Package 1
“Charros at Fiestas Patrias,” 2007, 16 x 50.5”, framed digital print
Valued at $1750

It’s Fiestas Patrias, and this is a private performance, the behind-the-scenes moment that attests the dynamic and deeply personal bonds of family and community, the vitality of traditional charro culture.

This package includes Boots, Bites, and a Bygone Era, an evening for 8 with wine and appetizers to view one of the most interesting private collections in Austin.  Our host will present his extensive personal collection of 19th C American folk art and custom-made cowboy boots crafted by some of the finest bootmakers in Texas and antique collectables using boot imagery.

About the artist: Chuy Benitez, a rising star of documentary photography, has exhibited throughout Texas including a 2008 show at Texas Folklife, “Pasatiempos de la Frontera,” and group shows at the Austin Museum of Art and Fotofest.  He will be part of an upcoming group show on young documentary photographers at the Aperture Foundation in NYC. Benitez is a native of El Paso and completed an MFA in Photography and Digital Media at University of Houston, where he also was granted an Honors Fellowship in Mexican American Studies. 




Package 2
“Rufino Loya and Casa de Azúcar, El Paso,” 2009, Chuy Benitez, 2 framed giclee prints, each approximately 8 x 24”
Valued at $1200

Rufino Loya has lived in El Paso since 1963. His entire yard and the exterior of his home are covered in delicately crafted and painted concrete figures and tin-worked designs. He has spent many hundreds of hours creating altars to the Sagrado Corazón de Jesus, to the Virgen de Guadalupe, and a monument dedicated to the victims of 9/11.



Package 3
“Calamity Jane,” date unknown, Giclee print, framed 20” X 16”
  Valued at $1300

A spray of red roses curves across one shoulder; “American Beauty of Rodeo” scrolls across the other, and the sinuous tattoo of a rearing black horse, ridden by a cowboy hunkered close to the animal’s body as if they were one, follows the curve of a woman’s spine and fills her back. The horse’s tail flows across the woman’s buttocks, as if she and the beautiful animal too were one.

The “Calamity Jane” package includes Experience Mañana at El Cosmico.  Included in this package is a three-night stay at El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas.  El Cosmico is the latest lodging concept from Liz Lambert, the creative force behind the renowned Hotel San Jose and Hotel Saint Cecilia in Austin, as well as the city's landmark coffee houses Jo's on South Congress and Downtown. El Cosmico extends Lambert's vision westward to Marfa. "… part vintage trailer, yurt and teepee hotel and campground, part creative lab, greenhouse and amphitheatre - a community space that fosters and agitates artistic and intellectual exchange." Your stay includes three nights in any of El Cosmico's perfectly appointed vintage 1950s trailers, sleeping up to three people.

About the artist: Photographer, filmmaker, folklorist, Alan Govenar is the author of twenty books, including the recent Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, hailed by Austin Chronicle’s Margaret Moser as “the finest, most comprehensive roundup [on Texas blues] yet.”   With artist Don Ed Hardy, Govenar co-authored Ed Hardy: Beyond Skin and Ed Hardy: Art for Life—for which he created complex, evocative images of Hardy’s internationally acclaimed tattoo art.  Nowhere is the multidimensionality that characterizes Govenar’s work—found in countless national and international collections—more evident than in his astonishing photograph “Calamity Jane.” 


Package 4     
“La Voz de la Frontera,” fine art print #16/60, 2008, 21 x 26”, Luis Jimenez, stamped “Estate of Luis Jimenez,” at Flatbed Press where Jimenez signed off on the artist’s proof. Framed.
Valued at $2500

Jiménez’s electric image renders music visual. A radio tower, rising from a border of hills strung with towers, emits lightning-bolts proclaiming “LA VOZ DE LA FRONTERA”  and showers radio waves bearing the voices of singers, sellers and sermonizers….At the base of the tower is the head of Wolfman Jack, his tongue curled mid-exclamation.  This is an image you have to hear.

About the artist: Native Texan Luis Jiménez’s provocative, often controversial artworks appear in numerous museums and public spaces, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Airport, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and elsewhere throughout the country.  Born in El Paso in 1940, Jiménez grew up listening to “Wolfman Jack” and the border blaster stations. From his first-hand experience, he created a limited-edition, black-on-white stone lithograph print especially for Texas Folklife’s Border Radio series. He signed the proof, but never had the opportunity to sign the 60 finished prints before he died in a tragic accident at his studio in Hondo, N.M. in 2006. 

Package 5 
“High Water,” 2003, signed, colored pencil and pastel on paper, 53 x 79” framed in Plexiglas    
Valued at $3700 (including shipping costs)

 “High Water,” a capacious drawing, is especially timely and timeless in its depiction of a flooded Texas landscape.  While this exquisite work is distinctly Marshall’s and the landscape, Texan, there’s something reminiscent of Hieronymous Bosch here—surrealistic, socially aware, and evocative…

About the artist: Award-winning artist Mona Marshall is known for her startling, haunting drawings and photographs, recently seen in solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Galveston and other Texas cities. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, residencies and awards.  Her latest work portrays marginal land, land that is neither wild nor developed, but shaped by forces both human and natural.