration” teams student artists from diverse creative backgrounds, allowing their disparate talents and ideas to generate fresh, insightful works of art.

All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For more details, visit http://www.mitchellcenterforarts.org/.

5 – 8 p.m., April 21 – Commerce Street Artists Warehouse (2315 Commerce St.)

“Stories from an Empty Place” is an interactive installation of art, photography, writing, storytelling and film. It includes contributions from 50 fourth-grade students from John J. Herrera Elementary School, who are photographing and documenting their communities. This is a one-night presentation, and participation from patrons is encouraged.

“Cover” is a multi-media documentary that invites the audience to consider the spiritual and cultural factors that influence why women cover their heads, faces or other parts of their body.

5 – 8 p.m., April 22 – Lawndale Art Center (4912 Main St.)

“Covering Ground” is a public exhibition focused on one group’s “environmental graffiti” efforts. Instead of placing messages around town, these artists planted flowers in vacant lots and unused spaces throughout the city. It’s an ongoing project, but the effects of this experience will be presented in this exhibition. For more details, visit www.projectcoveringground.blogspot.com.

“Collective Playground” is a multi-media installation that explores childhood memory as fable through the juxtaposition of organic and inorganic materials, the shared experiences of the artists and the metaphors of the collective life cycle. It is designed to provoke a confrontation of the distortion of one’s own memories through time, subjective perspectives, and emotional attachments.

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.