Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/141323
A Q-AND-A WITH MIZ MULCAHY multi-year lease renegotiation, so I decided to step away and help my family take care of the family farm while taking some time for myself. But the truth is, I think the gallery had run its course for me. It was a wonderful experiment for over 13 years, and I was completely and utterly committed to it, but at some point I realized I wanted to pursue my own projects. And there was, admittedly, an unyielding desire to simplify my life. I have more time to pursue varied interests, collaborate with other curators and spend time with good friends. I volunteer two to three hours every week at my local food co-op, and I commit time to working for Democratic elections. And mostly, the farm setting [Mulcahy Farms is 90 acres deep in the heart of North Texas farm and ranch country in the Brazos River Valley] ultimately led to a radical rethinking of how I viewed art and its place in a community, which led to the public art projects Square Dance and Seventeen Hundred Seeds, both literally in a field. I've been working on a small number of clients' collections in the last few years, and I love the freedom of not being tied to a space. In retrospect, it was a timely decision, as the Great Recession began a few months later and galleries were hit hard. Very first art acquisition. In my 20s with hardly any money, I bought a tiny Edouard Manet 1865 etching on paper of a portrait of Baudelaire based on a photograph by the prominent photographer Felix Nadar — weirdly, maybe my earliest interest in documentary work. It's still hanging in my kitchen. Together Robert and I bought a folk-artist drawing from Webb Gallery. The artist was Willie Wayne Young. That was 1999, and it's still hanging in our bedroom. House music. Constant rotation of old-school tunes like The Velvet Underground, Nigerian '60s jazz and Miles Davis to Four Tet to local Dallas bands The Beaten Sea and the Fox and the Bird and Austin's Yppah. On trips, we like to buy a lot of vintage Brazilian vinyl in Rio's abundance of used-record stores. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Still life. Mulcahy Farms organic pecans in champagne boxes, sunflowers in estate-sale pottery, folk-art horse and cookies from a Mexican bakery near Fair Park. Surreal seat. Antique prayer chair from Mulcahy's mother plus pecan wood gathered from the yard for grilling — "a favorite activity around our house every weekend, no matter the weather. We like to garden and grill," proclaims the gallerist turned independent curator. Out of this world. Mulcahy's homemade alien piñata wears a vintage riding hat, with a toy grenade, together forming a strange vignette atop the art-storage flat files in the couple's bedroom. Soldier's story. The French desk — a 19th-century reproduction of a Louis XV desk — belonged to Mulcahy's great aunt. Folk-art walking canes from Webb Gallery. Lisa Barnard's photograph Head Gear, 2008, is from the 2011 exhibition "XXI: Conflicts in a New Century," which she co-curated with Charles Dee Mitchell at Oak Cliff Cultural Center; depicted is a soldier wearing special headgear that treats post-traumatic stress disorder in returning military folks via a virtual-reality program. The work was in "Engines of War," which opened at Gasser & Grunert in Manhattan this spring. Wood-radio and video-camera works by one of the curator's favorite Texas artists, Charlie Morris, from his "Operations" exhibition at Mulcahy Modern in 2005. Work station. Atop the office desk is a 1940s Henry Pollak lady's hat from Mulcahy's vintage hat collection and a preferred quaff: rosé champagne, Billecart-Salmon. JULY | PAGE 20 | 2013 In the garden. We like to eat seasonally, so at the moment we are growing all kinds of greens (mustard, kale, heirloom lettuces), root crops (beets, carrots, radishes) and herbs. And it's pecan season! We belong to a food co-op CSA Urban Acres that supports surrounding Texas farmers. All organic produce every two weeks. Libations. Champagne, beer and wine never stop flowing 'round these here parts. House cocktail: Just about anything you can juice and add tequila to, right? Robert makes a mean Mulcahy Farms beet margarita with lime, mint and agave syrup. Fave menu item now. Bolsa's pork pâté with Mulcahy Farms pecans. Recipe to share. Tossed raw salad with blue cheese, dried cherries and Mulcahy Farms-grown kale, radishes, pecans and sunflower sprouts and housemade mustard/agave dressing. Daily reads. I really can't live without The New York Times in paper form every day. I'm old school. I read a lot of newspapers online, like The Guardian, the L.A. Times and The Rio Times and tons of organic farming blogs and food-issue columnists like Mark Bittman and art blogs like Hyperallergic and Glasstire, NY Times' Lens blog and At War blog. Personal design style. We're fond of mixing recovered sidewalk furniture finds and family antiques with work by contemporaryartist friends, folk art, piñatas, farm cacti, documentary photography, fresh seasonal farm flowers and wildflowers and books galore. I think that covers it. On your night table. Two books of fiction about Iraq war veterans, Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds and Dallas' Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, both National Book Award finalists; Organic Fruit Gardening; chief Creative Time curator Nato Thompson's Living as Form about socially engaged art over the last two decades. Fave city in the world. We both work in the arts, which allows us to check out for a month every August in Rio de Janeiro, where we rent the same apartment. After a decade, it seems like a second home for a tiny bit every year. Rio is a gritty, violent, breathtakingly beautiful city with its own unique culture of music, visual arts and folk traditions. It reminds me in a way of what NYC used to be like before it got scrubbed clean by Giuliani. Rio is changing now, too. They hired Giuliani to consult on the upcoming 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. All the museums are free, as well as concerts and films, because it's a social democratic country that makes culture for its people a priority. The Brazilian government just announced that all public and private sector workers will receive $25 a month on a card to spend on any cultural activity including museums, concerts, films. Wow, huh? Biggest break to date. Leaving the white walls for the field. Square-dancing adventure. Leila Grothe and I wrote a grant to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for an Idea Fund Grant, where we proposed art as social practice in the form of an outdoor seasonal dance in our city, and we were surprised to be awarded one of the 10 grants that support new forms of contemporary public art. The City of Dallas has an early history of sponsoring square dances in city parks in the 1940s and '50s especially, and much documentation exists in the city municipal archives about the dances: thankful letters from city residents, band contracts, caller invoices, even