McLennon Pen Co.’s two-year run in Austin, despite its hidden location in a tiny bungalow next to Nixta Taqueria, has attracted some big names of the beefier New York and L.A. art worlds to Austin. Now, having launched an official roster of 10 represented artists, the small gallery is taking another step toward the big time with a move to West Fifth Street.
At the new space’s packed inaugural exhibition last Thursday, it was clear: McLennon Pen Co. is a leader in the Austin art scene. And that scene, if the successful Friends Fair in May – put on by dealers of McLennon, Ivester Contemporary, Northern-Southern, Martha’s, and grayDUCK galleries – is any indication, might be joining a larger national conversation.
“The house gallery was always kind of meant to be temporary,” says owner and gallerist Jill McLennon. On East 12th Street, the gallery was open by appointment only due to a lack of foot traffic. Now, the fancy new digs across from Better Half are advertised by a custom neon sign by The Neon Jungle’s Evan Voyles that pays homage to the gallery’s namesake, McLennon’s grandfather’s Chicago pen shop that opened in 1934.
The gallery joins stalwarts Lora Reynolds Gallery, Wally Workman Gallery, and West Chelsea Contemporary in putting down roots in Clarksville. And other up-and-comers too – the same week of its opening, Martha’s unveiled its new location in the West Sixth luxury retail center Westside Market.
Having launched an official roster of 10 represented artists, the small gallery is taking another step toward the big time.
Fittingly, Austin-based Ben Siekierski’s sly commentary on said neighborhood, with its casual surveillance and conspicuous wealth, is the first thing that greets you in the space. Winking spyware is installed in the form of an owl figurine with a camera in its eye, while Greenpoint-based Patrick Quinn’s Dog Humping Machine Gun (exactly what it sounds like) piggybacks off that surrealism with an immediate memelike sensibility. Quinn’s work sets the hyper-current tone of the show along with Lindsey Lascaux’s Explosion Study, carrying the internet nostalgia collage aesthetic through. L.A.-by-way-of-Austin photographer Rosie Clements offers sun-kissed prints of ass cheeks (High Beam Strobe) and sexy cowboys (Save a Horse) on the novel medium of bubble wrap. Peter McRury’s three airbrush paintings juxtapose the playful work around them with a moody color palette and almost old-master imagery (Heads evokes a funhouse Mona Lisa).
It’s no surprise that an assemblage of young, relevant artists would make work born of the internet. McLennon says “many artists are using AI to start an idea.” Even those working with comparatively hands-on materials – like Ashley Swarts, an Austin-based collage artist – use it to begin. “Swarts used AI to make sort of fake-Lichtenstein, cartoonish templates, and then she used collage to fill in those spaces,” explains McLennon. In an eerie backlit print, Lascaux shows us what looks like a collection of vintage lamps you might scroll through on Etsy, but “they’re not like existing real-life lamps. They’re a combination of many lamps [using AI],” McLennon clarifies. “It’s just another medium for them to play around in,” she says.
As much as the exhibition is concerned with the world online, there are some works concerned with the natural world or more omnipresent cultural through lines: Slater Reid Sousley’s Bee Hive Pond is a calm pastoral scene painted in acrylic – but among its cohort, the brushstrokes take on the look of a pixelated jpeg. Audrey Rodriguez’s Life Ain’t Fare, a tiny diorama in the corner of the gallery floor, is a polymer clay New York subway stairwell, its tiles spelling out melancholic ruminations on transactional city life: “I am chosen, bought.”
McLennon says 2,200 people attended May’s inaugural Friends Fair, a seminal moment in Austin’s art world progression, and “having some of those out-of-town galleries come in was such a big deal.” Most of the artists on her new roster hail from Austin, and many have made names for themselves amongst more competitive and connected art worlds: Quinn’s work has graced a Lil Ugly Mane album cover and been curated by Ella Emhoff; McRury has been commissioned by New Balance for Paris Fashion Week.
A New York transplant herself, McLennon says she originally thought she “would be bringing artists to Austin, and that’s what was gonna set me apart from the existing galleries. But then once I was here, I naturally started finding artists in Austin that I think are really amazing.”
Austin’s artists have always punched above their weight, but our growing city’s galleries are now starting to offer something very new for what still sometimes feels like a small town: a scene that Juxtapoz mag might deem fit to write about.
McLennon Pen Co. is open Tuesday through Friday from 11am to 6pm and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4pm.
“Tenfold”
McLennon Pen Co.
Through July 12
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this review referred to Martha’s as its previous name, Martha’s Contemporary.
This article appears in June 13 • 2025.