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JANUARY | PAGE 23 | 2015 A fter a period of successful sales in 2005, Metoyer acquired his museum-area townhouse. The shingled tri-story in the classic Cape Cod style sets up a paradox with the art that it contains — not only the artist's ever-expanding collection of works by important peers and forebears but his own creations, developed here in a sort of laboratory, especially his rarely exhibited sculptural installations, which are essential to his practice. Along with his inherent and intuitive gift for drawing, these assemblage cycles freely combine African art and artifacts, found objects and other unexpected components, serving as a map to Metoyer's personal cosmology. Another incubator zone for the multimedia artist is his Third Ward studio on the Project Row Houses campus, where he occupies a prominent ground floor with windows facing Elgin — a space that serves as HQ for AIS (Angelbert Imagination Studios). A pivotal point in his journey happened there in 1994 when, at the tender age of 17, he burst on the scene with a show at one of the historic row houses during the nonprofit's infancy. That installation led to more work being exhibited at CAMH the following year in the Perspectives series, a group exhibition shared with PRH that marked a promising museum debut and led to a review by widely read Houston arts critic Shaila Dewan (who has since gone on to a career at The New York Times). Schooling at the prestigious Atlanta College of Art followed (the school attached to the High Museum of Art, now the Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta). He came close to graduating but eventually returned to town to take classes at Texas Southern University. The heady time was the late 1990s, and the fluid Houston scene was bubbling over. Metoyer's entrance could not have been better timed. He inherited Core Fellow Shahzia Sikander's studio on Berthea in the Museum District when she moved out after completing her Glassell residency, on her trajectory to the Whitney Biennial; palled around with other Core Fellows such as Julie Mehretu and Trenton Doyle Hancock; soon expanded to a bigger studio at the then way-off-the- radar, very raw David Adickes complex; and gained representation with influential doyenne Barbara Davis, at that time an anchor dealer on Colquitt Gallery Row. Considered a darling of the Houston art world and the next big thing, he was photographed by Suzanne Paul, who only snapped those artists and art-world players she considered the real deal. Paul's black- and-white portrait of Metoyer depicts him with a puff of smoke blowing from his nostrils, right after dragging on a cig, transforming the artist into a sort of young dragon. Metoyer's career was lifting off, and with collector demand and sales soaring, he was in a position to contribute funds back to Row Houses, honoring the nonprofit's role in his becoming an artist. (One of the historic shotgun homes now permanently bears his name above the door frame: the Angelbert Metoyer House.) Flash forward 15 years, and it's been quite a ride. Along the way, Metoyer has attracted support from Texas collectors, especially Houston patron/financial planner Craig Massey; wife Tatiana of Laboratia fame; Massey's former wife Poppi Massey, who serves on the boards of the CAMH and Houston Center for Photography; Silver Street developer Steve Gibson; and Dallas denizens Karla and Mark McKinley. But Houston was not big enough for Metoyer, who began exhibiting in New York in 1998 and increasingly hung out there, forming connections with musicians Saul Williams, Rene Lopez, Mike Ladd and Joseph Arthur. He produced album covers and occasionally went on concert tours with his collaborators. His travels took on an international component as his career widened. With these globe-trotting ways, his connection to and history in the community have been forgotten — an erasure of an artist who at times has been criticized as being a tad too popular and for not kowtowing to the traditional structure of "gallerist repping artist/serving up shows every two years." Metoyer, like Schnabel before him, looked to the big life and has always walked his own road. His marriage in 2008 to another peripatetic talent, photographer Charlie Koolhaas (daughter of starchitect Rem Koolhaas), also catapulted his orbit into the sphere of the big-moneyed jet set, yet Metoyer was off the radar of museums and the important art fairs. All of that began to change in 2008, when Deborah Colton Gallery placed him in a show dedicated to the Arab World, "Qatar Narratives," as the only American artist in the exhibition. Metoyer is now represented by the internationally focused Colton Gallery, where his current show, "Seasons of Heaven," is on view through January 3. T op collector Lester Marks, who bought work that funded Metoyer's college education, and CAMH curator Valerie Cassel Oliver were both early champions. Those relationships remain strong today. In fact, Metoyer and Trenton Doyle Hancock were two of the artists Marks most supported, while Cassel Oliver placed Metoyer on the short list when she was one of six national curators for the Whitney Biennial 2000, proposing his observatory project, conceived in 1997. More than a decade later, it has come to light again, thanks to the curator carefully preserving his drawings, which are currently on view in the Colton Gallery exhibition. When asked who has shaped his career, Metoyer singles out artists/PRH co-founders Rick Lowe and Jesse Lott for investing time with him when he was a middle-school student in North Houston. Also influential were Community Artists Collective co- founder/director Michelle Barnes, who picked him up weekly after school to take him to Collective classes (Metoyer co-chaired a luncheon benefit for CAC in 2013 in recognition of Barnes' impact) and HSPVA teacher-artist Fletcher Mackey, who saw the then high school student Metoyer's portfolio was reviewed by college scouts when they came to the High School for Performing and Visual Arts for a recruitment visit — even though the young artist was not enrolled there. Once again, Metoyer is back to his hometown as he repositions himself in the national and international arena. But he's playing his cards close to his chest. He quotes a curator at work on a group show (which he hesitantly discusses) encompassing Metoyer and art-history- making Bruce Nauman: "The curator recently told me, 'Your best work is not being shown. It's here at your home and studio.'" Nonetheless, he was justifiably proud of his current view at DCG, a reprisal of the M Windows, as well as signature paintings that continue to interweave symbols of mythic animals, the African diaspora and images alluding to his own family's ancestry going back to a freed land- owning slave in Natchitoches, Louisiana. M Windows perhaps best manifests Metoyer's most true voice. This series looks to the skies and spins time, eternity and Jungian symbols. If the stars are aligned in Metoyer's favor, an ambitious observatory commission at Overton Square in Memphis will unveil in 2016. In the artist's words, it will function visually and sonically as both a place "for reflection on internal space, [as well as] external space in the cosmos." Sculptural installations and an epic painting, The Embrace, 1999, take the place of prosaic home furnishings. Charlie Koolhaas and Metoyer's nuptial album from 2008, Guangzhou, China; the pair wed in Hong Kong. At his casa, a cosmic mural cozies up to a sculptural installation that combines a Western General sewing machine with its Tesla patent and a '60s-era amplifier. A sculpture from his second year at the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art and Design. The work evokes the great tradition of African portrait heads. A ghostly cradle and a pair of Metoyer paintings comprise a quiet vignette in the downstairs bedroom. Art books line the studio shelves, which he often samples, à la hip hop's tradition of appropriation. Foreground, from left: a found work from the surrounding Third Ward neighborhood, antique bugle from his father's family and one of his prints. In his Eldorado Ballroom studio, Metoyer holds one of his handmade books, bearing an image of a scarab. In the background, an early drawing on calfskin. In the dining room, the large painting represents a collaboration with rapper B L A C K I E, who contributed text. The water buffalo dusted with gold dates from 1999. The sculpture references the ancient Sumerian story of Gilgamesh.