Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/106149
GALLERIST ANDGAME-CHANGER W THE HISTORIC AND AVANT-GARDE LIVING SPACE OF A DEALER DAVID SHELTON HOLDS COURT AT THE INFAMOUS, 1920S ISABELLA ENCLAVE hen David Shelton relocated his eponymous burgeoning art biz from San Antonio to Houston last September, that city's loss was our gain: Shelton's stable is packed with solid, stellar talents. Where did Shelton select to hold court in Houston? The charming circa-1929 Isabella Court, long a haven for architects, designers, performers, and now an art enclave. The building once famously housed Evelyn Wilson Interiors and portraitist Paul Gittings, who often employed the building's scenic stairways as backdrops for family photographs. Built by enterprising Houston developer Pierre Michael, he tapped Miami architect William D. Bordeaux, AIA, to create the glamorous Spanish Colonial Revival-style mixed-use Isabella residential-commercial building for the booming Main Street corridor in 1929. Art dealer Shelton's recently minted digs rub shoulders with other important art destinations — Inman Gallery, Art Palace, Devin Borden Gallery and Kinzelman Art Consulting — to complete the midtown/Main Street art-power picture, with the new DiverseWorks a block away. Fortuitously, Shelton's move coincided with the availability of one of the fabled residential spaces for which the National Register Isabella building has long been famous — this one located just above his new gallery. This is home as distillation of work. Inside is a unique apartment where eight decades of history and touches of the Spanish Colonial Revival style make an engaging receptacle for Shelton's eagle-eyed contemporary collection, which mirrors his trend-setting aesthetic and timeless stable in the gallery below, containing coveted internationals such as humorous pop-text master Alejandro Diaz and Vince Valdez of the exquisite drawings of boxers, as well as dazzling emergents such as San Antonio-based collagist Kelly O'Connor and conceptual landscape painter Sara Frantz. AS TOLD TO C ATH E RINE D. A NSP O N. P H OTO G RAP H Y J AC K T H O M P SO N. A R T D IR E C T IO N M IC HE L L E AV IÑ A . I N T ERI O R D ESI G N BREN T G RO V ES. FEBRUARY | PAGE 26 | 2013