The exhibition sets the tone for what Bond hopes to accomplish with her new gallery, namely to “put a hyper local art scene within a global context.”
The daughter of oil and gas workers, Bond grew up moving around the Houston area, living at points in Greenspoint, South Park, Midtown and Missouri City.
She credits a summer workshop at Project Row Houses and concerts at Helios (now known as Avant Garden) in Montrose with exposing her to art as a child. But it wasn’t until she moved to Chicago for college that her interest in the subject really piqued.
There, she served on a number of arts organizations and started Bond Creative Advisors, an art consulting group, while practicing photography herself. After 13 years, she moved back to Houston in 2020 to take a role as deputy director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where she was tasked with driving “systemic change.”
Bond said she is proud of her time at CAMH — which included the conception of next summer’s exhibition “Ming Smith: Feeling the Future” and the development of the museum’s CAMHLAB residency program — but felt she could have a greater effect in a space of her own.
“A big part of it was looking at where I could best be of service to the Houston arts ecosystem and beyond, and how I could best leverage relationships to build space for that ecosystem to continue to elevate in a way I and many other creators envision,” Bond said.
“What I want to focus on is what we create here, and encourage Houstonians to see what we have here a bit differently. This is us,” she said, pointing to pieces by local artists Colby Deal, Greg Noire, Lanecia Rouse Tinsley and others.
Deal — whose photographs of Black life in Houston have made him a rising star in the art world, according to Bond — said being exhibited alongside local and international artists, such as Adama Delphine Fawundu, benefits everyone involved.
“Janice has paved the way, with a notable and beautiful space, that she can reach out her hand to help people and artists by spreading their work and their message,” Deal said.
Art is Bond joins a powerful roster of Houston galleries at the hulking gray arts building on Montrose near the Southwest Freeway.
Barbara Davis, a gallerist in the building for over a decade, said Bond is a welcome addition for “her great eye” and her “special activations.” Bond has said she plans to use the gallery as a project space for artist collaborations, workshops and more, and she has already partnered with Kindred Stories, the Black woman-owned bookstore in Third Ward, to sell art books out of the gallery.
“She’s done curation, she has an international reputation and she’ll be bringing in new ideas. It’s a huge addition to the gallery scene in Houston,” Davis said.
At the grand opening Friday, Bond said she could already see her vision taking shape.
“I kept saying, ‘It’s looking really Houston in here,’ in the best way, meaning that you got to see how diverse Houston is in a number of different ways,” Bond said.