Y'all mind hanging back? You're jamming my frequency.

June 30, 2007 7:39 AM

Inversion[more pics] [text] "This house has many hearts."
posted by moonbird (31 comments total)

Holy God. Huge extra mega double points for Tangina/Poltergeist references! 'To her it simply is another child, to us it is The Beast... Now let's go get your daughter.'
posted by ao4047 at 7:50 AM on June 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ah, the Inversion. I was fortunate enough to pass it every day on my way to work. I wonder how many people almost wrecked their cars the morning it showed up (as I did). It's on a pretty major thoroughfare and it really did seem to appear overnight.

About a month or two before it was set to be torn down, some assclown tagged it. Worse, it was your typical, generic, completely unartful here's-me-scribbling-my-name-in-four-inch-tall-completely-unreadable-letters. That was really upsetting.

Yup, all in all, just another of the bizarrely creative and totally unique things that have made Houston such a great place for me to live.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 8:01 AM on June 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Heh.
Especially the photo with people pretending to be sucked in accentuates the inane funniness.
posted by jouke at 8:04 AM on June 30, 2007

Ben and Carrie are good jumpers.
posted by unknowncommand at 8:05 AM on June 30, 2007

Malkovich. Malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich, malkovich. Malkovich - malkovich malkovich malkovich.
posted by jimmythefish at 8:07 AM on June 30, 2007 [2 favorites]

That is seriously awesome.
posted by 40 Watt at 8:13 AM on June 30, 2007

Wonderful. And the stuff of nightmares if you've watched to many horror flicks.
posted by cortex at 8:25 AM on June 30, 2007

I my gosh I loved the inversion house! I live right across the street and it became this wonderful community center for it's existence. Every evening people would walk their dogs and kids over to it and just hang around. People really would almost run into each other as they slowed their cars to look.

Now it's a pretty awesome coffee house, appropriately called Inversion. Free Wifi and cold-drip brewed iced coffee. Yum.
posted by dog food sugar at 8:26 AM on June 30, 2007

Neat!
posted by Artw at 8:39 AM on June 30, 2007

This is excellent isn't it - love to see the public getting such enjoyment out of public art too.
posted by Abiezer at 9:18 AM on June 30, 2007

Gordon Matta-Clarke, one of my heroes.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:26 AM on June 30, 2007

God bless the people who made this.
posted by MarshallPoe at 9:49 AM on June 30, 2007

Wonderful! And that's really cool, dog food sugar, that there's now a coffeeshop there. Makes me think of the St. Louis City Museum, though that has stayed up.
posted by honest knave at 10:19 AM on June 30, 2007

Ahaha. Ha. "Open house." Ahahaha.

Haha.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:48 AM on June 30, 2007

It looks like a giant wooden anus.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 11:02 AM on June 30, 2007

That is absolutely stunning. I would love to see it.
posted by Flashman at 11:10 AM on June 30, 2007

dirtynumbangelboy, that sounds gay.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:15 AM on June 30, 2007

Brilliant.
posted by effwerd at 11:18 AM on June 30, 2007

It looks like a giant wooden anus.

Cue a goatse.cx Photoshopping.
posted by ao4047 at 11:34 AM on June 30, 2007

Thanks for posting this! I really enjoyed having a look at the house.
posted by chudmonkey at 11:45 AM on June 30, 2007

Yeah I've heard about this. It's in Nogales Arizona on the Mexican border, right?
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:05 PM on June 30, 2007

That's awesome.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:55 PM on June 30, 2007

Gah! nnoOOOO!!! House of leaves! HOUSE OF LEAVES!!
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:02 PM on June 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

That house sucks, but in a good way.
posted by Dave Faris at 3:16 PM on June 30, 2007

Wonderful.
posted by Alec at 4:41 PM on June 30, 2007

Wow. Houston has so much great art -- the museums and the outsider/folk art. This strikes me as a stunning union of the two.
posted by treepour at 5:13 PM on June 30, 2007

When they built it they covered the entire building with this black tarp. It looked like a place getting treated for termites or something uneventful like that. So it was pretty easy to visually forget it was there during construction.

Then when they took the tarp off when it was finished it was like BAM! Overnight! Look what crazy thing happened to this house! Like 2or3ws mentions.

Here's the Art League of Houston's 2005 press release about it. The tag that showed up at the end was pretty lame considering that the neighborhood has some rather creative taggers that are really great.

The independent coffee house that stands there now has a window screen that shows the original project. As you sit inside you can see through it.

Here's an interesting video of Dean Ruck talking about public art. Other fun projects of his were Big Bubble (QT) and an instillation at the wonderful Project Row Houses.

In 1995, Huvel and Ruck collaborated with Kate Petley to make the "O House," another soon to be demolished bungalow into an temporary instillation space.
posted by dog food sugar at 6:09 PM on June 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

dog food sugar: Weird, somehow I never saw that larger tag on the piece. Or maybe I did hand have blocked the memory. Those assholes.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 5:02 AM on July 1, 2007

hand = and
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 5:02 AM on July 1, 2007

Yeah 20r3ws - If I remember correctly it was just black outline paint at first and then a few nights later filled in. I think it was just before they took the whole thing down.

Not to totally change the subject, but I have mixed feelings for the tagers. I love what Yar does. And the desperately positive responses that Give Up prompts with his posters are fascinating. The places they pick make a difference too. Un-sold space on old billboards, or the light boxes at red lights are quite different than someone's home or a place that really contributes to the community. Here's a really lame tag on the Menil of all places.

All part of why I love and hate this place.
posted by dog food sugar at 9:50 AM on July 1, 2007

(Dang it! Sorry I messed up the spelling on your name, 2or3whiskeysoadas.)
posted by dog food sugar at 9:55 AM on July 1, 2007