Big Medium, the community-empowering arts organization behind the annual Austin Studio Tours and so much else that’s good and creative in this town, will be leaving Canopy in the spring.
Yes, that’s the Canopy complex at 916 Springdale, a veritable hive of artist studios and galleries, the busy happy hub of cultural power and celebration that Big Medium’s anchored for more than 10 years. Ivester Contemporary is there. And Modern Rocks Gallery. ICOSA. Yard Dog. Austin’s professional epicenter of figurative painting practice, Atelier Dojo.
(We’ll remind you that the excellent Sa-Ten cafe on Airport is closing all too soon, but the Sa-Ten in Canopy remains to serve a hungry public some of the finest coffee and casual meals in town.)
As Big Medium’s executive director Shea Little reveals in a recent announcement, “Big Medium has grown and learned so much from our time at Canopy, and we look forward to using that knowledge and experience to build another arts complex in the future and our permanent home. Our plans will take some years to achieve, in the meantime, we will be relocating to a new temporary home. We’ll be sharing more about our new home in the coming months, with plans of having a big party to kick off our new space with our first exhibition by José Villalobos.”
(Right now the gallery has a multisensory exhibition by Christina Moser. And the final show, before they skeedaddle to parts yet undivulged, will feature recent Tito’s Prize winner Tammie Rubin.)
Says Little, in closing: “We are excited about our big changes and our future vision for Big Medium. I hope you will continue to support what we do and consider investing more in our work so that we can continue to advance the careers of artists. We are about a month away from Amplify Austin Day, and that is a great time to support Big Medium in helping us move to a new home and build on our 20-plus years of art experiences in Austin and across Texas.”
This article appears in January 27 • 2023.