H-E-B Family Night

Meet Home Bodies exhibiting artists Hillerbrand+Magsamen and experience Home Balance; a bounce house turned participatory artwork that morphs popular children’s entertainment into a contemporary art project about balance. Presented outdoors for one night only, during H-E-B Family Night.

Meet Home Bodies exhibiting artists Hillerbrand+Magsamen and experience Home Balance, a bounce house turned participatory artwork that morphs popular children’s entertainment into a contemporary art project about balance presented outdoors for one night only, during Family Night. A large inflatable bouncy house—like the one popping up on your neighbor’s lawn heralding the arrival of a child’s noisy birthday party—is custom built with walls that become glowing film screens. The walls are illuminated by videos of Hillerbrand + Magsamen’s family inside their own home: the artists and their children jumping up and down, breaking things, hitting their heads against the ceiling, knocking over furniture, falling, creating complete havoc.

As the private space of the family home is made public for everyone to see, visitors can enter and bounce in the midst of the images. In a bouncy house, the goal is to maintain stability in an environment not designed for stability, while our real homes are designed for a stability that our home-life can never attain. Home Balance questions what constitutes a home, and draws on childhood games to explore how family interactions challenge the desire to maintain orderly control of the structures in which we dwell. Home Balance was a commission for CounterCurrent 2016 by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston. Additional funding support from the University of Houston Small Projects Grant. The bounce house was fabricated by All-Star Inflatables, Dallas, TX.

Build-your-own Mosaic 

Inspired by Casey Gregory’s gem paintings, the Contemporary at Blue Star MOSAIC Student Artist Program teaches participants to use fun materials while encouraging visitors of all ages to create colorful mosaic tile artworks.
What’s For Dinner?

Create a dinner place setting through collage. Take your project to the next level with inspiration from Lenka Clayton’s All Scissors in the House Made Safer by wrapping the dinner and utensils with yarn.
Fun Photo Booth 

Channel Hillerbrand+Magsamen’s photographic works by taking creative portraits in our photo booth, props provided!
Shield Button Making 

Inspired by exhibiting artist Catherine Colangelo’s shield paintings, visitors can create protective buttons using mixed media to guard the entire family.

A Letter Home 

Empathize with issues of migration and displacement found in Origins, Rations, Extractions, by responding to writing prompts as you write a letter home.