Philadelphia Weekly
May 11-17, 2005

by Roberta Fallon


Jim Houser's new installation "babel" poured out of him with a confidence typical of the visionary. As with past installations by the self-taught artist, words and imagery cascade over the show like a brook kissing everything in its path.

Houser's work has always had music-sung mostly in a minor key-with ominous lurkers, things running amok, germs, ghosts and old bones. "babel" is like a symphony, progressing from theme to counter-theme with crescendo and diminuendo-and moments of quietude in between.

Houser is a young artist but an old soul. His flat, colorful imagery of animals, big-headed men and small-headed ogres is teen-sketchbook savvy. It's his words that separate him from the pack.

Houser's words are simple, yet imbued with an old-fashioned patois that's like channeling your grandmother. Even the cadence here is otherworldly, like ghosts of Poe talking in your mind.

"Hush" is a word that's penciled here and there on the walls in the installation. "How quiet it is here! We should sit for a spell," is a phrase in one painting. The language transports you to the realm of German romantic paintings by Caspar David Friedrich with couples gazing at the moon.

You'll never find words like "whatever," "dude" or "wow" in Houser's works. They may tumble out of his mouth when he speaks, but when the artist pans for gold to make his art, he's a fantastic editor. Today's catchwords fall out in favor of choicer nuggets.

In his fifth solo exhibit at Spector and his first since the death of his artist wife Rebecca Westcott in a roadside accident last October, Houser presents a universe that's quieter than in previous shows. The colors hover in the pastel registers of pink and green punctuated by browns, grays, blues and the occasional punch of orange.

The artist's high energy and forward momentum are tempered by objects and motifs that quote from Westcott's paintings. A few small houseplants sit on shelves, and a simple stalk-and-leaf pattern that evokes Jack and the beanstalk recurs everywhere. The plant kingdom, its roots deep and stable, creates an anchor that seems new.

There's a strong domestic element in "babel" that's also new. "This place is ours," says one painting that evokes an embroidered slogan above the hearth. Houser built a freestanding archway as part of the installation, a foray into sculpture that, like everything else here, seems a perfect touch. The arch, which has tree-branch elements at the top, evokes a bower as much as a doorway-becoming shelter as well as passageway.

I was thinking about Houser's work in relation to that other visionary artist Matthew Ritchie, whose "Proposition Player" is at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Ritchie's universe, like Houser's, includes sculptural elements and paintings, and envelops the viewer in its world.

But Ritchie aspires to physics and game theory, and his universe is a rather impersonal-albeit beautiful-spectacle. Houser's universe, rooted in earth science with houseplants and ocean waves, is familiar and accessible without the program notes.

Houser doesn't stand behind a curtain. He's revealed on the walls in work that's a personal outpouring. The artist's work keeps getting better, its message clearer. Life is precious, energy is important, and words, when used carefully, can be the most beautiful part of the art you make.


Philadelphia City Paper
April 21-28, 2005


by Brian Howard

For painter Jim Houser, preparing for his upcoming solo show was like starting over. "My hands shook a lot, and I didn't feel comfortable at first because I hadn't done it in so long," explains Houser, taking a break from installing "Babel" at Bainbridge Street's Spector Gallery, about ending something of a self-imposed painting hiatus.

Before starting to paint for this show in January, Houser's paintbrush had been mostly inactive since last summer after a grueling stretch of shows. By October, Houser's wife, fellow painter Rebecca Westcott, had become worried about his painting block. As she was preparing to visit her parents in Nantucket, Mass., Houser had finally begun to paint again. "Even if she was worried," he remembers, "she didn't leave worried."

Westcott, who'd just been awarded a Pew Fellowship, was killed Oct. 12 in a tragic roadside accident at age 28 on her way home from Nantucket. For Houser, painting again went on the back burner. After a few months of trying to pull his life together, Houser reapplied himself to his craft.

"The first painting I did was a Christmas painting for a friend of mine," recalls Houser, who for the first time in his life finds himself painting during the day in natural light. "It was just a small panel that said "Hold Fast' on it," a phrase which, to Houser, means more or less "keep it together."

The painting won't be in the show, but "Hold Fast" is significant; Houser's work culls words and iconography to create cryptic charts of thoughts and ideas. Recurring images (such as birds, plants, the Tower of Babel) and text ("hush," "ghost," "depths") become imbued with meaning. While Houser is hesitant to discuss those meanings, he's admits it's hard for him "to separate what I make from who I am."

Which is what made "Babel" such a difficult task. "I want it to be a pretty thing, and a happy thing," he admits, explaining that there's much of Westcott's work that's seeped into his own. "But there's a lot of elements that are coming out, shit that I'm dealing with, that might not necessarily be happy."

In one austere painting, three birds on a black canvas converse. A green bird says: "It's so good to see you. You were gone a long time. It's been forever since we were together."

A pink bird replies: "I am the same person I have always been, but I have been to countless joyful and terrible places. Come sit. It will be good to talk."

In another, Houser renders his trademark busy symbolism in blue-and-brown duochrome, leaving half the brown canvas uncharacteristically empty.

Houser's only fear in assembling this show, which will be the launch party for a career-retrospective book also called Babel (Gingko Press), was upsetting people. "But the more I thought about it, y'know, it's part of it. I can't pretend. I can't hold stuff in that wants to come out."

Inasmuch as "Babel" will showcase Houser's recent work, it will also celebrate Westcott. Spector was the site of Westcott's first solo show in September. Along with the obvious influence of Westcott on his work — "There's leaves and vines that are all over the place, those are hers" — "Babel" will also include a collection of Westcott's paintings.

Houser feels it's his duty to preserve Westcott's spirit in his life and in his work. "This is what I feel like she'd want me doing," he says. "It's my job selling paintings … but in this case, I don't really care. If nothing sold, that wouldn't be what I judge this show on."


The Philadelphia Inquirer
May 27, 2005


By Edward J. Sozanski

Jim Houser's best paintings are dense mosaics of visual and verbal clues to his thoughts, observations, experiences and concerns. He combines words, images and objects so effortlessly that they evoke a strong sense of his personality without actually describing it.

Houser's exceptional facility for synthesis characterizes his latest exhibition at the Spector Gallery. He has transformed the gallery into a unitary environment in which many individual elements become subsumed within a harmonious matrix.

The artist has even included music, which he composed, as part of the presentation, which is called "Babel." Even the gallery furniture and a black radiator fit into the scene comfortably.

"Babel" is enchanting, not least because of its unusual but soothing palette of various cool greens, brown, black and terra-cotta. Yet as much as I admired it, I couldn't get very far below its surface appeal.

The most useful clues are painted words such as fever, daemons, voids, germs and force field, but they don't help enough. Houser seems to be inspired by science and nature to some degree, but ultimately his work remains cognitively enigmatic.