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ART + DECORATION 70 T here are art installations — and then ther e are experiences. Latin American modernist Carlos Cruz-Diez takes over a 100-year- old industrial relic, the Cistern at Buffalo Bayou Park, which served a century ago as an underground water storage facility for the City of Houston. Cruz-Diez is no stranger to Texas audiences. The Venezuela-born pioneer, who turns 95 in August, was the subject of an epic 2011 retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, "Carlos-Cruz: Color in Space and Time." He has also been the subject of six solo shows over the past 15 years at his long-time Houston dealer, Sicardi Ayers Bacino. Currently based in Paris, Cruz-Diez originally conceived of the work staged now in the Cistern, Spatial Chromointerference, in 1974; his son, Carlos Cruz-Diez Jr., was responsible for the technology behind the complex light projection, which unveiled May 12. One of the last living first-generation kings of kinetic and op art, the nonagenarian master activates the Cistern's 221 columns, each 25 feet tall, with beams of colored light, which bounce and reflect off the space's shallow water and upon 30 white cubes that appear to float. The installation follows that of another Venezuelan: Magdalena Fernández's "Rain," which inaugurated the Buffalo Bayou Partnership's Cistern art program in 2016. Making the $250,000 Cruz- Diez project possible (admission fees are expected to cover the costs) are BBP public art co-chairs Judy Nyquist (whose family is also among the donors) and Geraldina Wise, major underwriters Leslie and Brad Bucher, project manager Weingarten Art Group, and AV experts Prime Systems. Cruz-Diez's Cistern project aligns with his goal of making "art an experience of the people — for everyone," gallerist María Inés Sicardi says. "Carlos Cruz-Diez at the Cistern: Spatial Chromointerference," through January 13, 2019; info and tickets buffalobayou.org. Catherine D. Anspon Cress' pendant poems run deeper than Trump-era politics. Lawndale's second-floor Horton Gallery serves as an intimate space for shelves of Bradford's Surrealist sculptures featuring found ceramic objects enveloped by hand-crocheting in an array of colors — a wild florescence blooming amidst porcelain morsels of the past. Alongside each sculptural work — 52 in all, one per week of the year — Cress hand-letters an accompanying poem. The poems, like the sculptures, are not an "easy read." Both words and sculpture metaphorically unfold in layers that are left to the viewer to decipher and discover. For more on this story and a tour of Bradford's casa and studio, visit papercitymag.com. "Elaine Bradford + Sara Cress: Routine Fables," through July 29, at Lawndale Art Center, lawndaleartcenter.org. Catherine D. Anspon CROCHETED POETRY wo anxious women from both sides of the bayou describe life and death." So reads the mission statement from "Routine Fables," the collaboration by Elaine Bradford and Sara Cress now on view at Lawndale Art Center. While it's billed as "a year of weekly dumb sculpture poems," don't let the description fool you. The smart visual and literary dialogue is fresh, wryly humorous, feminist, moving, and humanist, with a dash of optimism provided by its pre- millennial protagonists. The project was created as a response to our times, but Bradford's assemblage sculptures and "T ON THE BAYOU ON THE BAYOU ILLUMINATION Carlos Cruz-Diez's Spatial Chromointerference, 1974 / 2018, at the Cistern, Buffalo Bayou Park PHOTO SICARDI AYERS BACINO GALLERY © CARLOS CRUZ-DIEZ / ADAGP, PARIS 2018. PHOTO SICARDI AYERS BACINO. ALL PHOTOS JENNY ANTILL CLIFTON Elaine Bradford Sara Cress Elaine Bradford's We know that it's probably magic, 2017, titled by Sara Cress, features a corresponding poem.