Unintended Collaboration: Patrick Renner and Kirby Mears, AIA

Unintended Collaboration: Patrick Renner and Kirby Mears, AIA
Thursday, August 17, 5:30pm
Talk begins at 6pm

Patrick Renner’s site-specific installation, Once and Future Architecture, does more than occupy Architecture Center Houston. Renner’s piece flows with the Center’s design, jutting through ceiling cutouts, echoing its colors and prompting memories of a past flood. The installation responds to and harmonizes with the space.

Join us Thursday, August 17 for an engaging conversation between AIA Houston’s Artist of the Year Patrick Renner and Kirby Mears, AIA from Murphy Mears Architecture, the architect of Architecture Center Houston on space, process and changing course.

Moderated by Rusty Bienvenue, Executive Director, Architecture Center Houston

This program is in conjunction with Once and Future Architecture exhibition on view through August 18, 2023.


About our speakers:

Patrick Renner
Patrick Renner is a fourth generation Houstonian. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004 and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2006. As a sculptor, Renner has established himself in the Houston art scene over nearly two decades with an extensive exhibition history in his hometown. Additionally, he has shown at venues throughout the US, as well as once in a Cuban sound arts festival in 2006, and the Busan Art Fair in South Korea in 2016. Renner has been a collaborator in various capacities, helping establish the alternative art space El Ríncon Social on Houston’s east side, and as a founding member of the multidisciplinary art group {exurb} from 2011-2016.

Some career highlights include: selection for Lawndale’s Big Show six times, with top prizes two of those years; three prizes awarded out of four years of participating in the Houston Art Car Parade with his high school students, including a Mayor’s Cup (top prize); three very wacky floats in the Houston Thanksgiving Day Parade with collaborator Alex Larsen; the Museum District Business Alliance Cultural Arts Community Improvement Award for Funnel Tunnel in 2013; a Houston Press MasterMind Award in 2015; Artist of the Year awards from both the Houston Press and the American Institute of Architects (Houston chapter) in 2016; and most recently, #1 in Glasstire’s Top Five for his exhibition BOUNTY at Redbud Gallery in February 2020.

Kirby Mears, AIA
After receiving his B.A. from Rice University, Kirby worked for Caudill Rowlett Scott in Houston.  He spent a summer in Europe on a traveling fellowship, and a year in Athens working for Frank E. Basil Architects and Engineers. Returning to Houston for a Bachelor of Architecture degree, Kirby subsequently worked for Taft Architects, William T. Cannady and Associates and Skidmore Owings and Merrill prior to establishing Murphy Mears Architects. Kirby’s father designed and built his family’s home, a one-story mid-century modern house with an attached sky-lit painting studio.  Kirby attended a public school in France with his brother and sister, and continues to make return trips to Southern France where he restored an apartment in a 13th c. stone building.  Kirby enjoys working with clients to make houses having an organizational logic and inspiring, light-filled rooms.