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Church: Alright we're ready to get started back. Our first presenter after the break
is Marilyn Oshman. Marilyn's father opened Oshman's Sporting Goods in the 1930's, and
she herself was closely involved in the business but art has been her real passion. Since the
early 70's she's been involved in art and she's been one of the staunch supporters of
the Orange Show Center for Visionary Arts. We're going to welcome Marilyn today to talk
about, she's the first of three presenters that are going to talk about the Orange Show
in Houston. Marilyn.
Oshman: Well, good morning everybody. I do not have a note, and I am not sure what our
group is going to flash on the screen but I hope it's the Orange Show. We, I, came today
because I was the founder for the Orange Show Foundation for Visionary Arts, and I'm really
excited to say that we run two beautiful sites that are within...oh something's wrong, Jason?
Is it too loud? Oh...is that better? So I was just saying that I'm very excited to say
that the Orange Show Foundation for Visionary Arts from Houston, Texas, operates two gorgeous
sites that are inside the loop of Houston, the country's 4th largest city. They are open
to the public and they are active and they have active programming that involves our
community. When I think about all the sites that are
being discussed here today, and I look back on the long history of how all this happened,
I realize that I'm really happy I live in Houston. We have a remarkable city that really
responded to two environments which were the Orange Show itself, which is one site on the
east side of Houston, and the Beer Can House. Two men working at approximately the same
time, neither of them knew each other, each of them worked for approximately 25 years
to complete their work and we have been able to purchase them, restore them, and get them
up and operating and attracting a large part of the community. A lot of people have asked
me how and why this happened. We started with the Orange Show and I think that part of it
is because I had an art, my introduction to the Orange Show site and to the...hello? the
picture? oh where...excuse me...ok, the Beer Can House. I don't know where the rest of
them are. This is the Beer Can House. This is John Malkovich. Can we leave the lights
on please? This is Jeff McKissack and this is the Orange Show, a little sliver of it.
Anyway, the director of a museum that I was very involved with took me to see what he
said was the best work of art in the city of Houston. He took me to meet Jeff McKissack
and to see the Orange Show for the first time. Jeff McKissack had been working on the Orange
Show for about 20 years at the time that I met him, so it was four- fifths finished but
the first part he had started 20 years before so it already was in what we would call, in
need of attention but he was excited to complete the last portion of it.
He did finish it. He ultimately opened it to the public in 1978 in what he thought was
a proper condition. Unfortunately he died within six months of its opening. When he
died he, I used to go and visit him a lot, whenever, I was very involved with the museum,
so whenever visitors came to Houston, every time I would, my job was to take people to
visit Jeff McKissack and see this really unusual site in Houston.
So people were getting to know it, and that was a very important part of the reason we
were able to save it and have it, have the, the history that it's had. Anyway after his
death, he never married, he was a man who lived alone, never married, never had any
children, was very friendly, you can kind of see from the smile on his face and more
than anything he loved the Orange Show. So every time we would take a person there it
was like he was taking them through it for the very first time. That's part of his own
love affair with the property. It's part of what I think was his great gift in communicating
that to the people who came there. Now I'm going to do something...ok...this
is a little piece of the Orange Show, by the way, this is a little piece of, that we'll
talk about in a minute. Anyway he left the Orange Show at his death to his only surviving
relative which was a son, a nephew, of a sister of his. The nephew was 75 years old when he
inherited the Orange Show and had no idea what it was. I would like to show you a picture
of the whole Orange Show, but I don't know where it is. So we'll have to see it in a
few minutes. It's not the one that I thought it was. But anyway when the man came, his
nephew, Alex Hearst, he was an ex-FBI agent. I think the last thing he expected to inherit
was a structure like the Orange Show. It had a small museum in it, a labyrinth, a pond,
a steamship, it's a typical environment which I think, I think that Conservative Solutions,
Joe and Brice will show you when it's their turn.
Anyway, the nephew didn't know what to do with this and so he didn't know if he should
sell it, should he tear it down, should he just, you know, sell the property? But anyway,
he was going through his uncle's things and on the top of his uncle's desk there was a
note and it said, "Dear Alex, if you don't know what to do with the Orange Show call
Marilyn Rebuctkin" (that was my name then) and it had my phone number. He had been dead
at this point for three or four months, and this man called me and he said, "My uncle
said that you could tell me what to do with the Orange Show. " I had no idea what he should
do with it, but I loved the Orange Show and so I went to meet with him and after a year
of, that was difficult, trying to figure out, I think he thought that he could make a lot
of money by turning it into a food stand. I heard somebody refer to that a little while
ago from another structure. But anyway he finally decided that he would
give it, he would sell it, to us. So I put together a group that included two of the
most powerful women in Houston who were much older. I took everybody I could out there
to see it and to say do you think this is worth saving? And they all said, this is fabulous,
you can't let this go. To start with, for the people (lady) who asked me how do you
do this? I think you have to you have to build a constituency who has the same passion for
it and people who are respected in your community who can help you communicate the message to
a larger group. Anyway, we did buy it. Twenty-six people bought
it, We paid $10,000 for it and we contributed [it] all to a foundation so that everybody,
all 26 people had put in, actually $500. When you stop to think about what the Orange Show
has become and what it's given the city of Houston, it's like a great investment. It
takes up a lot of time and energy to keep it going. Anyway, so we opened it up, we restored
it, we didn't really know what restoration meant then. I wish I had done this before
that, and I didn't, and I didn't know about all this, but we did the best we could. We
thought we did a great job, and we had some local architects who were really, loved what
they did. They fixed it up and we've been operating it ever since.
The reason I wanted to speak today was to talk for a minute about the importance of,
we've won a wonderful grant from the NEA, and we are working now with SWCA Environmental
Consultants and Conservation Solutions, Jo and Price. The questions that it has brought
to mind are what I wanted to present to this group, which [ ? ] the fine line between doing
the most sophisticated products from Dow that this gentleman spoke of (I don't know what
the name of it is) and matching that with the ethos of the place and the great marvelousness,
charm, magic, that emanates from these environments from the hand, and to somehow integrate into
the engineering solution, something that will reflect something of the artist as well as
doing the most to stabilize it for the future. A lot of these people, Jeff McKissack did
not think, he did not think for one minute, about how long is this going to last? He only
thought about what is this look like, what does it feel like, and am I going to get finished
before I die? I guess that's what he thought, although he thought he would live forever.
As soon as it was over, he actually did pass away. I thought I would bring out the question
about the ethos, about the engineer and the artist putting them together with this photograph.
This is inside of the museum at the Orange Show and it demonstrates the problem perfectly.
This model has her head under a deer head...can everybody...is it clear? Okay and if you notice
that left eye, if you kind of concentrate on the left eye for a second, you'll notice
that it isn't really an eye, well we've always thought it was a ping pong ball because the
real eye had fallen out of the deer. So he didn't have the money to go buy a new deer
head so he simply painted a ping pong ball and stuck it and pasted it into the eye of
the deer. The other eye was there and then you'll also notice, it's hard to see, that
he tied the horns of the deer. They're just tied on with a string.
Now he knew this wasn't perfect, because he knew, but he needed to get it finished. So
when you redo this, the question is, now that the skin and the hair of the deer is shrinking
up, it's been there for 30 years now, should we get a new deer head? Is that what we're
supposed to do when you stabilize these places? Should we put in another ping pong ball? What's
the deal? We don't really know but maybe somebody here has an answer, and that would be really
great. There's a whole lot more I can tell you, I
don't know, I didn't make any notes as you can see. I'm talking right off the top of
my head. I don't really know what else to say except that what it takes to do this and
keep it going for thirty years, is to develop a program that involves the community. Without
the community and the neighborhood support, I don't think there's any way these things
can have a real life. I can't, it's very good timing that we're
following Watts Towers, because my first trip when I decided I was going to make a real
effort, when Mrs. [?] says as she thinks this is good now and go do it, I knew I was going
to do it. The first thing I did was to come out to see the Watts Towers, this was in 1978
or 1979, and I visited with a man named Seymour Rosen, who gave me a plan and said get a petition,
go to the neighbors and make the neighbors sign it. And so we just went for three square
blocks and we had a petition and we took people, we asked them, "Do you think that the Orange
Show is worth keeping? Would you like to have it in your neighborhood? Do you mind having
it in your neighborhood?" and everybody signed it, so that was the beginning and that developed
a relationship with our community that has lasted all these thirty years because the
kids get invited to things, whether it's art classes, we'll have a barbeque once a year
for the neighbors. Anyway, that's kind of part of how you get it done. Then after that,
we did develop something called the Art Car Parade which has become a Houston favorite
and now attracts about 250,000 to 300,000 people a year which really comes from the
energy of these sites. Trying to explain this to people is very hard, but I'm here, and
I hope that you guys will understand it. Anyway, I don't have anything else to say, please
feel free to ask me questions.