Cultural Enrichment Center Events
Fall 2024
Guest Speaker Artist, Julie DeVries
September 20, 2024
11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Classroom A413 (Academic Building)
Guest Speaker Julie DeVries is a Lone Star College Visual Arts professor, as well
as a painter, sculptor, and digital artist, who was born and raised in Houston, where
she currently lives and works. Her creative practice mines poignant memories and
observations of nature in urban and suburban environments, exploring how these settings
impact the natural world, as well as the importance of green spaces to our own emotional
being. In her artist talks to college students, she speaks about how the act of creating
has helped her over the years cope with periods of depression, which in my experience,
has greatly comforted and inspired her listening audience. She received her BFA from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on Painting and Latin American
art history and spent a semester abroad with family, participating in the Butler
University Institute for Study Abroad COPA program in Argentina. Devries also has
an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Houston. Her work has been exhibited
and collected locally and nationally and has been included in the prestigious Houston
Endowment permanent collection. Her most current solo exhibition at Hunter Dunbar
Projects Gallery in New York was also reviewed in the September issue of The Brooklyn
Rail. Recently, she has been working on animating her digital drawings in order to
create time based vignettes of distilled moments and has been designing and installing
her imagery as larger scale immersive paintings, sculptures, and vinyl wall murals.
Omar Pimienta Poetry Workshop
October 2, 2024
10 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
Virtual
Omar Pimienta is a poet and a visual artist from Tijuana, México. He will be joining the class Workshop in Poetry - ENG 3344 in order to discuss one of his poetry collections, Album of Fences, translated by José Antonio Villaran. The class will have read and discussed this poetry collection prior to Pimienta's visit. During our meeting with him, he will share his insights and experiences on the life and joys of poetry.
Jazzin' on the Bayou
October 14, 2024
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
OMB 40,000 Windows Cafe
Welcome to an extraordinary evening that blends the sophistication of a live jazz concert with the enriching depth of a master class. Our upcoming event promises an immersive experience, featuring Kyle Turner, Houston saxophonist; graduate of Jackson State University; recording artist; and KTSU radio host; Chad Wesselkamper, bassist, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, is a graduate of Rice University; Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame designee; Darrell Lavigne, pianist, graduate of Xavier University of New Orleans, international recording artist, and Sam Knight, a native Houstonian professional percussionist, attending The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, and studied with jazz greats such as Michael Carvin, Charli Persip, Eric McPherson and Greg Hutchinson; distinguished professional jazz ensemble renowned for their exceptional talent and deep expertise in the genre. This concert will showcase selections of jazz classics, spanning from the origins of jazz through the vibrant 1940s to contemporary masterpieces. This fusion of live performance and educational enrichment will offer attendees a rare opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the nuances and intricacies of jazz music. Join us for an evening where the rhythm and soul of jazz are celebrated in all their glory, and where you can engage directly with the rich heritage and vibrant present of this beloved genre. This event is not just a concert; it is a celebration of jazz’s enduring legacy and an exploration of its ever-evolving future.
Fall 2024 Symposium with Author, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Intersections of A.I. and Power: Promises, Perils, and Privilege
October 16, 2024
11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m
Fondren Commons Room (CST building)
The Cultural Enrichment Center is proud to partner with the Center for Critical Race Studies to support their Fall Symposium on Race, Politics, and Culture with Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram. Dr. Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry that received the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz prize for interdisciplinary work and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their fifth book, Negative Money, is available now. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland. Their new chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest.
Please join the university community as we critically consider how we might use computational tools to investigate bias, determinism, and anti-Blackness. Dr. Bertram will be reading from her award winning text A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content, which combines poetry, language, and artificial intelligence to explore racism and the limits of deep learning. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session and reception.
Co-sponsored by the UHD Center for Critical Race Studies, The UHD Cultural Enrichment Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Guest Speaker Artist, Bennie Flores Ansell
October 18, 2024
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Classroom A413 (Academic Building)
Bennie Flores Ansell is a Houston based artist, born in Manila, Philippines and raised
in the U.S.. She is an Art Professor at Houston Community College. Her degrees include
an M.F.A. from the University of Houston, and a B.A. from the University of South
Florida. She also was an American Photography Institute Fellow at New York University.
Through the use of discarded analogue photographic artifacts, Flores Ansell creates installations and unique objects that deal with representation, race, and the migration of people.. These discarded objects are a metaphor for those who have been discarded and left behind by the Western Canon of Art. In 1935,when film transition from black and white to color, the chemicals necessary to bring out darker skin tones were omitted, giving film an inherent racial bias toward white as an “ideal” skin tone, The now discarded analogue film represents those who were denied visibility By her removal of these film sprockets from their accompanying images, they take on an importance all their own, free from the substantive elements that once made them discriminatory.
Flores Ansell’s work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally including a group show at The International Center for Photography, NYC; Seattle Art Museu; The San Diego Museum of Art as part of the Only Skin Deep Exhibition curated by Coco Fusco; the Festival De La Luz in Argentina, in a site-specific installation at the Daegu Photography Biennale in South Korea in in two group shows at Patricia Conde Galeria in Mexico City.
LatinFest 2024
Danza Azteca and Danza Garifuna
October 22, 2024
5 p.m. - 6 p.m.
ACAD 300
The Center for Latino Studies presents LatinFest 2024, which highlights the various Latinx/e communities within UHD and the greater Houston area. LatinFest will feature performances by Danza Azteca, Danza Garifuna, the Conjunto Cultural Appreciation Student Organization, and a Selena Tribute Show.
Join us for fun and celebration!
13th Annual UHD Halloween Horror Film Screening
October 24, 2024
UHD Main Building North Deck (Robertson Auditorium in case of weather issue)
To celebrate UHD’s 13th year of horror film programming for the public during Halloween season, we have selected
a classic from the U.S. slasher subgenre – Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham from 1980. The film stars Adrienne King as Alice
Hardy, a role that helped to define what scholars mean by the slasher’s “final girl.”
Filmed on location, the film broke new ground by setting its story on the grounds
of a summer camp, turning cabins, communal kitchens, the lake, recreational spaces,
and the pathways that connect them into sites of horror. The film’s surprising monster
provides an added twist. Given the dynamic experience of last year’s slasher screening
(Halloween, dir. John Carpenter, 1976), and given this year’s lucky status as our program’s
13th year running, students in UHD’s film studies minor and concentration suggested this
independent, atmospheric slasher as our very best choice.
UHD’s Annual Halloween Horror Film Screening transforms UHD’s North Deck into a lit-up site of artistic and cultural expression, community belonging, and public feelings. Please join UHD students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of Houston’s vibrant film communities for this evening of socialization, networking, and thinking through fear and disgust under the moon’s waning gibbous.
Guest Speaker Artist, David McGee
November 8, 2024
12:30 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Classroom A413 (Academic Building)
David McGee was born in Lockhart, Louisiana, grew up in Detroit, MI, and moved to
Texas in the 1980s, where he received his BFA from Prairie View A&M University.
His work encompasses painting, printmaking, watercolor, and drawing, exploring the interplay between image and text to poignantly situate his practice within larger art historical narratives and social critiques. Humor, care, and thoughtfulness, coupled with an interest in surface, emotion, and drama characterizes a practice that oscillates between abstraction and figuration, and that explores the emotional weights of race, language, signs and signifiers, art history, and the recognition of existence, both individual and collective.
McGee’s recent Tarot Cards series are 160 small works on paper that draw from the art historical canon combined with text referencing the Civil War, highlighting its colonial inceptions, lasting historical and cultural legacies, and ongoing racial and economic reckonings still felt today. As part of the exhibit, 4 large watercolors of Black women dressed in 17th century European Court attire/ Southern antebellum ballgowns, pay homage to the past and present survival strategies employed by these women..
McGee is represented by Inman Gallery in Houston, with solo exhibitions at The Menil Collection, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Museum of African American Culture, The Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, , The Galveston Art Center,, and others. Permanent collections, include the Grand Rapids Art Museum,; Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; and W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University
Creative Writing Student Reading
November 13, 2024
2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
40,000 Windows Café
Creative Writing Student Reading will showcase the wonderful talent of the UHD students: writers who will share their work with other writers and UHD community members.