State of the Arts

Escape the heat this July with 7 refreshing art exhibits in Austin

The Austin arts sizzle this July with an assortment of innovative opportunities to whet the artistic appetite. Get your VR on at Wonderspaces with two new film installations to fill you with awe, artistically of course. Explore cultural connections between Texas and Mexico with ICOSA Collective in the exhibit “Where the Borders Meet.” Discover other landscapes in the symbolic drawings of Dan Jian at Women & Their Work. The art scene is simmering this July, and there’s so much to soak up.

Wonderspaces

Shigeto: Hovering and Immersive — New Installations
Wonderspaces is clever at constantly bringing in new immersive and thought-provoking art installations; Not to mention they have a full bar, so you can sip and enjoy the oeuvres. The latest installations are two new VR films, Shigeto: Hovering by Conor Grebel and 79Ancestors, and Immersive by Jérémy Oury, Antoine Briot, and ARCAAN Collective. Hovering is a transcendent tale of life-giving water brought to a dying planet. The film includes objects found in nature and digitally scanned, making an alien world of earthly design. Immersive is an 8-minute sequence of continually "self-reconfiguring geometric forms" and "electroacoustic compositions" that invite visitors into a new arrangement of space-time.

Link & Pin Gallery

“Summer Exposure: Session 2” — Now through July 8
Link & Pin is offering five exhibitions over the course of the summer, each lasting two weeks and running through Saturday, August 26. Their current show features work by Christopher Van Loan, Suzanne Courtney, and Gerda Sessions, aka Murdock. "Van Loan employs an innovative technique that blends traditional artistry with unexpected elements," says the gallery website. "Using unconventional tools like putty and drywall finishing knives, he applies foundational colors and textures onto the canvas." Courtney "loves mixed media," as displayed in her hybrid pieces, while Murdock’s abstract works "capture real life moments through the interaction of line, color and movement on canvas."

Yard Dog

Scott Griffin & Rita Koos: "Two Birds, One Stone” — Now through July 29
Married Toronto artists, Scott Griffin and Rita Koos produce paintings that although very different in aesthetic and style, still seem to compliment and pair well with of each other. Koos paints with a "bright, almost lurid palette" to create bold, heavily made-up ladies, while Scott uses "quiet and more muted tones" for his paintings of condensed bodies: in the water, on land, in the trees and in a chorus line.

ICOSA Collective Gallery

Jonas Criscoe & Mai Gutierrez: "Where The Borders Meet” — July 7 through August 5
“Where the Borders Meet” is, not surprisingly, an exploration of the cultural connections between Texas and Mexico. "Through the use of natural materials, found objects and imagery," each artist expresses existence between the borders and what it means for a border to be fluid and have no form, just a “soft transition from one body to another.” Criscoe is an interdisciplinary artist and Gutierrez is an Austin based multi-disciplinary architect and artist.

Courtesy of Yard Dog

"Poker Face," by Rita Koos from "Two Birds, One Stone."

Wally Workman Gallery

Joyce Howell: "Solo Show” — July 8 through 29
Joyce Howell’s paintings are all informed by nature, and her canvases are a swirl of placid and chaotic color. She describes her work as an ongoing conversation, “each color and mark applied to the canvas informs the next; colors give the impression of physical weight and become instruments, much as in a musical composition.” It’s no coincidence that Howell says her work is inspired by abstract expressionists.

Dougherty Arts Center

Begin Collective: "I See You See Me" — July 8 through August 12
“I See You See Me” is a photo exhibit that questions what queerness is "'supposed' to look like." Including residents from Austin, the premise of the exhibit asserts that "people who exist outside of Western society’s hegemonic norms are valuable and have stories worth sharing." Begin Collective, by its own description, "is a photo-based program serving folks at the intersection of LGBTQ+, non-binary and disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent identity."

Women & Their Work

Dan Jian: "The Bow Whispers to the Arrow” — July 15 through September 7
What’s more intriguing than canvases created with dust? Dan Jian’s drawings, which she calls “meditations on the act of looking” are created by using charcoal dust and burned ashes mixed together and then fixed on translucent paper. "This process allows the medium to form gravitational washes, similar to the effect of ink," describes the website. "Then ... she uses scissors, an Exacto knife, and glue to create introverted landscapes filled with imaginary narratives and symbols ... like mundane modern images pulled from the Texas landscape seamlessly [merging] with non-western and ancient pictorial motifs."

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New

Historic Austin museum will close for more than a year for restoration

Photo courtesy of the City of Austin

The Elisabet Ney Museum will close at the end of 2024 and reopen in mid-2026.

Every building needs some maintenance here or there, and the historic Elisabet Ney Museum needs some extra-special care. Formerly the art studio and residence of its namesake, it's been standing since 1892. It'll spend 2025 in relative solitude, as it undergoes renovation for a year and a half with no visitors allowed.

The museum will close to the public December 30, 2024, and open again in the summer of 2026 if all goes according to plan, a news release from the City of Austin shares. It'll be a quiet period compared to the 21,000 people visiting from around the world each year.

According to a museum overview on the city's website, Elisabet Ney, a European portrait sculptor, bought the property and called her new studio Formosa. She worked on sculptures depicting important Texans like Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, and collected works of European contemporaries.

The building at 304 East 44th St. includes 3,700 square feet of museum space, which was converted by Ney's friends after her death in 1907. It retains its unique look that juxtaposes a Neo-Classical main studio from 1892 with a later addition from 1902 including a tower for her husband, Edmund, to write in. It is also on 2.5 acres of land, which has largely been restored to its natural state with native species.

A press release lists these tasks (verbatim) within the scope of the new work, referred to as the Capital Improvement Project (CIP):

Restoration of original exterior wood doors and windows
Upgrades and replacement of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system
Replacement of the exhibit and general lighting systems
Repairs to the roof, masonry, plumbing, and interior finishes.

There will also be work to do outside of the building. Workers will replace the pedestrian bridge across Waller Creek, stabilize a 20,000-square-foot portion of the bank, and make the grounds more accessible by adding new pathways.

Funding comes from several sources, according to a release: "the 2012 Bond, Proposition 14, the Parkland Dedication Fund, the Historic Preservation Fund, Partners in Preservation through the National Trust, and contributions from the Friends of the Elisabet Ney Museum."

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