Home Events Arts Visual Arts

Visual Arts for Thu., May 15
Events
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Art & Parks Tour

    This sweet opportunity comes to us from the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Pease Park Conservancy, and Ride Bikes Austin – so we know it's a damned good thing indeed. Take the self-guided Art & Parks Tour to explore the best of what Downtown Austin art and parks have to offer through this selection of curated murals, artworks, and green spaces. You can sign up anytime, so click that URL and get ready to learn the most vibrantly visual parts of your city soon – live and in person.
  • 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.
OPENING
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Affordable Art Fair

    Couldn’t fuel your private jet for Art Basel this year? Can’t afford even a painting of a private jet? That’s where you may be wrong, as the Affordable Art Fair may be the way to get an original work on your walls. The traveling international celebration of visual media always highlights local artists at each stop, so you have your chance to purchase paintings, prints, and more curated by Austin galleries and institutions like Art From the Streets and Canopy Collective alongside London’s Quantum Contemporary Art, Lumas from Berlin, and Paris’ Galerie Duret. – Richard Whittaker
    May 15-18
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Friends Fair

    Gallery supergroup FOG started in 2023 with Jill Schroeder from grayDUCK Gallery, Phillip Niemeyer of Northern-Southern, Kevin Ivester of Ivester Contemporary, Jill McLennon of McLennon Pen Co. Gallery, and the team of Ricky Morales and Meredith Williams at Martha’s Contemporary. Their shows, many highlighting local artists, open up a world of contemporary art to Austin. Enter: the Friends Fair, which runs from this Thursday, May 15, through Saturday, May 17. The fair covers two floors of the Loren Hotel by Lady Bird Lake, with 12 rooms dedicated to displays. FOG’s fair isn’t just about collecting. It’s about Austin coming together to spotlight how revolutionary this grassroots art scene is. - Cat McCarrey
    May 15-17
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Margie Criner: “Sound & Vision”

    Hailing from Chicago, artist Margie Criner works in sculpture and miniatures. How so? Her unique sculptural works – themselves impressive patchworks of materials from wool to actual hornets’ nests – feature peepholes through which viewers may glance tiny tableaux. These miniature worlds all center music, such as her pinky-finger-sized record store, Needle on the Records, with vintage posters plastered across its small interior walls. “The music theme isn’t always literal,” explains Criner, “but background sounds within the space, specific to what I’m processing. Kind of like how there’s music playing at the grocery store, that music is everywhere.” – James Scott
    Through June 14
  • Community

    Events

    “Roots Unveiled: Exploring the Chinese Experience”

    Among the many anti-civil rights bills creeping their way through the Texas Legislature is Senate Bill 17, which would bar Chinese and many other Asian citizens from buying land here. Denounced by detractors as racist and reminiscent of 19th-century laws targeting Asian immigrants, its 2023 origins, along with growing anti-Asian sentiment after the pandemic, inspired Houston artist Jane Xu to found the multi-city Asian American Art & Culture Initiative and initiate this multidisciplinary exhibit. Curated by renowned international independent curator Sylvia XuHua Zhan, it brings in-depth research and archives along with work from a wide range of artists to offer a look at the rich history of Chinese Americans in Texas. Opening reception is Sunday, May 18, noon. – Kat McNevins
    Through August 31; opening reception, May 18
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    “The Everyman”

    I’ve been having a lot of “girl who’s going to be okay” moments as I reconnect with my earnest, optimistic side, so I’m excited for “The Everyman,” a group show curated by visual artist and musician Lisa Alley that celebrates the beauty in the small things – from commonplace occurrences to the working-class heroes that give this exhibit its name. Alley – who plays in local acts the Well, Mugger, and TV’s Daniel – shows her paintings alongside a slew of familiar names, including Parquet Courts’ A. Savage, Never’s Emily No Good, and photographer Pooneh Ghana. Everyone has the ability to create something exceptional, this Bolm Arts project assures us. – Carys Anderson
    Through June 7
ONGOING
  • 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

    Martha's Contemporary: Hokey Pokey + What You See Is What You Get

    Here's a two-person exhibition that features painting, installation, videography, and sculpture by Moll Brau and Wes Thompson. It's a deep dive into a pool of loneliness, triumph, and rebirth. It's a forest of mazes where fireflies provide the light. It's a show of creations from a pair of terrific, hardworking local artists and you don't want to miss it.
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Museum of Illusions

    Enter the fascinating world of illusions in this new venue that boasts a stunning array of intriguing visual, sensory, and educational experiences among new, unexplored optical wonderments.
    11010 Domain #100
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Old Bakery Gallery: Fantastical Flora

    This multimedia exhibition is a comprehensive exploration of the beauty of botanical forms, expressed realistically and in the abstract, featuring the work of local artist Francine Funke.
    Opening reception: Sat., Jan. 20, 1-4pm. Free.  
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Sev Coursen: “Portable Objects”

    For the 45th in their ongoing Window Dressing series, ICOSA pretties up their outward facing exhibition space with the work of Austin-based artist Sev Coursen. Viewable from this coming Monday until next Sunday are Coursen’s many foldable objects, created by him to be “self-contained sculptures” which may collapse, travel, and expand at the whims of their presenting environment. These expansion and collapsing points come from multiple features, including hand-milled wooden articulated hinges. Swing by to see these wonders through ICOSA’s front window, or pop in on May 16 to meet the artist at his reception, 7-9pm. – James Scott
    May 12-18
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Stephen L. Clark Gallery: Kate Breakey

    This exhibition of new work by Kate Breakey showcases hand-colored photography of the natural world, particularly of Texan and Australian landscapes, animals, and insects.
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    The Museum of Natural & Artificial Ephemerata

    This place, ah, it's one of our favorite places in the entire city; and of course they're properly corona-closed. But check 'em out online right now – it's a rich, wonder-filled website – to whet your appetite for when things get back to … uh … are we still calling it "normal," these days?
  • Arts

    Visual Arts

    Words and Wonder: Rediscovering Children’s Literature

    One of the pleasures of having a first-rate research center and archive in town is how the Harry Ransom Center will regularly comb through its own vast holdings and hand-pick gems to present in a new context. Hence the HRC’s latest exhibit, “Words and Wonder: Rediscovering Children’s Literature,” which pulls from its manuscript, art, photography, film, and performing arts holdings to spotlight early 20th-century authors and illustrators catering to a young readership. The exhibit includes magic lantern slides from Aesop’s Fables, John Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Ernest H. Shepard’s indelible images from the Hundred Acre Wood, among other treats. Runs through August 17. – Kimberley Jones
    Through August 17
  • 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

Information is power. Support the free press, so we can support Austin.   Support the Chronicle