This is the final part in a series of dispatches from James Michael Starr’s trek across Texas delivering art. Click for part 1, part 2, and part 3

I’m happy as a clam to be represented by two art galleries in Texas, Conduit Gallery in Dallas and Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston. While each is among the most respected in its city, their owner/directors could hardly be more different, and I’ve come up with a way to describe to my friends the contrast: Nancy Whitenack at Conduit Gallery is my Mom, and Geri Hooks at Hooks-Epstein is my Dad.

Nancy is gentle, affirming and would die before saying anything that might hurt my feelings. Geri kicks butt and takes names.

Dream Girl (2009) by James Michael Starr Photo: Graham Hobart

Of course, I need both in my life, but it helps explain why I find myself driving to Houston in a fourth attempt to make Geri happy. Saturday, September 12, Hooks-Epstein will open a group show of gallery artists entitled Master Works, celebrating a remarkable forty years in Houston. And I’m finally delivering my contribution, the collage-covered bust of a lady, Dream Girl.

All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t know the title of the show until now. That’s major choke material right there, and I was having enough trouble already.

I’d started showing things to Geri five months ago, and so far she’s turned down, in this order, 1) the comet-like croquet ball with gilded tail, 2) the basketball-trophy people flying over World War I-decimated Europe and 3) the steel pipe collaged with rotogravure skylines. But she turned them down not in an insensitive way. Each time, she explained in that distinctive alto, “James Michael. I don’t not like it. But this is not your best work. I want your best work. Something spectacular.”

And I’d think, gee that was a rejection. But how can you feel rejection from someone who believes you have in you “something spectacular?” Geri’s really got a way with that velvet hammer.

But finally I’ve made her happy. I guess I got spectacular. We’ve left her with Dream Girl, my deliveries are done and we have a few hours to kill here amidst the highest concentration of great modern and contemporary art between L.A. and Chicago.

Only I can’t help meditating on contrasts – no longer the differences between Nancy and Geri, but between great art and not so great art; and between cities that get art and cities that kinda don’t; in other words, between Houston and, in some ways, Dallas.

So as we view a show of drawings by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen at the Menil Collection, I think about DART’s Deep Ellum Gateway project, Million-Dollar Gumby, and how there’s more to whimsy and overcoming what the Menil calls “the excessive solemnity and inert character of much public sculpture” than just erecting a 4-story cartoon robot.

And as we see No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston at the Contemporary Arts Museum, I think about the tremendous difference it makes when a city understands the role its own artistic community plays in cultural vitality; and how a wonderful arts district by itself might only be the golden egg.

But all is not lost. Marvelous things are certainly underway, and Dallas may indeed be working on something spectacular.