Allison Gallery is proud to open it's doors for it's first exhibition with noted Houston artist Perry House. Helter Skelter has several starting points, one of which stems from House's exhibition "Happyville" at the Nau-haus in November 2009. .... but as with many artists who's careers have such longevity it's never that simple.

Speaking with the artist on Houston, his career, art, artist, and his last exhibition Happyville at the Nau-haus Art Space

Born in Orange Texas in 1943, Perry House graduated from the California College of Arts, Oakland, CA in 1970 and has been living and working in Houston for the last 30 years. As Houston's art scene was coming of age, House was one of the early pioneers of abstraction, showing with some of the most historically notable galleries in Houston,  including William Graham, Davis/McClain, and Inman galleries. In the collection of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts,  the artist received an NEA fellowship award in 1990 and mounted solo efforts at Diverse Works in 2000, curated by Susie Kalil, and 2004 at the Galveston Arts Center curated by Clint Willour.

Perry House's earlier bodies of works from 1987 and 1994 (ill. 7 and 8 below) defy as much convention as possible while still being able to refer to the finished art object as a painting. The artist in these works strips away decoration, narrative, sex, politics, and even perspective, while at the same time evoking the passage of time, weight, depth, and our mortal coil. Artists in early Houston of Perry House's generation, Dick Wray, Don Foster, and Lucas Johnson, hung out together, had to hang together, and had to hang tough in a provincial backwater. They were the few, but remained undaunted until the culture in Houston caught up.

Perry House and a few others survived, and are doing quite well in the new millennium. House arrives in "Happyville" with a more or less optimistic perspective as well as metaphorical overview of who, what and where we are going.

"My art has always been about some particular opposites. Elegance and violence, humor and horror, the sacred and the profane. Things are sectioned, distorted and exploded. That's been my artist's statement as long as I can remember. I have it tacked to the wall"

 House quotes the late great and boisterous Los Angeles artist of the 1950 and '60's John Altoon. " I'm drawing a picture in my mind of what's on your mind. I'm a little confused in my mind, but your mind is coming in clear as hell."

For Perry House the Happyville series is another version of Vanitas. "The neighborhoods are still-lifes in a way. They are in transition like everything in our lives."  The traditional vanitas painting was popular in the Netherlands in the early 1600's and contains collections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures.

While Helter Skelter is not necessarily a sequel to his "Happyville" series, in the artist's latest body of work the colors are still indeed joyful, there is plenty of perspective, with recognizable architectural elements not evident in earlier works. So while the world and worldly things are floating away, happiness precious but fleeting, we regroup, reorganize, and reevaluate Helter Skelter into the future. (courtesy DMA  Nau-haus 2011)