Lucia's writing has appeared in THE Magazine and People Newspapers, and her art has shown at Craighead Green, 500X, and Zephyr Gallery in Los Angeles. A recovering prop designer, she studied painting at the University of Dallas. Married to the most excellent Peter Simek, they raise basil plants, fire ants, and the jubilant Eva and Felicity in Oak Cliff.
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The Obama Art Fund
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Feature 1, Ideas, Visual Art on 30 November 2009
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Art I’d Buy with my First-Time Homeowner’s Tax Credit

Rees Opens First Show at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 30 October 2009
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If you’ve read her war cries and art market diagnostics on Glasstire, you’ll know why Christina Rees is reverently referred to between us on Renegade Bus as “The Scariest Woman in the Dallas Arts” and called by a gallerist colleague of hers as “Our Dave Hickey.” Tonight, this petite and powerfully frank art warrior-doctor launches her first show as curator of Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, in a group show called Death of a Propane Saleman (a title pulled from an episode of Texas-set King of the Hill) which will delve into the complex identities and dicotimies with which Texas artists grapple. Rees describes Texas as “polite and aggressive, lacking in urbanness with a desire to duck the searing sunlight; it’s part of the Bible Belt, it’s famous for doing things in its own time and it often seems unrattled by world events, and of course it’s known for stetsons, big hair, and plastic surgery. This, when viewed from afar, can appear to be an unnatural environment for contemporary art.” Full release after the jump.

Weaving Goods With Conscience
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Fashion on 8 October 2009
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From the hills of Guatemala via the backstreets of the Bronx, Goods of Conscience founder Father Andrew O’Connor has taken his style and vision to the heights of the fashion world. Today and tomorrow he brings his fashion line to Stanley Korshak in Dallas.

My Father The Shoe Shine Boy
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Feature 2, Lives, Visual Art on 29 September 2009
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I don’t know if it was his idea or what, but I am very clear about the fact that he would catch a ride with the milkman on his horse driven cart at 4 or 4:30 in the morning and would get dropped off at the train station or at State and Madison parked near where one of the busy L’s were, and he would shine shoes for three hours before he went to school every morning.

A Process in Pieces
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Feature 2, Reviews, Visual Art on 18 September 2009
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Art Review
New work by Aqsa Shakil and Lesli Robertson at 500X Gallery.

Strange Beast
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Feature 1, Reviews, Visual Art on 14 September 2009
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Art Review
Houstonian Howard Sherman’s bright, chaotic work in a show called Bloodthirsty Animal on Two Legs at Pan American Art Projects is, like the weather outside, ravaging.

Masked Isolation
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Reviews, Visual Art on 23 July 2009
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Art Review
Similarities emerge in Viewfinder: New Images by Texas Artists, at the Dallas Contemporary, and Launch, a MFA student show at CADD Art Lab. These pictures work like portraiture, in which photography has its deepest roots, telling the story of an age (like every other) at odds with its disparate identities.

Ticket Giveaway: Mark Bradford at the DMA
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Culture Chatter on 21 July 2009
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Ladies and gents: we’d like to announce our first ticket giveaway. Mark Bradford, whose work is included inPrivate Universes at the DMA (you can read about it here), will be giving an artist talk at the museum this Thursday, July 23 at 7 p.m. We have three pairs of tickets to give away to the first readers to email editor@renegadebusdallas.com with the subject “Private Universes.”
So hop to it. More about Bradford and the artist talk after the jump.

Angular Dimension
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Art, Feature 2, Reviews, Visual Art on 7 July 2009
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Art Review
Polly Lanning Sparrow and Leslie Wilkes at the Barry Whistler Gallery

A Fledgling City Captured in Forgotten Images
By Lucia Simek
Posted in Lives on 26 June 2009
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It’s an odd feeling, an eerily lovable one, to look at people, long dead, on the steps of houses I pass by everyday. Odder still, is seeing these neighborhoods pictured when they were still laced with sawdust, when columns sat perfectly level, and everyone congregated on shady porches to keep cool; when roads were gravel, cars had virtual bike wheels, and everything seemed dusty and hot.