“T. Smith: The Waiting Room”

Artist T. Smith had a little trouble with the models that appear in the Waiting Room series. “Some days they just wouldn’t cooperate,” the artist, recently named a Houston Press 100 Creatives, says. “At first I called them ‘the girls,’ but when they started being difficult, I changed that to ‘the bitches.’ They could be real bitches, too.” Since Smith’s models were mannequins, we’re not sure how literally to take that statement. Come to think of it, Smith worked with photographs of mannequins; that really calls into question the level of bitchiness the models displayed.

The 15 mannequins are seen in the 11 paintings that make up the one-night exhibit “T. Smith: The Waiting Room.” Painted in various shades of blue and silver against a red background, the female figures are seen unsmiling, without clothes or hair. Smith says that while there’s no definite narrative for the series, there is a sense of foreboding to the images. “They’re bald, they’re not smiling, they’re all bunched up together and they’re naked. You know something is going on there, even if you don’t know quite what.”

7 to 10 p.m. May 9. JoMar Visions, Hardy & Nance Studios, 902 Hardy. For information, visit tsmithartist.com. Free.

Fri., May 9, 7 p.m., 2014