MUSING THE THIRD WARD AT PROJECT ROW HOUSES:

in 2014, rick lowe was inducted as a macarthur “genius” fellow for his role as founder of project row houses, affirming and raising the international profile of the institution. many have held it up as the model for the burgeoning “social practice” and “creative placemak- ing” movements within the art world, but lowe himself has raised critical questions about those associations. FROM CULTURAL PRACTICE TO COMMUNITY INSTITUTION how then should we talk about project row houses? walter hood and carmen taylor essay a new language to describe the prh model. Potluck meal photograph courtesy PRH. meal photograph Potluck 26 spring PRH campus from Live Oak and Holman streets. Photo by Pete Molick.

In his book The New Vision, published in 1938 to inform laymen and artists about the foundation of Bauhaus education, László Moho- ly-Nagy writes, “Everyone is talented. Every healthy man has a deep capacity for bringing to development the creative energies found in his nature, if he is deeply interested in his work.” Moholy-Nagy’s as- sertion that every person has a “deep capacity” to express creativity AT PROJECT ROW HOUSES: encapsulates the value and mission of Project Row Houses (PRH) in the Third Ward of Houston. Stark white row houses adorn two neighborhood blocks, with a wide street separating them from an empty parking lot. When we arrived on a weekday, the street was quiet. There were a few people in the brick administration building on the corner, locat- ed next to the row houses. A teenager sat at a table inside doing homework. The space felt both empty and alive; its design was somewhat modest, furnished like a small home office. Neither a bustling neighborhood nor a fallow or neglected one, by walter hood and carmen taylor the site of Project Row Houses is a place that negotiates the stra- FROM CULTURAL PRACTICE TO COMMUNITY INSTITUTION tum of change. In 1993, Rick Lowe and a group of artists began renovating 22 abandoned shotgun houses on the two-block site, forming PRH. The project, which Lowe launched to bring art into the life and maintenance of the neighborhood, has been engaging participants’ creativity through rehabilitation, housing develop-

spring 27 Project Row Houses is 8 defined as much by the buildings as the space ELGIN between them. Porches, shared backyards, alleys, 7 and park space create a spatial condition or typology that encourages mindfulness and neighborliness.

prh campus 2 1 Mod Pod

1 K LIVE OA LIVE 2 XS House 3 3 ZeRow House

BASTROP 4 Duplexes FRANCIS 5 Shotgun Houses 4 6 RBW Work Yard 7 Eldorado Ballroom

8 Emancipation Park G

6 5 DOWLIN

HOLMAN

Project Row Houses site plan. Mapping by Edison Ding and Rice Building Workshop.

ment, and art practice for the past 20 years. Ward loves to barbeque. His enthusiasm, recog- bratory. Similarly, Lowe’s art is a cultural prac- With artist-in-residence programs, low-in- nized by PRH, garnered an ad campaign to pro- tice, to give it a new moniker. One that is both come housing projects, and a laundromat and mote his food, affirming his skill and presence. reflective and active in engaging the arts with other business ventures focused on the occu- Cookie Love, a woman who made money by do- daily life. pations and talents of people who live in the ing people’s laundry, now works from an es- Often discussed as one of the most success- Third Ward, PRH has advocated for a resil- tablished laundromat called Cookie Love’s Wash ful of emergent “social art practices,” PRH con- ient neighborhood within Houston’s constant ’n’ Fold. And Assata Richards, a participant fronts the critique of social art’s function. In an development. in PRH’s Young Mothers Residential Program, article for the International Socialist Review, This April, Lowe spoke at the Solomon R. Gug- later earned a Ph.D., became a board member Ben Davis asks, “Is this strand of art a starting genheim Museum in New York, explaining his of the housing authority, and has run for the point for addressing social problems, or a dis- art practice and the ideas that surrounded the Houston City Council. During our visit, a man traction that keeps us from seeing their true creation and continuation of PRH. He discussed rode by on a bike with music blasting and lights extent?” One response is that such art is not the significance of givingvalue , appreciation, flashing. Lowe walked up and asked, “Do you necessarily about solving social problems. In- and dignity to ordinary people. Through his ex- live here?” And just like that, the music man stead of asking how art can solve a housing amples of how recognition of the ordinary acts became a newly befriended neighbor. crisis, a drug war, or a homeless problem, art- and practices of the Third Ward neighborhood Neither a studio practice nor a temporary ists should address a different question: how have established its value, Lowe suggested the social art installation, PRH is a cultural insti- can art validate and encourage people to de- importance of acknowledging that around the tution. By fostering a space that is inclusive fine themselves in the world? Art can be a ve- corner you may meet the next great chef or a of its geographic context and people, Lowe has hicle for empowerment outside the boundaries budding entrepreneur. Lowe was first drawn to created a kind of museum that is shaped and of bureaucratic malaise. PRH’s foray into CDC the shotgun houses of PRH for their ordinari- maintained by cultural practices. Art actions (Community Development Corporation) hous- ness but also, most importantly, because peo- here are idiosyncratic, unique to their locali- ing, for example, emerged from Lowe’s recog- ple couldn’t see their worth. Through his art ty, and relate directly to the place they occur nition of a need for local housing and the idea practice, Lowe has discovered that he can help within rather than to the place where they are that as an art institution, PRH could work with people living in and outside of the Third Ward housed (as is the case in a typical art museum a traditional institution like Rice University to see the value of this place. setting). In the Third Ward, “cultural practic- develop housing on PRH property. The addition At PRH, validation of neighborhood worth es” are those everyday actions valued as art, of new housing to the PRH site bolstered the manifests in many ways. One man in the Third whether they are culinary, sculptural, or cele- social nature of the art institution. But as the

28 spring Duplexes, 2004, Rice Building Workshop. Images Courtesy RBW.

CDC expanded its housing development to other A cultural art practice, unlike a social art connecting their patterns and practices to a sites not contiguous with PRH, Lowe decided to practice, is about time and investment. Many larger purpose, whether that is spiritual, com- separate the CDC from the PRH art institution, social art practices provide commentary on munal, or inspirational. A cultural practice can a move that sheds light on the limits of agen- social issues, but they engage with place as be articulated as a triad of active engagement cy in social art practices. Development becomes the setting for the art, not as the site of an in- with the everyday and mundane, with a com- less about art and more about business and fi- tended physical transformation. Take, for ex- munity’s lifeways, and with acts of commemo- nance. The “power of art” in this context is di- ample, Suzanne Lacy’s orchestrated works; ration. PRH fosters practices in its community minished when it becomes subservient to other they are powerful events that leave a lasting that reinforce this triad of allegiances. imperatives. memory—and lead to possible consequent ac- Gentrification is a real concern in places like tions—but they are somewhat ambiguous in the everyday and mundane the Third Ward, and artists are often a major terms of site transformation. In contrast, the The museum today is most commonly associat- harbinger of the arrival of new wealthier res- culture of Project Row Houses demands that ed with an institutional practice that is script- idents. PRH, however, demonstrates how art- engagement be constant and ongoing. Culture, ed and procedural, choosing which artists to ists can be part of what is already there. Art- with its semantic roots in the act of “cultivat- exhibit and validate, therefore elevating the ists didn’t discover row houses and Rick Lowe ing,” suggests an artist’s and institution’s en- worth of their work and name. Project Row didn’t discover the Third Ward. He instead saw gagement in the production of both art and life. Houses suggests a different museum model, one people living in a place and decided to become This engagement occurs daily through nurtur- where ordinary actions and events are valued part of their lives. ing and caring for a place and its people, and by both the spectator and the performer or art-

spring 29 ist. PRH’s cultural practice asserts that we are conversation of the guys hanging out at the denotes the type of daily patterns people prac- enriched spiritually through the everyday and park, the movement of artists in and out of tice in a place, depend on the scale of a neigh- mundane. Awareness of the everyday instills the shotguns, and the dance of the man on borhood, whether the place is urban or rural, in us a sense of passing time, our obligations, the corner blasting music from a boombox. By etc. As these everyday rituals grow ever more and the remarkable skills we activate for dai- not disrupting these everyday patterns, PRH indistinct within Houston’s constant transfor- ly routines. By recognizing the mundane, PRH embraces the mundane—not only in the accom- mations, lifeways here are increasingly domi- demonstrates how a museum structure can modation of cultural patterns and practices, nated by the city’s infrastructure. form a proscenium for daily life. Organization- but also in the making of art. In this context, Project Row Houses offers a ally, PRH and traditional art museums have a During our visit to Project Row Houses, different model for viewing the lifeways of the similar structure in that each has gallery spac- we saw two installations that were striking Third Ward. If lifeways are the types of dai- es where revolving art installations are dis- in their ability to showcase the mundane. The ly patterns people practice in a place, then a played. Programmatically, they also have fel- first, a storefront in one of the shotguns, re- cultural practice may suggest how a change in lowships, residencies, boards of directors, and sembled a familiar neighborhood corner store. a place’s environmental, physical, and spatial funding streams in common. Yet what makes We walked in the house to find a group of wom- morphology can impact these daily patterns. PRH extraordinary is its ordinariness. The row en eating their lunch. The artist-in-residence, Sometimes this change may be advocated for, houses themselves are art; people live and play Michelle Barnes, explained that she was set- encouraged, self-selected, and managed by the in these spaces. Art is intertwined with the ting up a space for women in the neighborhood community. But oftentimes change emanates condition of the neighborhood. Like John Big- to sell their art. Hand-sewn dolls, homemade from the outside, from the influence of others. gers’s painting Shotgun, Third Ward # 1, where cupcakes, earrings, and paper cranes were on In PRH’s case, the change managed and self-se- mothers wearing dresses stand in front of the display, eclectic and wide ranging in their ref- lected by Rick Lowe and his supporters serves Third Ward row houses and children are play- erences. The second installation, Lovie Olivia’s a pedagogical purpose. The initial transfor- ing in the street, PRH is as much about the idea Material-lies, was in another row house a few mation of the row houses, which deliberately of “place” as it is about its buildings or objects. doors down from the shop. It featured the find- ings of an “archeological dig” beneath the row In this sense, PRH’s physical, social, and cul- houses—old bottles, toothbrushes, and other tural manifestation and its actions are the an- household debris were displayed like precious tithesis of the normative museum structure. items uncovered from the neighborhood’s past. Neither an institutional campus nor a single At some point, the children around the street objectified building, PRH is a continuous pres- must have been in that crawl space first! Both ence that validates both its community and its installations evoked the particular familiari- neighborhood. People and art coexist, express- ty of home—a bricolage, ad hoc aesthetic born ing the realities of daily life. PRH allows one to from both practical and creative construction, imagine living in a different sort of art muse- which often brings unrelated things together. um. What if you could touch the art? Or have sculpture, painting, and performances in your In the late nineteenth century, Houston’s backyard? founders divided Houston into a ward system PRH encourages nuanced community par- having six political and geographic districts. ticipation, the opportunity to watch what is One morning over breakfast, Lowe explained happening every day. The English language the ward system to us. He took his pancake and allowed this change within the Third Ward to lacks a word or phrase to describe this expe- cut it into six triangles. “This is the basic idea,” originate from the condition of the neighbor- rience of engaging in everyday observations he said, showing us the pancake, now sliced hood itself, positioned PRH as an educational associated directly to actions or places, but the like a pizza pie. “Each segmented neighborhood institution, teaching us about a way of life and, Italian word guardare comes close, associat- pinwheels around the center.” This formal idea in turn, giving residents and visitors choices ing stillness and mindfulness with the act of of compact neighborhoods emanating from about their own lifeways. PRH opens up space watching. This sense of guardare in the Third a center point has since been disrupted by where creativity is a tangible part of the neigh- Ward—watching a neighbor doing laundry infringing freeways and speculative develop- borhood’s development. or mowing the lawn—introduces the concept ments that cut across the wards, eroding their Within a six-block area of the Third Ward, of watching everyday occurrences as the pattern. Along with the disappearance of the distinct patterns and practices have emerged means to curate an event without reframing wards’ formal boundaries has come a major from the densely programmed site of PRH. The the subject. Whereas an art museum curates change in Houstonians’ way of life. The orig- form of the row houses with their front porch- an exhibition by reframing art in a gallery inal wards have become a set of decentralized es welcomes the social cadence of the street. for a viewer, PRH validates watching as a cu- neighborhoods bounded by large-scale infra- Shared backyards and alleyways make an ratorial act and the practice of living as art. structure, a vast plane where patterns of life interstitial space, encouraging communication Understanding ordinariness is art. PRH’s role is are difficult to make sense of. and interpersonal relationships. As a visitor, facilitating observation of the ordinary for the Houston is a city of “a third kind,” as for- you are swept into a familiar milieu of home. neighborhood, its people, and its visitors. mer Rice School of Architecture Dean Lars Twenty years after PRH’s inception, the As we repeat our mundane acts day after Lerup poetically writes in One Million Acres and continued maintenance of the shotgun hous- day, they leave a cultural trace. These trac- No Zoning. In this “restless middle landscape,” es in the neighborhood, along with Rice Uni- es, like the stream of lights that mark evening a lack of shared space and a predominately versity’s interest in developing row houses as rush hour on the freeway, are ritualized in ev- motorized urban area lead to a particularly an affordable housing infill typology, suggests eryday life. At PRH, the traces are subtle: the ambiguous way of life. Lifeways, a term that that the “way of life” that PRH offers has been

30 spring Clockwise from top left: 2505 Holman porch, Sean Shim-Boyle installation (Round 38, 2013), Lovie Olivia’s Material-lies (Round 39, 2014), detail from Material-lies. Photos by Claudia Casberian and Alex Barber.

spring 31 Clockwise from top left: the late Cleveland Turner aka Flower Man; Turner and the late Eugene Howard aka Brother- in-Law; shared backyards at Project Row Houses; backyard of XS House. Photos courte- sy Rice Building Workshop.

32 spring embraced by those who are here (and want Lowe described in an interview for the Spring tory, the progression of history is from shotgun to be here). Supportive of mothers and their 2010 issue of BOMB Magazine as “articulated by house to art institution. What a great correction children, it encourages day-to-day exchanges a collection of people independent of the whim to build—from worker housing to a cultural es- between neighbors, the constant acknowledg- or taste of the powerful.” tablishment. At PRH, this correction of history ment of neighborhood history through creative occurs every time an installation goes up, every practices, and shared local knowledge through ______time there is a new resident, every time a sin- simple acts. Even new townhouse develop- gle mother gets a Ph.D. The ruin is primary to ments within a few blocks of the row houses renewal—and unlike Jackson’s normative view [T]here has to be that interval of neglect, do not seem out of place: PRH does not advo- of succession, from slum to gentrification, the cate for things around it to be homogeneous. there has to be discontinuity; it is reli- physical object of the row house makes this suc- It is more concerned with the life that emerges giously and artistically essential. That is cession cultural. People may choose to gentri- from a diverse grouping of people. PRH views fy the area or not; change in the neighborhood what I mean when I refer to the necessity its collection of buildings as precious, but it also may be managed or organic. Since renewal is maintains a strong separate identity, acknowl- for ruins: ruins provide the incentive for cultural, not everyone’s return to origins is the edging that other things can come in and add restoration, and for a return to origins.… same. PRH asserts that ruins matter to the fu- to the neighborhood’s story without distracting ture and that bringing back the ruins in our life the landscape has to be plundered and from its own goals and mission. This identity is is necessary for renewal. Art is presented and increasingly important as the Third Ward faces stripped before we can restore the natu- maintained through the lens of memory! the challenges of gentrification; PRH’s success ral ecosystem; the neighborhood has to The Third Ward is the muse for PRH; it is has attracted a new gentry. Lacking a master the inspiration for the art—it is the inspiration be a slum before we can rediscover it and plan for neighborhood development, PRH’s open for the artist. By taking this place as its muse, and incremental approach instead is shaping gentrify it. That is how we reproduce the a different type of museum has developed, one the dynamics of the neighborhood. PRH plays a cosmic scheme and correct history. where nothing is collected, but everything is powerful role, and its potency lies in its ability curated—people’s lives, experiences, and sto- – j.b. jackson, the necessity for ruins to be continuously present—not to calcify into ries shape the common knowledge of the Third ruins or grow static. This allows an evolving Ward. The irony of this approach is that art- community stage to serve as a conduit between commemoration ists have always had muses and many have also existing residents and new populations moving When Project Row Houses began, the 22 run- been inspired by place—landscapes, countries, into the Third Ward. With attention from the down shotgun houses that Lowe and his group cities, and neighborhoods like Black Mountain, international art world and New York Times restored and painted white were in a neglected South Africa, South America, Paris, Los Angeles, readership, PRH draws a wide range of visi- area, struggling with the depredation of drugs Amsterdam, and Harlem. For PRH, perhaps, the tors, putting it in the curious position of bring- and prostitution. For that reason, the Third muse is home—the neighborhood that returns ing together a mix of people who might not oth- Ward and these row houses spring to mind us to a new origin, a corrected history seen erwise find themselves in the Third Ward. when reading J.B. Jackson’s thoughts about the through the lens of ordinary people’s lives. As Emancipation Park, a few blocks from Proj- return to origins and the need for ruins. Res- a cultural art practice, PRH demonstrates that ect Row Houses, was Houston’s first public toration of a “ruin” brings a remote past sud- by placing value on the everyday and mundane, park. It began with 10 acres of land, bought denly into the present, where it becomes real. on a community’s lifeways, and on the commem- by a group of former slaves to celebrate June- The shotgun house has undergone a well-docu- oration of people and place, art becomes a sig- teenth, a date that marks when Texas slaves mented transformation by John Michael Vlach nificant framework, able to shape and improve found out that they were free. As reported by and others from its origins in West Africa to daily life. Lowe’s practice asserts that commu- Lisa Gray in the Houston Chronicle, now a $33 the African diaspora’s construction of similar nity change is inevitable, but that alternative million renovation plan is underway to make dwellings in the United States. This building possibilities exist within this change to our the park a “national landmark.” As development type appeared on rural and urban sites, homes neighborhoods and cities. A cultural art practice interest moves into the Third Ward, future con- to slaves and indentured servants. These hous- engages history while creating a vibrant con- struction plans like this dot the neighborhood. es were small, cramped, and simply construct- text for the future within the present condition Yet, Lowe holds to his belief in the value of or- ed. The people occupying them did not herald of a place. This future context is one where the dinary, everyday experiences and maintains the houses as special abodes—they were akin detritus of the past is not swept clean, but rath- that this change too can exist alongside PRH. It to the one-room cabin. Bringing back the shot- er nurtured through its decay and resurrected just means that another layer of time and cul- gun house today recalls its origins, its epoch, in the constant dynamic of everyday life. Resi- ture will emerge and shape the neighborhood and its cultural setting, and this is what is re- dents old and new contribute to these everyday lifeway. By working with, rather than against, membered, not the wooden boards and slates experiences; new developments are always in developments like Emancipation Park, PRH is or the narrowness of the building. Now the conversation with the past. PRH’s legacy, then, part of the changes in its own neighborhood. houses represent the stories of the people that will only continue to grow and change as it is Lowe says that he is committed to focusing on once lived in them and why. shaped by the passing of time, recognizing the PRH’s mission, and he regards what is out of By preserving and restoring the physical life of the Third Ward as art itself. n PRH’s control as a matter of negotiating forces. row house, Lowe and PRH commemorate how In many ways, PRH has become an institutional people have lived in Houston over the past 150 nucleus for the Third Ward, from which its val- years without having to post signage, give ue in people and their histories emanate. The tours, or write narratives. Lowe’s work makes power of Lowe’s cultural practice comes from a bold statement about renewal. If his practice its advocacy for cultural establishments that reproduces the cosmic scheme and corrects his-

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