Do something real about hunger at the 8th Annual Empty Bowls Houston. For a mere $25, you get a simple lunch and your choice of bowls created by local artisans, with proceeds benefiting the Houston Food Bank. More than 1,200 handcrafted bowls were donated last year, and this year the turnout is... More >>

Vampirism, hard time, booze and stress relief through random gunfire: Unknown Hinson is the most rock 'n' roll cat to ever dismiss the genre as something "a damn 15-year-old punk can do." But thanks to his darkly funny, politically incorrect songs and blazing rockabilly riffs, Hinson is gaining... More >>

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, nominated for 11 Tony awards and winner of three — best score, orchestration and leading actress — the rock musical Next to Normal arrives at Stages Repertory Theatre, telling what its director Melissa Anderson calls “a story about finding... More >>

She’s already made a name for herself as an award-winning actor, and now with Catastrophic Theatre’s world premiere of American Falls, Miki Johnson adds playwright to her résumé. American Falls begins with the line “Let me tell you a story,” and each of the... More >>

There are lots of firsts in Houston Ballet’s spring repertory program, Made in America. There’s the company premiere of Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes by Mark Morris. There’s a reprise of Theme and Variations by George Balanchine, one of the first works by the choreographer... More >>

It’s a small collection of new works that make up “STUCK UP,” the exhibit that, as its tag line indicates, is a poster show for the poster movie that’s about the poster scene, in Houston. The film in question is Alex Luster’s Stick ’Em Up!, now available on... More >>

''Dirk Rathke: Endearing the Line'' is the third solo exhibit for the Berlin-based artist at Gallery Sonja Roesch. Rathke works in what Roesch calls the geometric-abstract tradition. Translation: He focuses on the relationship between line, space and movement, often with startling results.... More >>

It’s disillusioning for Eliza when she realizes the glass ceiling is still firmly in place at the architectural firm where she works. “Why is it still like this?” she groans. Playwright and Pulitzer Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck’s black comedy What We’re Up Against,... More >>

The bright and witty Art garnered just about every theater award there is to…uh, garn when it opened on Broadway in 1998. Written by Yasmina Reza, the playwright behind God of Carnage and Unexpected Man, Art gleams and sparkles, and makes you laugh out loud. This production by Texas... More >>

Larry Shue’s The Foreigner is full of mild-mannered sweetness. The story takes place in a fishing lodge in rural Georgia. A very shy guy named Charlie has come to visit a friend, but the friend has to leave for a few days for business. Charlie is undone at the idea of having to talk to... More >>

Photographer Scott Frances deals in what he calls architectural porn. That is, photographs of beautiful homes set in world-class locations with stunning views, or commercial buildings, such as museums or performance halls, that are as much works of art as what they contain. The images seen in... More >>

You can say that Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi focuses on the negative — negative space, that is. His new installation, “Yasuaki Onishi: reverse of volume RG,” commissioned by the Rice University Art Gallery, is the latest addition to his reverse of volume series. Onishi... More >>

Dinosaur. Few other words conjure up images of of such strength and power. Thousands of years ago, the huge monsters didn’t just walk the Earth, they ruled it. Now, they’re making a repeat appearance in the Museum District at “Dinosaurs! at the Houston Zoo presented by... More >>

Though he’s best known for his oil paintings including portraiture, historical scenes and the occasional Jesus, 17th-century Dutch painting master Rembrandt van Rijn also worked in chalk and ink. It’s those works that will be on view in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibit... More >>

All of the artists represented in ''Modern and Contemporary Masterworks from Malba - Fundación Costantini'' are famous in Latin America, but some of them aren’t very well known here in the States. ''Modern and Contemporary'' intends to change that. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are... More >>

The Rockerfeller family is associated not only with extreme wealth, but also with some of the finest art collections in America — in the case of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III, an especially impressive collection of traditional Asian works. The Houston exhibition “Treasures of... More >>

Out of a Third Ward blues guitar school that has now graduated to the great beyond Albert Collins, Johnny Clyde Copeland, Johnny Guitar Watson and Joe Guitar Hughes, Little Joe Washington is the last man standing. And he’s hardly standing still: He’s also pedaling his Schwinn from... More >>

The exhibit “Egyptomania,” currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, focuses not on the ancient Egyptian artifacts that have long fascinated us, but instead on the way those artifacts influenced Western culture, especially design, architecture and literature. The perfect... More >>

Calling a mélange of Gulf Coast musical styles a “gumbo” is a cliché, so we’ll call what Nick Gaitan whips up for his Umbrella Man project a “caldo” instead. It’s a tasty H-Town stew, equal parts blues, Tejano, swamp pop, rockabilly, ska,... More >>

Phil Anselmo is a busy man. Besides remaining one of the most iconic voices in metal, he's running his own imprint, Housecore Records, and working hands-on, one-on-one with Housecore bands such as Haarp and Warbeast. “I like to work with my guys and see their vision through," Anselmo... More >>

On the their recent Snake People LP, Balaclavas front-loaded everything we loved about 2010's Roman Holiday and their two previous releases, Inferno and a self-titled EP, and went straight ahead into a sort of dance-oriented, Angelo Badalamenti-influenced direction they had only hinted at the... More >>

Austin's Dialtone Records has already done right by Houston blues, releasing albums by Little Joe Washington and the late Earl Gilliam as well as the Texas Southside Kings CD, but the pairing of Jewel Brown and Milton Hopkins deserves some attention on more than just a local level. Both Brown... More >>

Atlanta's Gucci Mane is proof that a certain kind of mindlessness—not having much to say about life as people live it, for instance—can free other parts of the brain for genius. In fact, you get the sense from his songs' brightly painted gangster hedonism that anything... More >>

Band of Heathens combines twangy, raspy vocals with authentic harmonies, all set above easy-listening country-rock melodies. Their repertoire is varied, albeit usually straddling the line between blues and Southern rock. A full three members of the band are songwriters, which has led to the... More >>

It's probably just a coincidence that St. Vitus formed the same year Ozzy Osbourne parted ways with Black Sabbath. Nonetheless, this Los Angeles outfit was central to evolving Sabbath's classic sound and dynamics into the kind of metal that was more concerned with genuine heaviness and mood... More >>