What’s Happening: The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art is undertaking a $2 million restoration project of two Outsider art monuments—and its own eight-acre expansion.

The Download: In 1956, mail carrier Jeff McKissak began constructing a massive architectural tribute to his favorite fruit. Working entirely on his own and entirely by hand, McKissak spent the next quarter century assembling farm implements, bricks, mannequins, and more into a 3,000-square-foot, multi-level mosaic labyrinth of wishing wells and arenas. The idea was to inspire health and longevity in visitors by encouraging them to eat oranges. The result was one of the world’s most accomplished folk art environments.

McKissak died in 1980. To preserve his achievement, Marilyn Oshman formed the nonprofit Orange Show Center for Visionary Art (OSCVA). She assembled a wild bevy of donors, including both Dominique de Menil and members of ZZ Top, and bought and reopened the Orange Show to the public in 1982. “The original maintenance team, programmers, and audience came mostly from the University of Houston’s nearby art department,” OSCVA curator of programs Pete Gershon tells Surface. “Some of these students have since become some of the city’s most accomplished artists.”

If time has been kind to the installation’s reputation, it’s been hard on the work itself. “It’s an open-air structure, so rust and biological growth are constant problems,” Gershon says. “More significantly, there is no foundation underneath the monument so it’s been subject to constantly shifting ground through alternating floods and droughts, leading to uneven walkways and cracking walls.” Fortunately, the National Parks Service’s Save America’s Treasures program has awarded a grant for a two-year renovation that will stabilize the structure and establish an artist-led corps of community preservationists.

It’s one of a pair of major projects on OSCVA’s books. “Bob ‘Daddy-O’ Wade was a longtime friend of the organization,” executive director Tommy Ralph Pace tells Surface. “He was a university-trained artist but a true free spirit who looked at the world in a unique way and made larger-than-life sculptures from repurposed materials that perfectly embody the sense of fun and discovery we value at OSCVA.” One of those is Smokesax, a 60-foot blue saxophone Wade made of oil field pipe and car parts, which jazzed up the nearby Brays Bayou for some two decades before coming home to OSCVA in 2013. “While storing its individual pieces on our property,” Gershon says, “we’ve been working to site the sculpture and fundraise for its restoration.” A $1 million fund for its reinstallation is already being put to use.

As are almost six acres and a 31,000-square-foot midcentury building nearby, which the organization has acquired to incorporate into a new campus designed by Rogers Partners. A sizable ramp will move visitors through open workshops and highlights from the center’s extensive collection of art cars, which are normally only on view during its beloved annual parade. “There will be this part of [the new campus] that focuses on art cars and support for the artist community,” Pace says. “But I think even those who feel like they don’t understand art can step over that barrier visiting here. It’s a place you will be able to get lost for hours.” Not unlike the Orange Show itself.

In Their Own Words: “There are now generations of Houstonians who’ve grown up with the Orange Show and credit it as an important early influence that led them to pursue a creative life,” Gershon says.

Surface Says: Like a citrus-forward Watts Towers, the Orange Show is proof that so-called Outsider art—and especially public art outside—deserves protection.

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From the whitewashed villages of the Algarve to creative energy–filled Lisbon to the increasingly stylish beach town of Melides, Portugal’s hotel scene continues to evolve in spectacular ways. This week, we’re surveying the landscape.

The fishing village of Ericeira has beckoned surfers to Portugal with its silky breaks for years, but a recent influx of high-end resorts is putting the town on the radar of leisure travelers. The 50-room Aethos Ericeira, which opened its doors in September, is situated on the edge of a windswept 130-foot cliff, a solitary refuge overlooking the golden sand beaches and dramatic rock formations of Portugal’s Silver Coast.

Barcelona-based interior studio Astet and Portuguese architect Luis Pedra Silva modeled the design to be a reflection of the surrounding environment: cobalt blues that mirror the Atlantic Ocean, earth tones pulled from the towering cliffs, and textured neutrals inspired by the sandy beaches below.

Helmed by young chef Afonso Blazquez, the seafood-focused menu—hake with grilled red bell pepper puree and garlic flower; squid “noodles” with pickled mushrooms and dashi—at the restaurant Onda is fortified with seasonal vegetables and fresh fish sourced from the fishing boats in Peniche Harbour. For seasoned surfers, a fleet of solar-powered electric bicycles await for a cruise down to the beach—or book a lesson with Joana Andrade, Portugal’s first female big wave surfer. Or lean into the hotel’s wellness amenities such as the saltwater pool and Turkish hammam.

Sound has never been easier to come by, or harder to ignore. With endless music streaming, rampant noise pollution, and more media than ever before, the idea of active listening feels almost arcane. An unlikely pair—Etsy co-founder Rob Kalin and longtime NASA engineer William Cowan—seek to change that with A for Ara, a new line of handmade speakers that are tailor-made for attracting attention.

Each of the trio of options focuses on a horn, as opposed to a box speaker. For FS-1 and FS-2, the horn is unmissable, blooming in nine panels not unlike a tulip—or perhaps one of Takashi Murakami’s flowers—above a base that calls to mind, in the former iteration, a charming birdhouse and, for the latter, David Bowie’s Kansai Yamamoto pants. But the bold aesthetic choice, Kalin tells Surface, “is actually form following function. The horn is a coupling device for sound.” This allows the system’s drivers for high and mid range, both located in the horn’s throat, to play louder while using fewer watts than box systems.

Whether painted or oil-finished, in black walnut or cherry or hard maple, A for Ara’s output is best experienced by centering oneself between the pair set eight to 16 feet apart and about three feet from a back wall. This might be challenging in a cramped city apartment. But listen: proper positioning will not only let the speakers realize their full audio potential, but live up to their name, the Latin word for altar.

Since its completion in 1900, the five-story cast-iron building at the corner of New York City’s Canal and Wooster Streets has seen its share of pivotal moments. It outlived the manufacturing boom it was erected to serve, and witnessed the birth of crucial art scenes in SoHo and then in TriBeCa, along with shifting demographics and at least two pandemics. After a 2018 facelift and a full rethinking of its basement and ground floor courtesy of conceptual minimalists Worrell Yeung, it’s now a 6,000-square-foot home to Canal Projects, a new arts organization devoted to “supporting forward-thinking international artists at pivotal moments in their careers.”

An entry space wrapped in patinated bronze panels greets visitors, followed by a gallery space with a free-standing reception desk by Zachary Taube. Worrell Yeung installed new white oak flooring and painted the public restroom a bold orange, but thankfully preserved the building’s ten characteristic columns, half of cast iron and half of wide flange steel. Behind a gallery wall, the cellar stair leads to a lower level, with a corridor for video screenings and floating wall for film projections. The team exposed the ceiling’s timber joists and masonry foundation walls, all illuminated by a new light cove and steel sidewalk light vaults.

To inaugurate the gallery, the “poetic research unit” Shanzhai Lyric has set up an ersatz office to study the subterranean Canal Street demimondes the building calls neighbors at this particular moment.

One of the past year’s most jarring stories was the arrival of AI to the masses. Image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E drew both interest and ire with their ability to create realistic images and illustrations simply by typing short descriptions into a text box. Now, the same company has developed an AI chatbot that can provide information in simple sentences, explain concepts in clear terms, and even generate business strategies from scratch. Ask ChatGPT a simple question and, using a large neural network, the bot spits out human-like text within seconds.

ChatGPT’s release has even led Google to declare a “code red,” meaning it may pose a threat to the tech giant’s core search business. Though language models like ChatGPT can potentially upend a wide range of industries, we’re only starting to uncover their true capabilities. Teachers have already caught students using the bot to plagiarize essays, causing New York City public schools to ban access. Wariness about AI’s impact on the future is sure to intensify this year and beyond as mainstream adoption grows, so we decided to test ChatGPT by conducting an interview with it about its capabilities and potential to cause major disruption for creative professionals.

Art + Loom is a bespoke rug company based in Miami, Florida. Founded almost 10 years ago by designer Samantha Gallacher, Art + Loom’s mission is to bring fine art to the floor in homes around the world. Each rug is individually designed by Gallacher and hand-made in Nepal or India using techniques handed down over generations. Art + Loom works with top designers, collaborates with cutting-edge artists, and continues to push the bounds of rug design and construction.

Surface Says: A roster of collaborations with prominent creatives and Gallacher’s dedication to overcoming challenges posed by the built environment positions Art + Loom where art and design meet.

Melissa Pérez Puga’s chocolate bites cleverly mimic the texture of coral reefs.

There’s growing evidence that the universe is connected by giant structures.

This show returns Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station to its industrial past.

A slightly unnerving device fact-checks whether or not you actually LOL-ed.