It’s hard to decorate your walls with original artwork without breaking the bank, but this art fair wants to change that. The Affordable Art Fair, a festival of art without the gallery price tag, is coming to Houston this October and organizers have found a creative way to promote it.
The fair is a three-day event, starting Oct. 15 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The fair will be interactive with family-friendly activities on weekend mornings and will host late-night programming. Art sold at the fair will range from $100 to $12,000, and will be from emerging as well as established artists.
Cori Teague, the fair’s director, thinks the event will help broaden the public’s access to art and help promote local artists at the same time.
“Really putting art out there and giving a name and a brand to emerging artists is really important to keep the art ecosystem alive,” said Teague. “ Art should be affordable to everyone because we remove art from our school curriculums so early that we’re losing collectors and art in our everyday lives.”
To promote the event, Teague partnered with Houston chef Christian Hernandez to put on a one-night dinner where each course took inspiration from a different work of art that will be featured at the fair.
The special dinner was hosted at Houston-inspired restaurant Barbacana and was aimed at giving the public a sneak peek of the fair’s art. Hernandez specially designed each course to mirror the artwork.
“As chefs, we take inspiration from everything,” said Hernandez. “It can be a piece of art that we saw at the museum. It can be a color palette that we want to recreate. It can be whatever is under the sun. A lot of the same words the artists used to describe the paintings were exactly what I was thinking when I was creating the dish to represent their painting.”
If you want a preview of what to expect at the art fair, the Barbacana dinner highlighted some of the art available for purchase. Here’s what was served.
COURSE ONE
Inspired by “Artichokes” by Joan Steinman, Houston-based artist
Seasonal crudité with bagna cauda and green goddess
The first course of our five-course meal looked like the painting had jumped off the canvas and into the bowl. Decorated with fresh vegetables and a rich sauce, the ingredients used in the dish were the same as those envisioned and brought to life by the artist.
COURSE TWO
Inspired by “On the Road” by Joan Steinman, Houston-based artist
Smoked brassicas, cabbage “butter,” McPeak Farms peaches
The second course was smoky, with the cooked brassicas reflecting the dark clouds on the horizon of the art piece. The chef was able to replicate the color palette of the painting almost exactly with the ripe peaches, dark green garnish, and darker hues of the spices—making the dish look like a landscape on its own.
COURSE THREE
Inspired by “Golden Thread” by Holly Wong, San Francisco-based artist
Turmeric & lobster tonnarelli, house garum, Baerii caviar
The third course was layered with the shape of loops and spirals, the pasta mimicking the thread in the painting it was inspired by. Pops of orange geometric shapes in the painting were made into food with the bright colors of the caviar on the plate. The sauce at the base of the dish formed a background like the dusty marks in the painting.
COURSE FOUR
Inspired by “Evangeline and Dunes of Bahia Grande” by Kate Mulholland, Houston-based artist
TX wagyu bavette, creme oaxaquena, mole manchamanteles and salsa borracha
Combining the bold colors of one painting with the layered texture of another, the chef joined two separate art pieces in one dish with this main course. The brightness of the orange and white sauce contrasting against the black plate recreated the visual contrast between the artist’s two pieces.
COURSE FIVE — DESSERT
Inspired by “Elixir 5” by Holly Wong, San Francisco-based artist
Coconut sorbet, almond cake, mango mousse
The dessert transported us to the tropics and was my favorite part of the five-course meal. The cream-covered nutty cake was topped with a cold coconut sorbet, which melted into the mango mousse, and recreated the ethereal wispiness of the artist’s work. The color combinations mixed together as one ingredient melted into the other, mirroring the streaks of color in the art piece.
To see more art that’ll be featured at the fair, check out the event website.
