Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/734535
T o gain inspiration for our October issue, I took an impromptu road-trip to Bentonville, Arkansas — home of the remarkable Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which I've been eager to visit since it opened in 2011. I checked into the ultra-cool 21c Museum Hotel and spent the weekend in a town where a charming Pleasantville vibe is the background for a progressive contemporary-art scene. The billion-dollar collection at the Moshe Safdie–designed museum could take days to fully absorb, and the Frank Lloyd Wright house (recently relocated from a flood zone in New Jersey to Crystal Bridges' grounds in Arkansas) was a hopeful reminder of the lengths people will go to preserve great works of art and design. I was clearheaded after the artful jaunt, and the magazine took shape. The first order of business regarded someone our magazine could not live without: Briana Buxbaum, our ambitious, stylish sales leader, who was promoted this month to Dallas publisher. She has grown the magazine tremendously since moving to Dallas from Houston in early 2015 — and if not for Briana and her talented team, we wouldn't have nearly the amount of space to play with for editorial each month. As for this issue? It's packed with stories about individuals who are dedicated to creativity — and who have shaped the worlds around them through their work and their visions. Dallas Contemporary senior curator and director of exhibitions Justine Ludwig takes us on her recent trip to Mexico City, where she was a houseguest of artist Pedro Reyes and fashion designer Carla Fernández. (Reyes' exhibition "For Future Reference" is on view at the Contemporary through December.) With their respective mediums, Reyes and Fernández have not just created thought-provoking work, but used their art to promote change and shape the current political and cultural discourse — something this world can always use more of. With the opening of "KAWS Where the End Starts" at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth slated for October 20, Billy Fong — director of the Texas Association of Museums, and one of the few people I know who can wax poetic about both art and fashion — digs into KAWS' diverse oeuvre. This rare artist successfully walks the line between fine art, commercialism, and fashion, and has fans such as Alicia Keys and Pharrell, so the retrospective is not to be missed. On page 52, PaperCity's home design editor Rebecca Sherman pays tribute to the incomparable life of the highly influential Betty Blake, who passed away in August at age 100. Blake was a trailblazer, to say the least: She launched the careers of myriad artists, wore trousers when most ladies would have scoffed at the idea, and was respected and beloved by many for her witty, brash, audacious nature. As Sherman says, "She didn't suffer fools, didn't care what others thought, and did what she wanted." She was absolutely one-of-a-kind, a nonconformist of the greatest, most elegant kind — a woman we should all look up to. Christina Geyer Dallas Editor in Chief christina@papercitymag.com letter editor STEVEN VISNEAU 16