Second Annual Texas Contemporary Art Fair Announces Signature Programs and Special Events


New York, NY (PRWEB) October 12, 2012

The second annual Texas Contemporary Art Fair opens next week (October 18 21) at the George R. Brown Convention Center and will feature over 70 leading galleries from across the country.

Underscoring the Fairs commitment to the visitor experience, this years line-up of programs will again feature an extensive series of discussions, special events and tours, large-scale installations and the inaugural MRKTworks auction. These on- and off-site special events provide visitors with the opportunity to engage with art in an immersive and impactful way and to delver deeper into the innovation and experimentation of the contemporary market.

Events

Texas Contemporary Art Fair celebrates the burgeoning growth of Houstons cultural landscape with an extensive range of tours and events in some of the Citys newest venues.

The week will begin with a pre-show reception hosted by the Asia Society Houston, Julie Kinzelman and Texas Contemporary at the newly unveiled Asia Society designed by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Throughout the Fair, visitors will be invited to attend a special ribbon cutting ceremony of The Andy Monument with artist Rob Pruitt at CAMH, and Claudia Schmuckli, chief curator and director of the Blaffer Art Museum will host a private lunch as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the newly-renovated museum.

As well, for the second year, the Opening Night Preview on October 18 will benefit the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH) and is anticipated to raise over $ 20,000 to support the museums free admission policy and extended hours.

Discussions & Guided Tours

Texas Contemporary will host a series of discussions throughout the duration of the Fair. Speakers include artists Rob Pruitt and Eric Beltz as well as CAMH Director Bill Arning and a panel of photo and video artists will be organized and moderated by FotoFest International.

Fair visitors are invited to tour of several of the citys leading museums, private collections, the new Midtown Arts District, and the conservation studio, Whitten & Proctor Fine Art Conservation and Houston Collector Lester Marks, Museum of Fine Arts Curator Dena Woodhall, and Galveston Arts Center Curator and photography collector Clint Willour, will be among those giving guided tours of the fair. Curatorial Assistant Susan Sutton of the Menil Collection will also conduct a tour the critically-acclaimed exhibition, Silence, which looks at a century of art considering silence. For more information, visit: http://www.txcontemporary.com/texas/installations-and-events.

Installations

The artists whose works will be presented at this years Texas Contemporary Fair include Eric Beltz, Colby Bird, Dan Douke, Gina Phillips, OKAY MOUNTAIN, Travis Somerville and many others.

Eric Beltz, Revival Wall presented by Morgan Lehman

Beltzs site-specific 9 x 12 wall drawing for Texas Contemporary is derived from the sampler patterns of his Elementary Forces series. Beltz uses the cross-stitch grid-map to create eye-popping illusions in his signature grayscale palette. This installation marks the first time the artist will bring these drawings out of the frame and into this monumental scale.

Gina Phillips, A Sentimental Tree Reminisces presented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery

The installation will be constructed of textiles the largest of which will be a custom-made tree that will envelope a structural column. Interspersed among the spaces of the branches and the spaces between the ground and the branches will be various sized thought bubbles, representing nostalgic scenes from the trees past history. The installation will include cutout forms of animals, clouds and teeth; these three components are meant to represent the trees past, present and future.

OKAY MOUNTAIN, Roadside Attractions presented by Mark Moore Gallery

The artist collective, OKAY MOUNTAIN, was commissioned to create Roadside Attractions, 2011 for the Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga as part of the Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series. The sculpture draws upon the mythology and quirkiness of different categories of roadside attractions with the purpose of delighting and confounding the expectations of the browser and would-be tourist. The brochures themselves mimic the discordant imagery and incongruous information often found in a typical visiting center brochure rack. This is a place where do-it-yourself and professional design are typically forced to cohabitate. All one hundred brochures are uniquely designed by the members of the collective. The printed works -like the brochures upon which they are drawn–are free to take by the viewing public, giving Roadside Attractions of a performative life outside the institutional setting where it originated.

Travis Somerville, Well Division presented by Catharine Clark Gallery

Inspired by the famous photograph showing a refrigerated drinking fountain designated for WHITES sharing the same pluming with a porcelain fountain for COLOREDS, Somerville has created his own set of water fountains loosely based on the 2000 census and anticipation of changes for the 2010 census. Above each fountain is a label and inside each basin is a stereotypical image associated with that group.

Kim Beck, The Sky Is the Limit presented by Mixed Greens

This installation of light boxes of backlit prints captures a series of messages taken from advertisingSpace Available, All Sales Final, Everything Must Go–as they were drawn in the sky over Pittsburgh. The phrases, both exciting and portentous, indicate fantastic sales and business closings. The available space advertised is, of course, the most potent symbol of longing in the landscape: the sky. When loosed from paper signs and billboards, the texts evoke open-ended poetic phrases that, as evanescent marks in the sky, gradually fade back into air.

Colby Bird, Cord presented by Lora Reynolds Gallery

Colby Birds sculptures are minimal and precarious exercises in balance. The works are comprised of commercially abundant materials, such as chair parts, fruit, and lumber. While his work may appear to be elegant and effortless, he goes to painstaking lengths to create this illusion. Birds work carves out a space between high art and youthful insouciance.

Herbert Mehler, WV 745 & WV 716 presented by Lausberg Contemporary

The inspiration for Mehlers artwork comes from organic and natural matter, such as fruits and seeds. The sculptures serve as a play between light fluid shapes and the seemingly insurmountable weight of the material. Simultaneously, the rhythmic fan-like structure strongly suggests architectural and man-made forms- the rhythm of the corten-steel forms evoke the serene undulating forms of the changing tides or mountain landscapes. It is this ambivalence between the natural and the man-made that makes Mehlers works so captivating. These sculptures are from Mehlers KAVEX series (2003- 2009).

Agnes Denes, Pyramids of Conscience presented by Ballroom Marfa

These powerful monuments metaphorically and theoretically encapsulate our world’s most precious resource, water. Pyramid I is filled with tap water from Marfa, Pyramid II is filled with polluted water from the Rio Grande River. Pyramid III is filled with recycled motor oil, which symbolically references water as a commodity. Pyramid IV is constructed of mirrors, which reflect ourselves.

Dan Douke, Kingdom Come, presented by Peter Mendenhall Gallery

At first glance, Kingdom Come appears to be two large shipping crates on top of one another. In actuality, the five-sided work is composed of sixteen separate stretched canvases and is completely hand-crafted. The labels are hand-lettered, the wood texture, scrapes and smudges are all hand-painted, highlighting the artist

Texas Energy Network (TEN) Announces Membership in Key Energy Data Standards Organizations; Releases Standards for Carrier Deployment of LTE for Energy Communications

Houston, TX (PRWEB) July 25, 2012

Citing ownership and control of the network core as a key element of service, Texas Energy Network, LLC announced today carrier deployment standards for LTE networks on the oilfield. Gregory M. Casey, Chief Executive Officer of TEN stated; “TEN is releasing these standards as guidelines for energy companies seeking to use LTE to transmit data. TEN’s network is being built to a carrier class standard and we think its important that our energy customers know what that means compared to some other service that may portend to provide critical infrastructure wireless service.” Casey was business unit head of Qwest/US West’s carrier access business before starting TEN.

The first key element of carrier class service is control of the LTE Evolved Packet Core(EPC). An LTE network uses an eNodeB (evolved node B, essentially an LTE base station), a MME (mobile management entity), a HSS (home subscriber server), a SGW (serving gateway), and a PGW (a packet data network gateway). With the exception of the eNodeB, everything is considered as part of the EPC (evolved packet core) network. At the tower the eNodeB connects to the EPC.

The MME and the HSS basically handle all duties regarding subscriber access to the network. It handles all the authentication, roaming rules for subscribers, etc. The SGW essentially acts like a giant router for subscribers, passing data back and forth from the subscriber to the network. The PGW provides the connection to external data networks. The most common data network the PGW provides a connection to is the internet.

Therefore, ownership and control of the EPC is essential. Allen Shipman, Vice President of Engineering and Operations at TEN stated, “network control is essential when providing data transmission to critical infrastructure companies such as the energy industry. If the network isn’t controlled and is maintained by a third party, its not secure and certainly not carrier class.” Shipman is noted for his architecture of the 50,000 mile Broadwing fiber network now owned by data heavyweight Level 3.

Other key elements beside ownership and control that are essential to the provision of carrier class service are: 1) ownership and control of backhaul links over licensed spectrum, 2) ringed network topology to provide system continuity in the case of backhaul failure, 3) redundant core routers in the case of failure, 4) secure tower deployment and several other design elements. These standards will be announced on TEN’s website in September.

TEN also announced membership in two key energy data standards organizations, Energistics and PIDX. Energistics is a global industry consortium that facilitates an inclusive user community for the development, adoption and maintenance of collaborative, open standards for the energy industry in general and specifically for oil and gas exploration and production. Its website can be found at http://www.energistics.org. PIDX provides a global forum for delivering the process, information and technology standards that facilitates seamless, efficient electronic business within the oil and natural gas industry and its trading community. Its website can be found at http://www.pidx.org. Greg Casey also noted “TEN is the first carrier to become a member in both organizations. Our intention is to not only efficiently transport data at high speeds but to facilitate the use of data in energy company work flows. Membership in these organizations gives us access to key energy data constituents.”

Starting first in the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford shale play, TEN is delivering 4G LTE to the oil and gas industry to enable the promise of the “Digital Oilfield”. The company’s website can be found at http://www.texasenergynetwork.com.







Apex Capital Invests in Fiber Optic Ring in North Texas


Fort Worth, TX (PRWEB) July 24, 2012

Apex Capital

Apex Capital, a leader in the freight factoring industry, continually invests in technology to provide the best for its clients. To ensure the fastest, most technologically integrated service possible, Apex arranged through FiberLight to leverage more than 150 miles of underground fiber optic lines forming a ring in North Texas.

Through its agreement with FiberLight, Apex has a private line directly connecting its Fort Worth office to its Dallas colocation facility for real-time replication and multi-location service availability. A private fiber optic network provides a faster, more secure connection and is used by businesses that must maintain connections to multiple physical locations. With a fiber optic ring providing business systems with redundancy there is no need to access the public sector of the Internet for intra-company communications. If any portion of the ring is undermined, information will traverse the alternate path, providing dependable service to clients at all times.

With its recent move to fiber optics, Apex is raising the bar for customer service. Reliable technology is imperative for Apex clients who depend on Apexs connectivity for daily transactions, credit, accounting and fuel information.

We are excited about the new relationship with Apex, as a leading provider of freight factoring services; Apex is uniquely positioned to leverage technology to deliver superior solutions for their clients. FiberLight, with the largest competitive underground telecom fiber optic network in Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, has designed the network for mission critical and low latency network solutions and serves as a platform for real time access to key technologies driving revenue and profit for our clients, said Judd Carothers, EVP of Network Operations & Engineering with FiberLight.

About FiberLight

FiberLight, LLC is a premier provider of mission-critical, high performance networking services including Ethernet, Wavelengths and IP, SONET and Dark Fiber optical transport network solutions. Solutions are provided to telecom carriers, government, enterprise, content providers and web-centric businesses. FiberLight wholly owns its 600,000 fiber-mile network in key growth areas and offers robust metro networks in 29 metros within Georgia, Florida, Washington, D.C., Texas, Virginia and Maryland. Visit FiberLight at http://www.fiberlight.com.

ABOUT APEX CAPITAL

For over sixteen years, Apex Capital, based in Fort Worth, Texas, has been a leader in providing freight bill factoring services for the trucking industry. Over the years, our company vision has remained the same: to be known for the legendary service we provide, the value we create, and the flawless execution we deliver. We want to provide more than just cash for our clients. To us, its about the service and most importantly the relationship. Apex is different and its our people that make us different. We value honesty and integrity as much as the freight bills we buy. Thats one of the many reasons weve been voted as Americas Favorite Factor and have been one of the top companies to work for in Texas for 5 years. For more information call 800.511.6022 or visit http://www.apexcapitalcorp.com.







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Methodist Retirement Communities (MRC) Announces the Purchase of Land to Open MRC Clear Springs Retirement Community in Galveston County, Texas


Clear Lake, TX (PRWEB) June 14, 2012

Methodist Retirement Communities (MRC) President & CEO, Ron Jennette, has announced that Happy Harbor Methodist Home, Inc., a non-profit corporation whose sole member is Methodist Retirement Communities (MRC), has entered into a Purchase Sale Agreement with Florida-based Regency Realty Group, Inc. The purchase includes an 18.81 acre site at the corner of FM 518 and 270 in the League City/Clear Lake area of Galveston County, TX, on the south side of Houston.

Happy Harbor Methodist Home, Inc. will be doing business on this site as MRC Clear Springs with a plan to develop a life care Healthy Living Community for persons aged 62 and better.

Upon completing the due diligence process, MRC is anticipating closing on the land in September or October of this year to be followed by informational sessions, then open the marketing offerings while the project is being designed. Construction is anticipated to start the end of 2013 or early 2014. Conceptual architectural renderings of the project have already begun, with a preliminary expectation of 108 Independent/Residential apartment homes, 36 Assisted Living apartments, 24 Memory Support suites for those with various dementias, 20 short-term Rehab units and 28 Skilled Nursing units for long-term care.

The MRC system, whose central support offices in The Woodlands, TX, is currently celebrating its 50th year of service ministry to senior adults in Texas. MRC prides itself in fulfilling its mission commitment to quality living for senior adults in a Christian environment where each person has the opportunity to live every day to the fullest they can and choose. This is done through services, programs, activities, care and housing with amenities; all supported with a capable, competent, caring and compassionate staff. MRC has other similar communities in Texarkana, Lufkin, Bryan and a smaller version under current construction in Huntsville. MRC also has 3 Home Health Agencies and has sponsored and manages 5 HUD apartment communities for seniors with income limitations, 3 in Bryan and 2 in La Porte. Additionally, MRC owns and leases to a 3rd party a retirement community on Galveston Island. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.mrcaff.org, which also provides a link to our Facebook site.







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