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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. -
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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
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Aisha Imdad: “The Allegorical Gardens”
Gardens loom large in legend. Think the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Shalimar Gardens, the Garden of Eden: each bursting with symbolic beauty, dripping with promises of life and growth. Artist Aisha Imdad explores the lush intricacies of this verdant imagery. Her watercolor works delve into literary and mythological gardens, inspired by Indian, Mughal, and Persian frescos. Each invites closer introspection, a desire to immerse in the vibrant world of her works. Each intricate blossom speck, or gilded turn of a bird wing, vibrates with idealized life. Imdad’s art portrays the possibilities of paradise. – Cat McCarreyThrough July 3
CLOSING
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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 McCarreyMay 15-17
ONGOING
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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 WhittakerMay 15-18 -
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Creekside Studio
Creekside Studio is a women-owned printmaking studio and gallery, located in Canopy on the Eastside, specializing in fine art prints pulled by hand using archival materials and matrices: engravings, photogravure etchings, monotypes, woodcuts, copperplate etchings, and linocut.Saturdays, noon-1pm916 Springdale, Bldg 2 #103B -
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Dana Robinson: “The Middle Distance”
Ivester Contemporary, that purveyor of meticulously curated duo shows at its Canopy space on Springdale, offers a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Dana Robinson this spring, featuring 12 delicate acrylic, ink, and fabric paintings with ironically punchy names. The surfaces almost recall a scrapbooking sensibility with neon pinks and collaged bits of hand-dyed cloth, but are blurred at the edges like memory. Contrasting Robinson’s strained sensitivity, Texas State alumna Sydney Guzman’s “Under the Moon’s Eye,” running concurrently, asserts a less abstract approach, offering painterly scenes of surreal nature, animals, and the artist herself while exploring similar themes. – Lina FisherThrough May 24 -
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Jiab Prachakul: Sweet Solitude
Whoever says Austin isn’t a fine art town can get the hell out of here. We continually break artistic ground with innovative and international taste. The Contemporary once again adds to that rep by hosting artist Jiab Prachakul’s first solo museum show. Born in Thailand, living in France, and with a solid film background behind her, Prachakul’s work has a bold style and clear point of view. Heavy graphic lines and soul-stirring colors fill her art. Each moment could be a film still, each stroke staking her claim on a far-too-Western art world. Widely accessible but intensely intimate, Prachakul’s scenes beg for close inspection. Join the Contemporary, and the artist herself, in examining her offerings during Friday’s opening night festivities or in conversation on Saturday, Feb. 1. – Cat McCarreyThrough August 3 -
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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 -
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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 ScottThrough June 14 -
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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. -
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Mauricio Alejo: “The Unexpected Product of Labor (Two Hammers Without a Sickle)”
Though International Workers’ Day remains a week or so away, recent statements and retractions from our unfortunate president have brought labor front of mind. What is our labor worth, and how do we extract that while also saving ourselves? Mexico City/New York City-based artist Mauricio Alejo explores labor’s delicate balance through this exhibition and presents what Co-Lab calls a “metaphorical story about labor as an unstable equation between forces – wind and gravity – that produces movement within their own dialectic process of searching for equilibrium.” Opening reception is this Saturday, April 19, with an earlier preview available for Co-Lab members and VIPs. Don’t sweat it if you miss the big kickoff, as the exhibition will be on view Saturdays, noon-6pm, until the end of May. – James ScottSaturdays through May 31 -
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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.$20-24.11010 Domain #100 -
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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. -
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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 ScottMay 12-18 -
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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. -
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Sydney Guzman: “Under the Moon’s Eye”
Austin-based and McAllen-born artist Sydney Guzman says her upcoming sculpture & painting exhibition began from a conversation – not with a person, but the universe. “In moments of uncertainty, I pose a silent question,” says Guzman. “And the world responds, not with words, but through intuitive signs: an animal crossing my path, an object pulling my attention, a subtle shift in energy.” These questions and their answering signs brighten the Ivester walls this Saturday, April 19, with Guzman’s bold colors and “gestural brushstrokes,” as the gallery describes, bringing to viewers’ minds questions of transition, form, and self. Don’t be surprised if after you leave the gallery, you, too, will see the world responding to your unspoken inquiries; just be open to the visions. – James ScottOpening reception, April 19; runs through May 24 -
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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? -
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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 JonesThrough August 17 -
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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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Yard Dog: Paul Rodriguez
Yard Dog presents the vibrant works of Paul Rodriguez, a printmaker from San Miguel de Allende. "And some very cool new paintings by Harry Underwood."Opening reception: Fri., Jan. 19, 7-9pm -
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“HOT: The Exhibit”
Over a million American women go through the change every year. Why do we still talk about it in such hushed tones? Andee Kinzy and Melissa Knight hope to eliminate the stigma around menopause with “HOT,” a multimedia exhibit that hosts an art show, a play, and several workshops and panels throughout the month of May. The gallery opens May 4, and Jennifer Connell Davis’ I Wanna Be a F*cking Princess premieres four days later. In between and beyond, catch medical experts dispel menopause misinformation and try your hand at consciousness raising at community storytelling events. Find the whole schedule at improvedarts.org/hot-the-exhibit. – Carys AndersonFridays-Sundays. Through May 25 -
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“Meeting at the Edges: Testing Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Boundaries”
Why are the edges always the most difficult? Almost all textile arts suffer in relation to cleaning up those untidy ends. This month, Link & Pin Art Space invites viewers to embrace the unruly threads of life. To shamelessly pull from artist Sam Elkins’ Instagram post (@samelkinstextiles), join Saturday’s artist reception for some “edgy” conversation with the creators involved. Elkins’ weaving work will rest alongside the fibrous textures of Gary Anderson’s art and Diane Sandlin’s mixed media marvels. Ponder, and maybe even come to terms with, life’s bumps and whorls through these artists’ explored space. – Cat McCarreyThrough June 8 -
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“Personal Records”
One part of a greater track-and-field trio of shows, GLHF presents art from Brian Dulaney, Drake Konow, Gerardo Cisneros, Justin Leal, Tim McCool, Kevin Muñoz, Marissa Dunagan, Phillip Niemeyer, and Preetal Shah. All these pieces speak to their experiences while analog traveling – you know, using their legs rather than a car or skateboard. This show organizes under the banner of Artist Run Club, coordinated by Northern-Southern and focused on the quick-paced art intelligentsia of Texas.: – James ScottMay 3 - June 1 -
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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 McNevinsThrough August 31; opening reception, May 18 -
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“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 AndersonThrough June 7
Creative Opportunities
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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.