John Waters, the man filmmaker William Burroughs called the “Pope of Trash,” will be in Houston March 14 to help raise funds for DiverseWorks Art Space (1117 E. Freeway). It’s difficult to describe a Waters film to someone who’s never seen one. Even his most mainstream fair like Serial Mom and Hairspray displays a maniacally perverse joy in poor taste. His less mainstream fair, like the early films Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble and the more recent Dirty Shame roll in our culture’s trashiest fetishes like a dog in its own sick, and the best part is that Waters’ exuberance for his material makes you want to get down on the floor and roll around with him.
John Waters
At the DiverseWorks benefit Waters’ will present his one man show This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier, a vaudeville style act “focusing in on Waters’ early negative artistic influences and his fascination with true crime, exploitation films, fashion lunacy, and the extremes of the contemporary art world, this joyously devious monologue elevates all that is trashy in life into a call to arms to ‘filth followers’ everywhere.”
Tickets start at $250 and may be purchased by calling 713-223-8346.
If that’s a bit rich for your blood, or if you just can’t get your fill of Waters’ trashy sensibility the McClain Gallery (2242 Richmond) is showing a collection of works by John Waters the artist March 15-April 14. In this exhibition, Waters’ cinematic sensibility and most provocative themes–including race, sex, gender, consumerism, and religion–are transposed into photographs, montages and sculptures.
