State of the Arts

8 joyful Austin art exhibitions celebrate belonging this September

September in Austin brings eight exhibitions threaded together by care, connection, and the power of process. These shows turn everyday objects, landscapes, and memories into sites of transformation.

At ICOSA, two sculptors rethink the labor of care with cast objects and crafted tools, while Flatbed Press slows things down with mindful drawing and printmaking born from a residency in Italy. Across town, a gardener’s eye at Link & Pin maps native plants, and a village of stilted houses at Georgetown Art Center invites viewers to physically navigate the delicate bonds that link us.

Davis Gallery

Garrett Middaugh: Life is Absurd! — Now through September 13
In Life is Absurd!, Austin painter and sculptor Garrett Middaugh leans fully into his surrealist, expressive vocabulary. In this exhibition, he works primarily in oil, with ceramic sculptures sprinkled throughout. Middaugh champions the crude, weird, and imperfect, framing the everyday as theater. His canvases are populated with elastic figures that stretch, tangle, and careen between the unnerving and the whimsical. Middaugh’s aim isn’t to resolve the chaos so much as to make it legible in his works.

Flatbed Press

Group Exhibition: The Italian Intensive — Now through September 13
This group exhibition is drawn from a 2024 group residency at La Romita School of Art in Terni, Italy. For two weeks last fall, 10 artists immersed themselves under the guidance of artists Suzi Davidoff and Katherine Brimberry, Flatbed’s co-founder, director, and senior master printer. Their theme, “Piano Per Favore! Slow Down Please — Mindful Drawing and Printmaking,” set their focus to intentional creation. The exhibition gathers works by Cynthia Beath, Scott Bennett, Katherine Brimberry, Susan Cohn, Suzi Davidoff, Becky Duvall Reese, Denny McCoy, Clare Metague, Sally Rohrbach, Erica Stevenson, and Sheryl Kolasinski, who captured moments from the intensive itself in monotypes with watercolor and colored pencil.

ICOSA

Sarah Hirneisen and Tammie Rubin: Take Care — Now through September 13
This joint exhibition examines care through the lens of labor. Sculptors Hirneisen and Rubin use mold-making, casting, and precise material choices to reframe the function and power of objects. Hirneisen pushes craft techniques like brush-making and basketry into symbolic tools and offerings. Rubin mines ritual and domestic objects, coded symbols, mapping, Black citizenry, and migration to build sculptures and installations that open dream-like spaces with unexpected associations. Together, they insist that care is a central, complex force in both private and public life.

Link & Pin Art

Samantha Melvin: Genius Loci — Now through September 13
Melvin, whose mixed-media works span drawing, painting, and printmaking, examines landscape through the dual lens of artist and gardener. Layered botanical abstractions, airy grids, and patterned gestures map the human imprint alongside native wildflowers, plants, and tall grasses, celebrating “genius loci,” the spirit of place. Light, intricate compositions translate regional species from her home and travels into vibrant conversations of color, light, and form.

Lora Reynolds Gallery

Karla Garcia: Grass Flower — Now through September 20
Grass Flower brings the desert flora of the Texas-Mexico borderlands to life through ceramic sculpture. Inspired by sorceress Malīnalxōchitl and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, García’s imagined landscapes consider knowledge, transformation, and the vastness of time. García crafted barrel cacti and wild grasses in states of bloom and decay, recycling unfired works from previous desert installations.

grayDUCK Gallery

W. Tucker: I made these things for you — Now through September 28
This exhibition charts Tucker’s leap from drawing on found materials to hand-built ceramics. Working largely with his non-dominant left hand — his longtime conduit for an unfiltered, intuitive line — Tucker brings his recurring characters “off the page” into playful, toy-like forms: cars, trains, houses, and abstract figures. The ceramics retain the looseness and authenticity of his works on paper and wood; made in private for himself, they become, once finished, for you.

Wally Workman Gallery

Ian Shults: Fotomat — September 6 through 28
Shults’ paintings bring together fine art with the profane, spinning noir-pop vignettes of debauchery and sly humor. Like flickering scenes on a broken vintage TV, his images feel fragmented and kinetic. A former lead illustrator and head sculptor at Blue Genie Art, Shults brings sharpened craft to his nostalgia, crafting feverish tableaux that are equal parts seedy and self-aware.

Georgetown Art Center

Caroline Walker: Interlocking Paths — September 12 through October 12
This exhibition maps the fragile architecture of human connection through sculptures and two-dimensional works that trace growth, transformation, and interdependence. A floor-standing village of stilted houses linked by ladders and stairs, alongside larger-than-life wall figures woven with chains, becomes a metaphor for the routes we traverse and the bonds we forge. Delicate despite their hard materials, the tall, floating houses feel weightless, inviting viewers to handle the interactive elements of the exhibition.

Photo courtesy of Wally Workman Gallery

Shults' work recalls a bygone era in Fotomat.

State of the Arts

7 art exhibitions to catch in Austin this December

Collage in Licensed to Thrill at West Chelsea Contemporary

Photo courtesy of West Chelsea Contemporary

Collage, vintage advertisements, and clever wordplay are blended in Licensed to Thrill at West Chelsea Contemporary

December brings a convergence of artistic visions to Austin's galleries and museums. This month features everything from the dramatic realism of Spanish Baroque oil painting to contemporary works in handmade paper, found objects, and layered textiles.

The shows span intimate portraits paired with women's own voices, satirical reinterpretations of advertising's glossy promises, and works that honor Indigenous plant wisdom through digital innovation. This month’s exhibitions invite viewers to appreciate not just what's shown, but how it's made and what those processes reveal about power, memory, and connection.

West Chelsea Contemporary

Group Exhibition: Licensed to Thrill — Now through December 21
Charlotte Rose and the Connor Brothers return to Austin with Licensed to Thrill, a sleek examination of desire and the carefully crafted performances that surround it. Rose tears down advertising's glossy veneer by reimagining commercial fantasies to reveal darker truths about mortality and longing. The Connor Brothers transform vintage nostalgia into cutting satire, their pulp fiction-inspired pieces merging fact and fantasy with clever word play.

Davis Gallery

Group Exhibition: Cornucopia: Annual Holiday Show — Now through January 3
This diverse holiday exhibition brings together more than 30 artists working across painting, collage, and mixed media, offering viewers a spectrum from whimsy to profound introspection. The show features vibrant Western cowboy figures by B Shawn Cox alongside Danny Cabading's haunting self-portraits; plus, Lauren Jaben contributes delicate collage work, and other artists create complex three-dimensional pieces assembled from found objects.

Austin Public Library

Robin Kang: The Light That Grows Here — Now through January 4
The Light That Grows Here weaves native Texas plants, ancestral textile practices, and digital technology into works that honor the healing power of nature. Informed by her studies with master weavers worldwide and her initiations into Amazonian shamanic practices, Kang transforms the act of weaving into ritual, inviting viewers to contemplate how craft can reconnect us with ecological wisdom and the unseen intelligence of the plant world.

Wally Workman Gallery

Priscilla Robinson: Between — December 6 through January 4
Robinson works at the intersection of handmade paper and fused glass, drawing inspiration from her dual studios in Austin and Taos. This exhibition focuses on the ambiguous "between spaces" — where opposites meet and transition — and their relationship to the natural world. The artist combines handmade paper, glass, metal, and polycarbonate into fragments that interconnect to form cohesive artwork. Robinson's layered constructions feel substantial and dense, evoking the texture of flower petals or sculpted clay. Her pieces pulse with movement, suggesting flowing rivers or autumn leaves caught in the wind.

Women & Their Work

Barbara Felix: The Glorious Way She Moves — Now through January 15
Felix has created a multi-sensory celebration of women across generations, cultures, and lived experiences, rooted in her Black and Latina heritage and inspired by her mother's enduring friendships. Felix paints movement-based portraits of women she knows, meets, or admires — each one a tribute to the joy that women embody as acts of resistance. Each piece is paired with audio recordings of the women themselves, sharing stories of struggle, empowerment, and hope.

Photo courtesy of West Chelsea Contemporary

Collage, vintage advertisements, and clever wordplay are blended in Licensed to Thrill at West Chelsea Contemporary

Blanton Museum

Group Exhibition: Spirit & Splendor: El Greco, Velázquez, and the Hispanic Baroque — Now through February 1
Featuring almost 60 paintings, Spirit & Splendor charts the evolution of Spanish art over 150 years. The exhibition pulls from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library's collection, presenting masterpieces by El Greco and Diego Velázquez alongside José de Páez and Melchor Pérez Holguín, painters who brought the Baroque vision to Spain's American territories. The show offers a rare chance to see works from one of the world's most important collections of Hispanic art, showcasing the emotional intensity that made Spanish Baroque painting legendary.

Art for the People Gallery

Group Exhibition: The Edge of Everything — Now through February 21
The Edge of Everything gathers 17 artists inspired by the quiet observations of everyday life. The exhibition captures the subtle textures of our surroundings through diverse perspectives and mediums. Among the featured artists are Alessandra Posada, who brings over two decades of experience in ink, watercolor, and sculptural objects. Luke Smith's oil paintings celebrate nature and adventure, and Paul Moncus explores the human condition through portraiture.

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