Skyline Art Services: Art in Public Facilities Like Hospitals

Friday night at an gallery artist reception, the gallery owner was
happy to reckon, “These are works we probably never could sell.” In
another gallery, his claim would have been startling departure from
professional decorum. At Skyline Art Services, Charles White was
explaining the peculiar strength of the show, and its potential to
support young and emerging artists in Houston.

The artists were a collective called Montrose Art Society, who banded together just over a year ago to show their works about once a month at venues that will have them. They are a remarkably international group, with some members coming from Brazil,
Pakistan, El Salvador, but the group is committed to making art in Houston, Edú Portillo, whose works include a video installation and a colossal ragdoll creature slumped over in the corner, says, “We’re an international group, but that’s just like Houston. It’s such a diverse community.”

Community is also important to White, a co-principal at
Skyline Art Services. He describes the art show as a sort of
community service, modest as it may seem, to provide a space and drum
up some attention for artists in Houston that Skyline would not in
their ordinary business get a chance to meet.

Skyline is one of the largest art consulting companies in the
country, placing works by hundreds of artists a year in public
facilities, primarily hospitals and clinics. Its gallery on Old Katy
Road usually serves as a functional showcase of works by members of a
regular ensemble of artists whose works fit into their design
programs. Hospital art is famous for being obtuse and tawdry, but
Skyline hopes to improve matters by thinking a bit more critically
about what a client really needs.

Skyline hosts a spring and a fall series in their gallery, about one
show a month, each show with a new group of artists.

Montrose Art Society represents a wide range of styles and skills.
Nico Whittaker’s series of photographs of Houston skylines and
landmarks, in electrical colors, appeals to our civic sensibilities
without demanding very much in return. Michael Abromowitz covers his
canvases alternately in vivid washes of color as background to rough
geometric figures drawn from a dream of pre-Columbia Mexico or some
voodoo ritual. Raul Gonzalez’s works are easily the most variable in
style, subject, and realization. His best works are the mixed
painting and drawing on canvas. One of these depicts a car-bound
vision of roadside construction, traffic signals, and a tractor-
trailer, bound in overlapping and blocks of yellow and rose, and
incorporating a traffic ticket into the painted surface.