Bayou City Art Festival Jury Information

• Minnette Boesel - Mayor’s Assistant for Cultural Affairs, City of Houston.   Boesel holds a Bachelor of Arts in art history from Briarcliff College and a Master of Science in historic preservation from Columbia University. An ex officio board member of the Houston Arts Alliance, Boesel previously served as executive director for the Downtown Historic District, Inc., which was founded to help revitalize Houston’s Downtown Historic District. She has served as Chair of the Downtown Redevelopment Authority/TIRZ #3 and on the boards of Rice Design Alliance, Greater Houston Preservation Alliance and Houston Association of Realtors.

• Keelin Burrows - Windgate Charitable Foundation Curatorial Fellow, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH is a Nonprofit Partner of the Art Colony Association.) Burrows holds a BA in Art History Summa Cum Laude from the University of Houston and an MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture.  She is currently lead researcher for the Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio Contemporary Ceramics Collection at the MFAH. She was formerly the Curatorial Project Assistant for Craft Revolution: The American Studio Movement 1945-1970 at the Museum of Arts & Design.  She has served as a Windgate Intern at the Victoria & Albert Museum and as an Archive Assistant at the American Craft Council Library.  Additionally, she contributed to the exhibition and catalogue Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection.

• Richard Fluhr – A Houston-based artist who has bought art, sold art,         owned a gallery in Houston, and shown his work in other galleries. A past     board member of the Art Colony Association, he was named the Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts “Artist of the Year” in 2002. Some of his work has found permanent homes in museums, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, and the British Museum in London. Richard has served on the Bayou City Art Festival jury previously. 

• Les Slesnick - An award-winning photographer and member of the National Association of Independent Artists, Slesnick is a consultant and retired art show photographer. While he has juried several art festivals, this is his first time to jury a Bayou City Art Festival. Slesnick earned an M.F.A.  in     photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design (1993). His “Private Spaces” body of photography documents the values of a culture as it is represented in the home and other interior spaces.   Since 1987, emphasis has been placed on the Yucatan cultures of Mexico. In the early 2000s, small bodies of work were produced in Cuba and Colombia.  In     2005, he returned to working in the U.S. for the first time in 13 years.

• John Staehely - An art collector and rock musician, Staehely is an accomplished guitarist who has been a part of the international rock scene for more than 30 years. As a musician he has performed and recorded with such notables as Bob Dylan, Robert Palmer and Paul Rodgers.  While living in Europe, he developed a keen interest in art and during the last 15 years, John has pursued this passion through intense collecting and study.  He is most interested in American and European art of the early 20th century, with an emphasis on modernism, surrealism and abstract expressionism.

• Gemma Torralba de Santos - Director, De Santos Gallery in Houston. The De Santos Gallery is owned and directed Gemma and Luis de Santos, natives of Spain and long-time residents of Houston. The De Santos Gallery specializes in photography (including traditional and new media) from contemporary European and Asian photographers including Anna Halm-Schudel, Roman Loranc, Sang-Nam Park, and Kimiko Yoshida. The gallery also has work available by North American and Latin American artists: Clyde Butcher, Linda Butler, and Edgar Moreno among others.

• Bart Truxillo – Preservation architect, designer and developer. Art Colony Association Board Member and past president. Graduate of the University of Houston (UH) with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture; recipient of the UH College of Architecture Alumni Award for Community Development in 1999. He is co-founder, past chair and Director Emeritus of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance (GHPA), which awarded him the Preservation Alliances' Good Brick Award in 2000. He was editor of the book "Last of the Past" published by the GHPA. He is two-time president and multiple term director of the Houston Heights Association, which named him "Citizen of the Year" for his efforts as director of the Heights Museum Collection and other extensive volunteer work. Bart serves on the Houston Archeological and Historic Commission of the City of Houston, where he is immediate past chair. He has juried for Bayou City Art Festivals previously.