Houston’s place as one of the country’s most dynamic cultural cities will be on full display this month when Untitled Art opens at the George R. Brown Convention Center from September 18-21. In the lead up to the fair, we spoke to three Houston-based artists we admire (and who also did us the honor of joining our inaugural Host Committee): Randy Twaddle, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Francesca Fuchs. Each brings a distinct vision shaped by Houston’s layered histories, communities, and everyday rhythms: Twaddle, whose decades-spanning multimedia practice on view at Untitled Art, Houston with Moody Gallery intertwines with his stewardship of The John Fairey Garden; Novo, the Cuban-born conceptualist is participating in the fair’s Special Projects section with Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino and is recognized for investigations into power and migration, moved to Houston more recently; and the British-born, German-raised Fuchs, whose work is the subject of a poetic solo exhibition (The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House) at The Menil Collection until November 2025. Seen together, their lives and work underscore the breadth of Houston’s artistic voices at a moment when the city continues to nourish artists working with radically different materials, ideas, and audiences, the same Untitled Art strives to foster on the international stage.

Randy Twaddle, Artist and Executive Director of The John Fairey Garden

Randy Twaddle is an American artist and designer currently serving as Executive Director of The John Fairey Garden Conservation Foundation in Hempstead, Texas. Twaddle is known for his multidisciplinary visual art practice—spanning drawing, painting, prints, sculpture, textile, and graphic design—with works held in major museum collections across the U.S. He received his BFA from Northwest Missouri State University and MFA from the University of Houston, and has exhibited nationally since the early 1980s. His work often explores the aesthetics of industrial infrastructure and language, employing surprising media like charcoal, ink, and coffee.

Untitled Art: What does your perfect day in Houston look like?

Randy Twaddle: Since moving five years ago to The John Fairey Garden, about 44 miles outside of Houston, I rarely have a full day in Houston to enact my perfect day. Still, I typically come to town twice a week for meetings with board members or Garden supporters, and my go-to places for those are Agnes, Brasil, and Blacksmith. If I’m in Houston on a chilly, rainy day, and it’s close to lunch time, I’ll go to Guadalupana Bakery and Cafe on Dunlavy Street for a delicious bowl of Posole. If I have any time to spare, I’ll go to Basket Books & Art on Hyde Park Blvd. There’s a high probability that I’ll find a book I’m looking for that I didn’t even know I was looking for. Owners Laura and Edwin’s interests seem to hit my sweet spot for botanical/horticultural books, idiosyncratic books (‘The Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch’ is a favorite) and art books.

Untitled Art: Who is someone you particularly admire in Houston? Why?

Randy Twaddle: One who quickly comes to mind is trombone player/composer/improvisor/executive director, Dave Dove. Dave started the nonprofit organization, Nameless Sound, in 1996 and it seems has integrated his life fully into the nonprofit’s mission. Nameless Sound brings in an internationally recognized practitioner of contemporary music for a public performance and then, often, that performer leads workshops with young people, many of whom are refugees who do not speak English. Dave has pioneered the method of using music improvisation to break down language barriers and give these underserved students a means of expression. At a time when the most vulnerable in our society must live in constant fear, Dave is using the power of creative expression for good.

Untitled Art: Where do you shop? What are your favorite Houston businesses?

Randy Twaddle: I’m not much of a shopper but when I do, Kuhl Linscomb is where I usually end up. I regularly buy my soap there, and I’ve bought socks, cards, shirts, bedspreads, furniture, shoes, etc. I also have to give a shout out to The Eye Gallery. I go to the one on Westheimer, and owner Tina Ozcelik always takes good care of me.

Untitled Art: If you could capture the essence of Houston in a single moment or scene, what would it be?

Randy Twaddle: A band of New Orleans musicians performing on the outdoor stage at Axelrad in front of a video of those same musicians playing music outside the Astrodome when they were taking shelter after Katrina, years earlier. This time they were in Houston to help clean up the damage from, I think, tropical storm Harvey; before, they were here as refugees from another natural (and man made) disaster. Two funky coastal communities with so much in common, being there for each other and expressing mutual love through food, music, and shelter.

Reynier Leyva Novo, Artist

Reynier Leyva Novo is a groundbreaking conceptual artist who transforms historical data and official documents into minimalist, tech-driven installations that challenge power and ideology. His acclaimed series The Weight of History uses custom software to turn the ink from totalitarian texts into bold visual form, questioning the true heft of words and regimes. An activist member of Cuba’s 27N movement and now Houston-based, Novo’s work has appeared at top biennials and major museum collections around the globe.

Untitled Art: Where and how does Houston fit into your own biography?
Reynier Leyva Novo: Houston became my point of entry into the United States after I made the decision to leave Cuba for good. I had been to the U.S. before, but this time was different—after drifting for almost three months through Europe and Mexico in the pandemic’s long hangover, I arrived with one suitcase, a few burning ideas, and several metric tons of emptiness. At the time, I was working on Methuselah, a digital artwork about migration commissioned by El Museo del Barrio. Without realizing it, I had landed right on the corridor where monarch butterflies cross south every year. From Houston I watched them descend, and then rise back north. The city and the project met in midair.

Houston is also where my family exhaled after Cuba, where strangers became essential, and where I began to understand the history of this land. It is both a border and a bridge. Without intending to, it became the ground zero for rebuilding my life and my practice.

Untitled Art: Who is someone you particularly admire in Houston? Why?
Reynier Leyva Novo: Houston has given me many people to admire, but there’s one I met recently whose presence feels like the city itself. He’s an intellectual, an academic, and I’d bet one of three people who know Houston by heart—not just as data, but as a living, breathing body. His knowledge is deep and encyclopedic, but also tender. His voice carries the weight of every building he’s ever studied, and every absence where a building once stood. In a city where having no car is almost a death sentence, he can guide you with closed eyes through the most fascinating corners. He’s been my guide into Black Houston, into its invisible layers of history. That person is Stephen Fox [an architectural historian and a lecturer at the Rice University School of Architecture]. To admire him feels less like a choice and more like gravity.

Untitled Art: How do you like to explore the city when you have no plans or obligations—do you have a favorite way to wander?
Reynier Leyva Novo: What I’m about to say might sound like a contradiction, but it isn’t: when I have no plans or obligations, I drive to my workplace. Or at least that’s what my car thinks, because “work” on my map is set to Art Club. I’ve watched it grow from the inside, and it’s made me believe in this city’s potential, both awake and still dreaming. By day, it’s a museum where I have a permanent installation. But on certain nights, when the museum “closes,” it switches to “club” mode—and everything changes. You can wander the pavilions, move through massive immersive works, and see the art in a completely different light, all while DJs go at it like they’re cutting sugarcane. It’s still the museum, but in party gear, and that shift is what makes it unforgettable.

Untitled Art: How do you find inspiration or recharge in the city when you’re feeling uninspired or overwhelmed?
Reynier Leyva Novo: Not having inspiration—or feeling empty—is good sometimes. Being fully inspired all the time would be exhausting, and honestly, a little boring. When that happens, I walk—sometimes in places you’re not “supposed” to walk. I get lost in the narrow streets of the Third Ward, where two churches fit on every block and eight on every corner, each tuned perfectly to its community’s rhythm. Other times I end up at the Cy Twombly Pavilion, skipping the entrance to stretch out under the old tree, or at the Rothko Chapel, sinking into the cushions and letting that monument to silence do its work. Somewhere in that quiet, the next idea always shows up—uninvited, impatient, and ready to start trouble.
People ask why I live in Houston, and more than once I’ve answered: “Because the Rothko Chapel is here. That’s reason enough.”

Untitled Art: Are there local sounds, smells, or flavors that instantly make you feel at home?
Reynier Leyva Novo: One of the sounds that makes me feel at home in Houston is the tram rattling past the corner of my street. Almost nobody rides it, but its metallic hum, mixing with the cardinals, mockingbirds, and sparrows in my backyard, has become the soundtrack of my studio—steel wheels and bird lungs. An overlooked piece of infrastructure, still alive, insisting on its place. The birds are their own resistance—holding territory in the middle of the city, nesting in empty lots six minutes from downtown. The smell? Wood smoke from The Pit Room on Richmond Avenue or from Pinkerton’s—barbecue that seeps into you like a shared inheritance. That’s barbecue—slow fire, fast temptation—pure Houston, pure Texas. And taste? The red snapper ceviche or lomo saltado my friend, chef David Guerrero of Andes Café, makes. We trade Cuban for Peruvian and Ecuadorian-Andean dishes—exchanges that feel almost illicit, except the only offense is how good they taste.

Untitled Art: Describe Houston in 5 words
Reynier Leyva Novo:
Extra-diversely-particular.
Explosively-cultural.
Intimate-yet-distant.
Visible-invisible.
Neither-old-nor-new.

Houston is a city of layers. You can cross fragments of the world in a five-minute drive and still feel something humming underneath, like there’s a second map hidden below the streets. It’s one of the biggest cities in the country but with social circles so small they almost feel like secret societies. Monumental and human-scale at the same time, always negotiating its own contradictions—that tension is what keeps it alive.

Untitled Art: How do you stay connected to the city’s creative or cultural pulse without following a set routine?
Reynier Leyva Novo: The city tunes me in.

Untitled Art: Can you share a story about a serendipitous discovery you’ve made while out and about in Houston?
Reynier Leyva Novo: A few months ago, at a Fotofest benefit auction gala where I’d donated a work, I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard, “Chino!” I turned to find a great friend from New Jersey, whom I’d first met in Cuba eight years earlier when he visited my studio. He later wrote an essay for a book on my work Archaeology of a Smile, and we crossed paths several times in New York before losing touch. Now he was in Houston, running an energy company. That same night, he bought my photograph at the auction. After all those years, we are now almost neighbors.

Untitled Art: If you could capture the essence of Houston in a single moment or scene, what would it be?
Reynier Leyva Novo: The diversity of Houston isn’t decorative—it’s structural. More than a city, it’s a human universe, where you can cross continents without leaving your ZIP code. Here, diversity isn’t an event, it’s the daily operating system.

If I had to capture it in a single day: breakfast with a Syrian baker who insists I take extra pistachio baklava “for the road.” A haircut from a Mexican barber who plays Ethiopian jazz. Lunch with a Nigerian friend who orders for me because “you wouldn’t know where to start.” An afternoon work meeting with my Venezuelan gallerist, where we talk the language of deadlines. Coffee right after with a Filipina curator who somehow knows my favorite Cuban pastry.

If that’s just one day, imagine a week: you’d need a passport for every meal, every conversation, every corner—like living in an airport without ever boarding a plane.

Francesca Fuchs, Artist

Born in London and raised in Münster, Germany, Francesca Fuchs moved to Houston in 1996 as a fellow for the Core Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Throughout her nearly 30-year career in Houston and internationally, Fuchs has been thinking about the significance of everyday objects insisting that they illuminate foundational truths about our selves, our communities, and our histories. Her paintings hone an extended, reflective process of reworking that is engaged in the deeply personal and envisions the power objects hold.

Solo exhibitions of Fuchs’ work have been featured at The Menil Collection; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Suburban, Illinois; The Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and Filet, London. Fuchs' work has been included in exhibitions organized by The ICA, London; The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has attended residencies at MacDowell and La Maison Dora Maar and was awarded Art League Houston’s 2018 Texas Artist of the Year Award.

Fuchs currently works in Houston, where she lives with her dog, her cat and seven plants. This past summer, with her exhibition The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House on view at The Menil Collection, she spent some time talking to us about her favorite spots in town:

Hermann Park

Verdant vegetation and the giant ancient gnarly live oak trees in Hermann Park and along Rice University (opposite) are part of Houston's true beauty. Walking the paths under the trees is a good way to start even the hottest Houston day and get used to this supreme humidity. Hermann Park is just south of the museum district with so many of our local art riches: the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Contemporary Arts Museum; Lawndale Art Center; HCCC (Houston Center for Contemporary Craft); Asia Society, Houston; HMAAC (Houston Museum of African American Culture) and Moody Center for the Arts at Rice.

Black Hole Coffee House

Black Hole, like many of Houston's best venues, is hidden in a little strip mall on Graustark just off Richmond close to the Menil Collection. During a morning latte I invariably bump into other artists, curators, writers engrossed in their own morning coffee ritual, in a meeting, or working concentratedly on a sofa or table by the window. This was the weekly meeting spot preparing for my current exhibition at the Menil Collection, which is up through Nov 2.

Blue Bird Circle Store

Blue Bird Circle is a resale and consignment store, open 10 am - 3 pm most days, although I find they are often closed just when I want to stop in. You can browse furniture, artwork, glassware, and ceramics on one side and clothing and shoes on the other. Some of my best designer clothing finds come from the Blue Bird and part of your purchase benefits Texas Children's Hospital. If your consignment store shopping isn't quite satisfied here, there is the Catholic Charity Guild shop nearby and The Guild Shop on Fairview. For an uncurated Texas-sized thrifting experience head up to Value Village on Shepherd in the Heights.

Basket Books and Art

Basket Books has been a Houston community hub since they opened a few years ago. It is the place to gather for readings, conversation, and community events over books (downstairs) and art (upstairs). They have an amazing selection of books to browse, the focus is on art and theory with a deep section of novels, poetry, and a wonderful children's area. If you don't know what you want to read next, ask for a recommendation. It is also the place to pick up a small present: an artist-made card, a calendar, Tarot, a publication or chapbook by F Magazine, and if you want to look like a hip Houstonian (or just hip), buy one of their baseball caps. Upstairs you will find thoughtfully curated exhibitions beautifully installed.

Nameless Sound/Lawndale

'They Who Sound' is an ongoing Monday evening gathering at Lawndale Art Center where Nameless Sound presents two different sets of experimental sound-making, improvised music, noises, and the sounding of art. They host a rich diversity of artists with an emphasis on Houston’s vibrant local sound scene. An evening is always deeply alive and a portal to giving yourself over to chaos, beauty, dissonance, sounding, and being completely present.

Project Row Houses

Project Row is social sculpture, community catalyst, and art venue wrapped in one with its seven shotgun houses at front each installed by one artist within the curatorial perspective of the 'round' and a duplicate set of houses at back supporting local entrepreneurs and single mothers. Affordable housing was built close by in an effort to hold gentrification at bay and Project Row's care and vision extend into the third ward community: there is the beautifully renovated Eldorado Ballroom with Kindred Stories bookstore below and Doshi House for a cosy coffee and vegan snack around the corner. PRH's logo nods to an iconic John Biggers' painting and in a way this entire urban landscape project pays homage to his deep influence within the community.

The Menil Collection

This beautiful museum is on your list already, you really need to go. It is always free and its hours have never changed, Wed - Sun, 11 am - 7 pm. Hang in the grounds with the community in the evening on a picnic blanket and feel the full care the Menil brings to everything as you walk under the most beautifully supported live oak limb on the path to the Twombly pavilion, Drawing Institute, and permanent Dan Flavin installation.

H-E-B

H-E-B is one of my happy places. Never a fan of grocery shopping before, I love browsing the produce here. H-E-B sources food locally, the veggies are always juicy and fresh, and it supports its community during our many hurricanes and disasters. My favourite go-tos are their home-made tortillas which are buttery warm in the bakery section, their local free range egg selection, and picking up some store-made sushi. And I buy all the avocados and arugula I need for the week.