Kat's Meow
Go ahead. Click on the thumbnails. And make sure someone happens to be walking by when you do it. It'll make you look cool.
Vonetta Jenkins is a body artist. She decorates bodies, faces, and hair--costumes mostly made of paint--and lately has been putting it all on display in a series of stage productions that she describes as "interactive, collaborative musicals" at Fitzgerald's in downtown Houston. Fitzgerald's is a rough-around-the-edges former punk palace that's still got an edge and is still a staple of the Houston music scene. So I imagine Vonetta's racy works fit right in.
Vonetta told me she originally imagined these productions would take place in sterile, white-walled galleries. She's a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she very much considers the performances art pieces. But instead the works have ended up on the seamier side of town, mixing with the hoi poloi of Houston's various night time party scenes. This, she confesses, gives them an energy and a spontaneity that they never could have had anywhere else.
Her most recent show, Kitty Kat in Paris, is a follow up to the original Kitty Kat show and features our heroine leaving the jungle for the City of Lights. Vonetta cites the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and the film Moulin Rouge as heavy influences in her vision of decadence and sensual overdrive. Kitty Kat in Paris goes on stage this Sunday evening, September 10.
8 September 2006