Unnamed Skiff Project, Zach Moser

I’ve got nautical kitsch and art all mixed up in my head. As the daughter of a boat builder and an artist, I have a Pavlovian response to anything that combines art and boats. I grew up in a house that would have suited Captain Ahab just fine– stuffed marlins, whale bones, ships’ wheels, rope art, portholes, buoys, crab pots, fish lures, oil paintings of ships in storms, all that. Enter the Grover family residence and immediately feel like an extra in Mutiny on the Bounty. This posting has been a long time coming, but boat artists, you’re about to get your due. Look for future posts on Bas Jan Ader, Marie Lorentz, Roy Fridge, Swoon, Open_Sailing, Waterpod, and others. Suggestions welcome, mateys.

Art & Boats, Part 1: An interview with Houston (boat) artist Zach Moser

Zach Moser is a co-founder of Workshop Houston, an innovative art/education/community center based in Houston’s Third Ward. Moser recently conducted a boatbuilding workshop inside the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston as part of the exhibition, No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston. The project (conceived with Benjy Mason) was titled “Yacht Shop,” and invited the public to collaboratively build a boat over six months. Yacht Shop concluded with the ceremonious hull turning and launching of the vessel (by spontaneous night parade) down Montrose Boulevard. This was all primed with sea shanties and home brewed braggot, a kind of malt and honey beer. (You can imagine what the drivers on Montrose thought of this land-locked endeavor.) Moser, a graduate of Oberlin, has a keen interest in collaboration via unlikely platforms – “civic events, low income neighborhoods, dying industries.” And this was not Moser’s first foray into maritime collectivity; his earlier nautical-theme works include “The Shrimp Boat Project” (with Eric Leshinsky), “Voyages to the Unknown,” and the “Untitled Skiff Project.” Read the interview with Zach Moser on Glasstire.com.