"Lo-Fi No-Brow Folk Show: New Works"

Glen Gips and Jon Read use simple methods to create complex compositions for the "Lo-Fi No-Brow Folk Show: New Works." "As the name suggests, we are pairing artists who have an outsider art aesthetic, without being actual folk artists themselves," says ArtStorm's Chris Cascio in an e-mail. "Both artists are educated and well shown, so calling them 'folk artists' wouldn't really do." Many of Glen Gips's pieces are sprinkled with multicolored spirals. Some are drawn on cardboard and glued on top of patterns of colorful horizontal and vertical lines. Others twist and turn to form more recognizable objects, like the face of a monkey bursting out of jungle foliage or silly human faces in an abstract doodle-meets-Picasso scene.

Read - whom local music fans might know as the one man behind the experimental rock outfit The Wiggins - has a cartoon, coloring-book style that makes for rather playful works. "His paintings use a fantasy world and a cast of humorous characters to create ridiculous scenes," says Cascio. In one, a sharp-toothed, pink whale with a unicorn horn has come ashore to scare a pair of warrior-boys and their dog as they walk through what appears to be a miniature golf course. "We feel that some of the best art is anything but serious (at least on the surface)," says Cascio.

Noon to 7 p.m. Saturdays, and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays, through October 18. 4828 Caroline. For information, call 713-568-8174 or visit www.artstormhouston.com. Free.
Saturdays, Sundays. Starts: Sept. 20. Continues through Oct. 18, 2008