HOUSTON, TEXAS.- The Contemporary Arts Museum presents today “Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith,” on view through June 15, 2003. Although best known for her revolutionary contributions to the worlds of music and poetry, Patti Smith is also an accomplished visual artist whose drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. Inspired by artists such as William Blake and Antonin Artaud, her art is a powerful fusion of image and text. Among the objects to be shown are original manuscripts of her writing, source material for her work in various media, and her seminal and rarely seen videos and films, including Still/Moving, an early collaboration between Smith and her friend and collaborator, Robert Mapplethorpe. Photographs of Smith by Mapplethorpe are also included. Patti Smith first gained critical attention in the early 1970s as a pioneering poet and performer who burst onto the downtown New York scene centered around St. Marks Church. After performing at the fledgling underground music club CBGB, Smith was the first of a new breed of musicians to be signed by a major record label. Simultaneously with the development of her musical career, Smith expanded her work in the visual arts. Her latest series of large-scale drawings are inspired by the 9/11World Trade Center attacks. Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith is organized by the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and curated by John Smith, exhibition curator and archivist. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Warhol that contains a variety of critical essays, reproductions of exhibited work, and documentation on the artist’s career. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston will publish an abbreviated Perspectives-format catalogue to accompany the project, the 137th exhibition in this long-running series.