Winter Exhibitions Opening Reception

Time
Friday, January 25, 2013 from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Location
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
4848 Main Street. Houston, Texas 77002 (Map)

Please join us for the opening reception of our winter exhibitions, 2013 NCECA Biennial, Constructing Solitude and Roughneck: A Juried ClayHouston Exhibition.

Call for Misfit Cups!
Artist Michael Strand will be present throughout the evening to accept visitors’ misfit cups in exchange for his handmade cups as a part of his Misfit Cup Liberation Project, on view in the 2013 NCECA Biennial.  Below, see a video of Michael Strand explaining his project.

5:30 PM – Artist Talk by Janice Jakielski

6:00 – 7:00 PM – Open Studios by Current Resident Artists

Beer sponsored by Karbach Brewing Co.

Misfit Cup Liberation Project

“Right now, in the recesses of your cupboard, resides a cup. This cup has been long forgotten and left to sit idle for too long. Every time you open your cupboard to fix a drink, you pass over this cup by in favor of more cherished alternatives. . . What sort of cups?  You know the ones.” – Michael Strand

As part of his piece, Misfit Cup Liberation Project, on view in the 2013 NCECA Biennial Exhibition, artist Michael Strand invites visitors to bring in a rejected cup—the snowman-shaped mug given as a gift from a relative or that plastic, cactus-shaped martini glass—and trade it in for one of his handmade cups during the opening reception, January 25, 5:30 – 8:00 PM.  Throughout the evening, Strand will be present to exchange cups. The visitors’ cups will reside alongside 99 other rejected cups as a collection of “the best of the worst” for the duration of the exhibit. This project was first staged at The Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, and Houston is the third stop in what Strand hopes to be a ten-city tour, eventually amassing 1000 cups worldwide. In the end, this collection will become a cultural anthropological study of what is at the back of our collective closets.