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Tales of a Blerd Ballerina
The Vortex Tapas Series 2021 begins with a new work-in-progress production of Valoneecia Tolbert’s Tales of a Blerd Ballerina. Presented both as live broadcasts each evening and with limited in-person seating opportunities at the VORTEX, this play centers the Blerd (black nerd) experience, embracing diverse communities and generating vital conversations around black identity, pulling concepts and style from the Afro-Diaspora and Jazz Aesthetic within stories of growing up as a Blerd child of the Eighties. Directed by Florinda Bryant.Through April 18 -
Arts
Theatre
The Cohen New Works Festival
UT Austin presents the biennial Cohen New Works Festival, the largest collegiate festival of its kind, this year featuring 33 all-new works by undergraduate and graduate students. The virtual event will include live and pre-recorded performances, digital installations, and daily panel discussions with professional artists.Through April 16. Donations accepted. -
Arts
Theatre
The Office! A Murder Mystery Parody
Wait, live theatre? And it's outside? And it's a murder mystery? And it's based in the, uh, let's call it the Dunder-Mifflinverse? Yes! The Paramount presents Bob and Tobly McSmith's immersive theatrical diversion in which characters from "The Office" will journey with you along five walkable locations Downtown as they "use their keen detective skills to find clues, catch red herrings, plant evidence, and lock up the Scranton Strangler."Through April 25. Wed.-Sun., multiple times daily. $39.50. -
Arts
Dance
Ballet Austin: Preludes/Beginnings
Filmed at the historic Scottish Rite Theater and set to Frédéric Chopin’s 24 Preludes for solo piano, Stephen Mills' fantastic new dancework centers around the tradition of a "ghost light" left on stage at night to keep the ghosts from haunting, the filmed performance imagining ghosts coming out to dance through the night, returning to the rafters before dawn.Available for viewing through April 25. Free. -
Arts
Theatre
Hold Me Well
Shrewd Productions presents this virtual world premiere of Eva Suter’s sci-fi re-envisioning of Shakespeare's Othello, depicting "a desolate, Central Texas inhabited solely by women after a catastrophic war has eradicated the male population. With the threat of another war and a new romance quickly unfolding before them, five women bound by the tragedy must entrust their lives to one another in order to save themselves and humanity." (Well, damn – count us in on that action, tyvm.) Directed by Rudy Ramirez, starring Ellie McBride, Hayley Armstrong, Elizabeth Mason, Emily Rankin, and Taylor Flanagan. Note: Click here to view the original trailer for the show.Through April 30. $8. -
Arts
Theatre
Natatorium
How far would you go for The Good Life? Listen: 20-something couple Jules and Ash and their gamer neighbors Devon and Chris are trapped in an unending cycle of late rent, mounting debt, and day-old pizza. Across from their shitty apartment complex is Natatorium, a premier gated community full of gleaming mansions, sparkling pools, and possibilities ripe for the taking. You will help decide the fate of these would-be thieves as they reach for a shinier life – even if that means taking down a mega-rich corporate asshole or two along the way.: Intrigued? This new show is from improvised-music conductor Kenzie Slottow and director Kaci Beeler in collaboration with Density512 and American Berserk Theatre. So, OK, now we know the premise, and we can trust it'll be done well. Also, "Natatorium pushes the limits of virtual performance technology to combine a chamber ensemble of six musicians with a 10-person cast of improvising actors." And the cast and crew will perform live from Austin and six other U.S. cities, with each night a unique, unrepeatable experience. So this, we reckon, will be one of those online livestream things that are totally worth seeing, not just a theatrical stopgap but another of those odd good things to come out of the pandemic, tempting us to say "Hey – thanks, 'ronas!" even as we continue to kick the virus's ass. Note: This show features adult language and themes of violence.Fri., April 16, 8pm; Sun., April 18, 2pm. $10. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Northern-Southern: Baton
This is a group show by relay, begun in July of 2020 as a method of socially distancing a community in the height of the pandemic: Artists took turns alone in the space, each adding to the exhibition. Now, as it nears its close, the exhibition resembles a community in which work converses and overlaps. With Adreon Henry, Vy Ngo, Dawn Okoro, Leon Alesi, Matt Steinke, Sev Coursen, Stella Alesi, and more.Closing reception: Sat., July 24, 3-9pm -
Arts
Theatre
The Spin
Street Corner Arts presents a livestreamed production of this new dark comedy produced specifically for the virtual medium. Listen: "When the Public Works Director of a major city confesses to a horrible crime, a team of spin doctors are brought in at the last possible second to pull off a tough assignment: prepare the Mayor’s top aide for a crucial news interview mid-pandemic, distance City Hall from the controversy, and point the public’s attention elsewhere. And do it entirely over video-conferencing." Spenser Davis wrote and directs this modern thriller that's expertly embodied by Zac Carr, Michael Galvan, Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, Natalie Garcia, Jason Graf, Kelsey Mazak, Mike Ooi, Shariba Rivers, and Andrea Skola Summers – with realtime screen management by Morgan Brochu. And, look: Here's a trailer for the show!Through April 25. Thu.-Sun., 8pm. Donations accepted. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Art for the People Gallery: Such Miracles Among Us
Kate Fitzpatrick's work enlivens this gallery's first solo show of 2021, the artist's painted depictions of wildlife a colorful delight for the eyes.Through June 6 -
Arts
Visual Arts
ARTUS Co: End In the Beginning
This is a duo exhibition of mid-to-large oil paintings and photography by Shelby Sult and Maggie Lyon that "represent each artist's personal truths through the lens of time."Through April 2510000 Research #118 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Atelier Dojo: Remote Studios
The local powerhouse of figurative painting, the art school that's the smart school for artists of all kinds, they've got a painting-along-at-home series going to help you keep your skills honed in these socially restrictive times, featuring live costumed models posing on camera and a thriving community of creatives rendering that lovely human biotecture from their separate studios. "Join us for a three-hour costumed-model drawing session. Use any supplies you wish, listen to music, share your work, chat with others. It’s a great way to stay connected with your art community!"Tuesdays, 1:30-4:30pm; Fridays, 6:30-9:30pm; Saturdays, 9:30-12:30pm. $5. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Bale Creek Allen Gallery: Sweet Black Angel
The newest show at BCA is a collection of Gary Wong's complex layerings of images and text. The artist says: "As an Asian American, I feel outside. As an artist, I have no problem. As an Asian American artist, I have sometimes been made to feel that Asians are supposed to have a special mystique and design sense. I have never known what that is supposed to mean but I know I’m not a designer. I am an American with Chinese heritage. I am an artist whose eyes are trained in the language of paint and whose work meanders through the pantheon of American Abstract Painting and the problems inherent in the genre and the discovering one’s own voice in the process."Through May 9 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Behind the Scenes: Art of the Hollywood Backdrop
Visit mid-century Hollywood without leaving Austin through an up-close view of these Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio assets. This first-ever public viewing of 12 historic Golden Age of Film backdrops provides a look into the nearly lost art of hand-painted Hollywood scenic art. Bonus: Re-creations of other backdrops in the collection, as painted by UT scenic art students training with Karen Maness. And, look: Robert Faires reports on the show right here.Extended through April 18. $5-12. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Big Medium: W I L D L I F E
Inspired by stories of nature regenerating and reclaiming space during the Covid-19 pandemic, Manik Raj Nakra's W I L D L I F E show examines what happens when humanity removes itself from the natural world. The exhibition also introduces a new material for the artist: The ceremonial bindi, worn for centuries on the forehead in Indian culture for spiritual, traditional, and fashion reasons.Through May 1. Thu.-Sat., noon-6pm, by appointment -
Arts
Visual Arts
Camiba Art: Since Last We Met
What do you get when you rescue a discarded Leclerc table loom from the curb during a neighborhood walk? If you're acclaimed ceramic artist Jen Rose, you use the knowledge you gained about weaving in college and you integrate that weaving into your porcelain practice. What do you get if you visit Rose's latest show of works, now on display at this fine gallery? An eyeful of sculptural creations, threaded multiples, that are hung, draped, twisted, and manipulated toward a pattern-rich kinesis. This show, tell you what, it's sublime.Through May 15 -
Arts
Visual Arts
ChingonX Fire: Group Exhibit
Inspired by the Mexican American Cultural Center's annual La Mujer celebration – and by the first feminist of the New World, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz – this online group exhibit is curated by April Garcia and features womxn-identifying and nongender-specific artists whose artwork is tied to activism, feminism, cultural. and gender identity storytelling, environmental protection, and socioeconomic parity.Free. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Co-Lab Projects: A Wished For and Welcome Guest
This is Co-Lab's first exhibition in and around the newly realized culvert gallery at their Glissman property. "As a nod to our history," says the gallery's Sean Gaulager, "and in the sentiment of gathering our community once more, this reopening exhibition includes 21 artists who have shown with us in the past." Note: Arts Editor Robert Faires reviewed the show right here.Closing reception: Sat., May 29, 6-10pm5419 Glissman -
Arts
Comedy
ColdTowne Theater
ColdTowne's new brick-and-mortar place is totally open, and who knows what they'll shake this city with next? But one truth remains: ColdTowne is a designated den of gold, baby, sweet comedy gold. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Davis Gallery: Altered Allusions
When an image is stripped of its clarity, we are left with two things: an allusion to something familiar and the viewer's interpretation. These provocative new works by Nate Szarmach explore the space between image and interpretation, uncovering the ways that familiar religious imagery, cultural christianity, and personal history influence our spirituality. Our Robert Faires reviews the show right here.Through April 24 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Flatbed Press: Transcending Language
This is a collection of works created by artists at Flatbed whose practice has focused entirely on non-objective abstraction, the exhibition curated out of the studio's deep archive of works from the 30 years they've operated as a collaborative print studio in Austin. "It might seem as if each artist has developed a new language that speaks perfectly to us without translation. As music can transcend words, so visual abstraction transcends audible language as well." Including works by Taiko Chandler (Denver, CO), Ann Conner (Wilmington, NC), John Robert Craft (Clarendon, TX,) Anna Craycroft (New York, NY), Anthony DiMichele (Friday Bay, WA), Winston Lee Mascarenhas (Dallas, TX), Denny McCoy (Wimberley, TX), Samson Mnisi (Johannesburg, South Africa), Greg Murr (Berlin, Germany), John OBuck (New York, NY), John Pavlicek (Houston, TX), Larry Scholder (Dallas, TX), Joe Segal (St. Augustine, FL), Bettie Ward (Santa Fe, NM), and Joan Winter (Dallas, TX).Through May 1. Wed.-Fri., 10am-5pm -
Arts
Visual Arts
grayDUCK Gallery: It’s Only BarrioPOP But I Like It
Cande Aguilar (b. 1972, Brownsville, Texas) is a self-taught artist who reflects on border culture through his distinctive style, an amalgamation sprung by characters, colors, and street phenomena.Through May 23. Check it out on Saturdays, noon-6pm, or by appointment -
Arts
Visual Arts
ICOSA Gallery: Vessel
Here's a show of new works by Alyssa Taylor Wendt and Brooke Gassiot, a gathering of diverse and inhabited forms, wherein the acclaimed creators examine "the containers of spiritual and mnemonic residue" via video installation, staged production stills, drawing, performance, and sculpture.Through May 8 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Inspired Minds Art Center: Digibilities
This is out in Buda, yes – but it's Leslie Kell. The digital artist presents her works from the Other Side collection and her mesmerizing video art. Bonus: Art in a diversity of mediums by Lisa Zinna, Chalda Maloff, Caroline Walker, Paul McGuire, and Ronald Gross.Through April 17Inspired Minds Art Center, 121 Main, Buda -
Arts
Visual Arts
Ivester Contemporary: it's kinda like that
This exhibition of new work by Fort Worth-based artist Rachel Livedalen "weaves the joy, color, and design of 90s' Girl Power with images and text pulled directly from Art History textbooks, challenging the hierarchy of the Arts by translating techniques associated with femininity and craft into the traditionally respected medium of paint on canvas." It's bright, bold, and (we daresay) pretty damn badass.Through May 15 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Laguna Gloria
This local treasure of a venue, run by those Contemporary Austin folks who also bring us the Jones Center shows Downtown, is all about the outdoors – which is perfect for these trickily navigated times of ours, n'est-ce pas? Recommended: Stop by and breathe in the air, enjoy the lawns and gardens and the many examples of world-class sculpture arrayed across the property, and (as Frankie used to say) r-e-l-a-x.Thu.-Fri., 9am-noon; Sat.-Sun., 9am-3pm -
Arts
Visual Arts
Landmarks: Self-Guided Walking Tour
Use your smartphone to access self-guided tours of the outdoor public art sited by UT's award-winning Landmarks program any time you feel like it. BONUS: There's also a free, docent-led tour starting at Marc Quinn's "Spiral of the Galaxy" (1501 Red River) on Sun., Jan. 8, 11am. -
Arts
Visual Arts
Link & Pin Gallery: Dogs In Borderlandia
Through painting, drawing, video, and performance, Andrea Muñoz Martinez invites people to contemplate the beauty that exists in a land where people negotiate their place, where people thrive and struggle, and where people resist the idea of unjust borders: Borderlandia. Here's Robert Faires' review of the show.Through April 18. Thu.-Sat., 1-5pm -
Arts
Visual Arts
Lora Reynolds Gallery: Twenty-Eight Skies
Witness these large new works on paper by Jason Middlebrook, in the artist's fifth show at the gallery. "Much of this work can be imagined as bearing witness to a mortal struggle between man and nature," say the gallery notes, "a struggle between frenetic geometric patterns and the humble flora we too often overlook and take for granted."Through June 19 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Lydia Street Gallery: Two
This exhibition will be the first time that artists Kathy McCarty and David Thornberry, married for 22 years now, have shown their work together. She's been painting grackles, grackles, and grackles; he's been doing portraits based on old photos and video stillshots; now here's the impossible aviary of their work on display at Lydia Street. Recommended!Through April 28 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Mexic-Arte Museum: Mexico, the Border, and Beyond
Mexic-Arte Museum presents an exhibition of selections from the Juan Antonio Sandoval Jr. collection, an array of work that is considered one of the most important Latinx art collections in the United States.Through May 30 -
Arts
Visual Arts
OUTSIDE In
This is a pop-up art show from Raasin in the Sun and Something Cool Studios, featuring an amazing lineup of muralists, street artists, and fine artists who bring the city’s outdoor vibe inside for an immersive experience in a unique temporary exhibition.Through April 30. Fri., 4-8pm; Sat.-Sun., noon-6pm914 Congress -
Arts
Visual Arts
Prizer Arts & Letters: Infinite Essence
Responding to images of police killings of Black people, the Pittsburgh-based queer Nigerian-Swedish-American multimedia artist Mikael Owunna has worked to articulate an alternative vision of the Black body as the incarnation of the eternal cosmos. Using his engineering background, Owunna built a camera flash that transmits only ultraviolet light, and in each photoshoot he begins by hand painting his sitters’ nude bodies with fluorescent paints that glow under ultraviolet light. Yes, this looks amazing. Note: In addition to full entry appointments, there's nighttime front-window viewing every evening, 7-11pm.Through May 8. By appointment, Fri.-Sun., noon-5pm -
Arts
Visual Arts
Recspec Gallery: Holy Ghosts
This collection of new work by illustrators and printmakers Aaron deGruyter and Tyler Winters Skaggs is a requiem for the Catholic-soaked Chihuahuan desert of the Mesilla Valley.Through April 30 -
Arts
Visual Arts
The Blanton: From the Collection of Jack Shear
In 1999, the photographer and art collector Jack Shear co-organized an exhibition at New York’s Drawing Center: "Drawn from Artist’s Collections." This new show at the Blanton is curated by Shear "in an exploratory, free-flowing manner in which the forms, compositions and colors on the sheets respond to one another in a playful, non-traditional hang."Through Aug. 22 -
Arts
Visual Arts
The Blanton: Leo Steinberg’s Library of Prints
Leo Steinberg's wide-ranging scholarship addresses such canonical artists as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns. Here the Blanton presents selections from the scholar's vast collection – an impressive array of highlights from the European printmaking tradition.Through May 9 -
Arts
Visual Arts
The Contemporary Austin: "I'm" and "Bible Eye"
Austin-born and internationally acclaimed, Deborah Roberts critiques notions of beauty, the body, race, and identity in contemporary society through the lens of Black children. (Her first solo museum presentation in Texas, "I'm," is part of The Contemporary Austin's participation in the Feminist Art Coalition – a nationwide initiative of art institutions to generate awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action through exhibitions and events.) Norway's Torbjørn Rødland works with analog technology and readymade spaces to create photographs that render the everyday uncanny. His images blend the cool, seductive aestheticism of commercial and fashion photography with the layered complexity of a conceptual practice, resulting in ambivalent perspectives that both attract and repulse.Through Aug. 15 -
Arts
Visual Arts
Wally Workman Gallery: Malcolm Bucknall
One of this city's favorite artists – and probably the only one whose work appears as a Jesus Lizard album cover and on the walls of the WWG – Malcolm Bucknall has lately immersed himself in works by artists such as Hieronymous Bosch and Lucas Cranach the Elder. (Appropriately, those artists created work during the plagues that ravaged Europe centuries before our current pandemic. And before there was, you know, the internets.) Recommendation: You'll want to see the gorgeous conflagrations of realism and surrealism this modern maestro has wrought with his meticulous oils.Through April 24 -
Arts
Visual Arts
West Chelsea Contemporary: Provocateurs
This is the third exhibition from WCC since its reopening last fall. "Provocateurs" provides a unique chance for visitors to see, discover, and collect internationally recognized artists like Raphael Mazzucco, Andy Warhol, Mickalane Thomas, the Connor Brothers, RETNA, Jenny Holzer, and more – in the context of a diverse show where power lies in the interpretation and the art dares to look back.Through May 9. Mon.-Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., noon-6pm -
Arts
Visual Arts
Wyld Gallery
This is Ray Donley's gallery of art by Native Americans, located in that company of artistic glory called Canopy and resplendent with creations from the original people of our struggling country.Call for appointment
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