- Deborah Grotfeldt

Deborah Grotfeldt Deborah Grotfeldt is an artist/organizer who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Trained as a photographer, for eight years she was the Assistant Director of Diverse Works, Houston’s premiere alternative art space where she organized and curated exhibitions, readings, and performance. In 1993, she co-founded Project Row Houses, a two-block site of 22 abandoned shotgunhouses that were transformed into a public art and cultural community development project in one of Houston’s oldest and poorest African American neighborhoods. Since then, PRH controls six blocks including the Eldorado Ballroom, the oldest black music venue in the city and has expanded the canvas to 35 blocks. This work has garnered recognition by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Keystone Award from the American Institute of Architects, and the Rudy Bruner Award for Excellence in the Urban Environment. In addition to Project Row Houses, Grotfeldt has developed projects in the Watts area of Los Angeles; East St. Louis, Illinois; the May Street Project in Philadelphia; and an ongoing project in Detroit, Michigan. Grotfeldt subscribes to the Conceptualists’ idea that the most exciting art might still be buried in social energies not yet recognized as art. These energies are out there, waiting for artists to plug into them, potential fuel for the expansion of what art can mean. Biography