Exhibit - Rewind
Location: Watters Creek, 877 Watters Creek Blvd, Allen, TX 75013
You're invited to check in at Sweet Tooth Hotel, created by wife and husband duo Jencey and Cole Keeton, an immersive art venue that features emerging experiential artists. Visitors make their way through 5,000 sq. ft. of adventures in the form of art installations - exhibits have included everything from large-scale new media productions to retro-futurism to yarn. Yes, yarn. It’s unexpected, imaginative, impressive.
The current exhibit, Rewind showcases one of our most incredible lineups of local and national artists to-date. Open in a new location, nestled in the heart of Watters Creek at Montgomery Farms in Allen, TX, Rewind showcases ten art installations created by twelve local and national artists. For those curious about the title, Rewind is defined as “Something that rewinds or is rewound. A function of an electronic device that reverses a recording to a previous portion.” Why did we chose this title? Well (drumroll), at the heart of the exhibit will sit a full blown vintage video store full of VHS tapes, with a few hidden spaces for guests to discover!
Rewind features a curation of artists, from painters to fiber artists, with purposefully different backgrounds and voices. Artists include Multidisciplinary Artist Andy Arkley (Seattle, WA), Fiber Artist and Graphic Designer Hannah Busekrus (Austin, TX), Fiber Artist and Illustrator Niki Dionne (Dallas, TX), Painter, Illustrator and Graffiti Artist Hatziel Flores (Dallas, TX), Fiber Artist and Muralist Sam Lao (Dallas, TX), Experience Producer Madison Mask (Dallas, TX), Multidisciplinary Artist MOM (Dallas, TX), Twinkie Chan (San Francisco, CA) Jackie Lawrence (Denton, TX), Bobcat & Birdie (McAllen, TX), Joanna Lin - Soft Surprise (Dallas, TX), Dallas Yarn Bombers, London Kaye (Los Angeles, CA) and Ray Albarez (Dallas, TX). Each artist has been given a dedicated space to create their own unique art installation. For fans of previous Sweet Tooth Hotel exhibits, we're rebooting a few of our favorite installations. But we'll leave it a surprise! Read on to meet all of the artists of Rewind.
In A Beautiful Place
A celebration of color and flowers, with the intention of creating joy and elation for all who visit.
Andy Arkley is a visual artist, designer, musician, and animator who often combines these disciplines in his work. He strives to make work that fosters positivity and elation. Some of his work combines sculpture, light, music, animation, and interactivity, while other projects are static installations. His interactive pieces encourage creative collaboration between strangers, while his static installations use brightly colored, simple forms that are meant to invoke a sense of joy about being alive.
So Cozy
So Cozy, combines illustration, sculpture and hand tufting to create the hidden world of a cat—one humans often wonder about—by imagining and projecting what a cat might be dreaming of as it sleeps.
Hannah Busekrus is an interdisciplinary artist and designer. Adapting her background in graphic design and illustration, she creates three-dimensional characters and objects ranging from less than 1” tall to over 10’ tall using fiber as her main medium. She introduced fiber art into her practice in 2012, creating a large scale, site-specific, outdoor installation at the Honolulu Contemporary Art Museum (now part of the Honolulu Museum of Art, Spalding House) as part of The Fuzz, a 3 person yarn bomb collective. In 2014 she created her second large-scale, solo installation at Linekona, the Honolulu Museum of Art School featuring two towering 10’ 3” mermaids on the building’s front exterior columns. She is also an author and most recently added textile design to her CV creating her first line of unique punch needle jewelry made from recycled cashmere and other fine yarn fibers for her brand, / h // s / r / textiles.
Rigged
Rigged is not only a reflection of a claw machine within a claw machine, but is also a reflection of the contradicting emotions of hope and apprehension that come with attempting to beat a claw machine. Although not obvious, it also draws from the reality of inequity in a system that is rigged against women of color.
Niki Dionne is a fiber artist and illustrator based out of Dallas, Texas. She’s an expert when it comes to pompoms and one of her biggest passions: drawing black women, living for care-free moments. Through her work, Niki explores how self-perceived identity shapes how women of color view themselves. Through various mediums including fiber, oil pastels, digital illustration and animation, Niki develops characters that all women can find themselves in. Every single thing she creates has a smart and carefree energy to it - whether it’s fiber art, an illustration or animation.
Venus Room
Inspired by the wonderful work of the "Birth of Venus" (Nascita di Venere), I wanted to create a peaceful space that can apply the viewer in that great moment of the rebirth of ones greater self and make you the subject of the platonic idea about earthly and divine love.
Hatziel Flores is a self-taught, contemporary artist from Dallas. He was born in Mexico City and has been creating art since a very young age. His passion is to paint in a wide variety of mediums, primary portraits. His diverse collections consist of explosive contemporary mixed media paintings portraying the beauty found within chaos. Internally driven and emotionally charged he continues to explore and convey his ideas. His visions are unique and unlimited.
Stay Sweet
"With a vivid palette and bold prints, my signature hands beckon visitors into the wonder that is Sweet Tooth Hotel. This tufted mural includes select elements that are raised to add depth and playfulness while reminding guests to Stay Sweet."
Sam Lao is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, TX. As a UTA graduate with a BFA in Visual Communications, Lao’s work spans across many genres of art. From designing and painting vibrant murals across the city to crafting textile art that’s meant to be touched, Lao explores the life and source of ideas and of inspiration itself. The tactile nature of her current work subverts the old adage of ‘do not touch the artwork’ by inviting the viewer to do just that and in turn making a visual experience a physical one as well.
Sky's The Limit
"Sky's The Limit" is designed to challenge that notion while playfully embracing scale as a major formal and conceptual element by enlarging my paintings and snail sculptures to create an environment proclaiming that big things are possible, even when you feel small.
MOM is a contemporary and multidisciplinary artist, active in Dallas, Tx since 2008. Her current work features a variety of mediums including vinyl, acrylic paint, and ready made objects. Inspired by experimentation with contrast and balance, her abstract landscape paintings are an optical feat riddled with explosive colors and hard-edge striping, giving the work a sense of trippy depth. MOM was recently featured on the Design Milk Everyday, Tastemade Home, and co-founded Dallas artist co-op & shop, Trade Oak Cliff.
Vice Video
We live in a world where everything is constantly asking for our attention. My hope is to create spaces that let people exist in the moment. Vice Video is an abandoned VHS rental store that's recently come back to life...on its own.
Madison Mask started his career at an event planning agency. Since then he has gone on to produce events and brand activations at some of the largest industry trade shows across the country. With this corporate events background, he's now exploring his interest in creating more surreal and artistic experiences. His delve into creating installation started in 2020 with site-specific large sculpture pop ups under the moniker modest museum and immersive exhibits inside of his studio space.
Creative Direction and Design by Cole Keeton
Sucre Fleuf
Sucre Fleuf! is an imaginary bakery in the middle of a secret garden. I was inspired by old-world boulangeries and patisseries as well as modern Asian dessert art. Here, you’ll find a combination of my love for yarn, sweets, Wes Anderson movies, and 80s cartoons.
Twinkie Chan is a crochet designer, author, and Creativebug instructor known for her colorful, food-themed accessories like cupcake scarves, hamburger mitts, and slushee cup purses. She lives in San Francisco with a rainbow wall of yarn and a billion pom poms.
Bobcat & Birdie was founded by Birdie, creator of the BYOY (Bring Your Own Yarn) latch hook kit. Birdie’s BYOY kits and art is inspired by her love of bright colors, traditional tattoos, and the Rio Grande Valley. She’s been interested in latch hook for more than twenty years and says fiber arts have always drawn her in as a way to escape because of the repetitive nature which is therapeutic for her. Growing up making latch hook kits from big box stores, she would end up with a finished piece, but never knew what to do with it. Where do you go from there? You have hooked yarn in a cool design, but the rug canvas is starting to fray and you just really don’t know how to share the project you put a little piece of your heart into. She’s on a mission to share the art of DIY latch hooking from beginning to end.
An Impossible Reality
“While in undergrad, I began exploring the possibilities of world-making within installation art. The environments I built served as a manifestation of my inner world, letting me air our conflicts through processing space. These large scale installations are meant to feel overpowering yet intimate.
R.I.P. Vice Video
Giant Hairy Tubes
Joanna Lin is a multidisciplinary maker from Colorado currently based in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA in Film/Animation/Video in 2015 from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since then she has collected professional experience as a graphic designer, tampon designer, motion graphics animator, artist assistant, and now a freelance designer.
