21 minute read
Non-Traditional Galleries
By Tolly Moseley Photos by TBD ART BREAK
FOUR CREATIVE SPACES THAT BREAK FROM TRADITION
BY TOLLY MOSELEY
Here in Austin, innovative artwork abounds. Throw a rock and hit a gorgeous mural; throw another, and hit a casually amazing band poster. But don’t get it twisted: we’ve got galleries! And museums! It’s just that our idea of “art” is expansive, and doesn’t always fit on a white wall. So in that spirit, here are four spaces that expand the concept of a gallery: these places are designed for immersion, and perfect for exploration.
Installation by Mesmerize Photo by Zac Miles
MESMERIZE
What do you get when you take veterans of Austin’s live music scene, pedigreed by the laser light show concerts of the 2010s, and give them an art-friendly space like Native Hostel? You get a reality-bending, maze-slash-art-game, where futuristic rooms coalesce into an overarching narrative about an amateur tinkerer named Mesmer who’s accidentally stumbled into one or several parallel universes. Was that not obvious?
Jokes aside, artist duo Clayton Lillard and Mateo Gutierrez, along with Antonio Madrid, creative collaborator and founder of Native Hostel, have a bold vision for Mesmerize. All three love art parties; all three have a background in artistic event production. Together, Clayton and Mateo run Independent Event Creatives, a creative production company with clients like Netflix and Fender Guitars; Antonio is a partner in HOPE Outdoor Gallery and has helped facilitate several immersive art shows, spanning SXSW to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But with Mesmerize, they’ve taken all of their art event chops, and turned them into something special: a mystery story.
“Our whole mission with Mesmerize is to innovate with storytelling to create multi-sensory experiences that inspire joy and community,” says Clayton. And they were successful: Mesmerize opened pre-pandemic at Native Hostel, and stayed open (safely) to provide some desperately needed wonder. Now, they’re looking to the future: Clayton, Mateo and Antonio are sourcing a permanent home for Mesmerize, where they can take their immersive art-meets-storytelling vision to the next level. Announcement coming soon, and in the meantime, savor their social media, where neon lights, outer space and hidden clues transport you to, dare I say? An alternate universe. thisismesmerize.com There’s an art to putting together a beautiful home, as Royal Turkey founders Courtney Blanton and Claudia Geoly are well aware. That’s why their home goods store, Royal Turkey, feels decidedly “gallery” in presentation, with furniture and collectibles made for ogling. Love wood-heavy, French antiques? Got ‘em. How about art deco Miami? Yup! The ultra-democratic approach to curation makes Royal Turkey a fresh face in Austin, where — let’s face it — mid-century modern has had a stranglehold over our home decor for a while now. Not that it’s bad! It’s just that, with all due respect to Danish-style simplicity, there are lots of ways to be stylish. Royal Turkey gets it.
“It’s just a fun, funky space, with ‘fun’ as the keyword,” says Courtney. “We have a hot pink bathroom with neon lights, we have a littles’ room entirely for small accessories, we love color, we love the 80s. Everything we source is a true collector’s piece, but in addition to Italian, French and Spanish influences, we love working with local artists. We’re trying to keep Austin weird.”
In that vein, be on the lookout for work by decorative artist Caroline Lizarraga, a west coast painter who’s graced the pages of Architectural Digest and ELLE Décor, and will be designing the entrance to Royal Turkey. On November 12 from 5-8pm, you can catch an exhibition of her piece and a spotlight on local Austin artist Robert Wymer, accompanied by bubbles and brew. On November 13 from 12-5pm, enjoy a single day showing of their work. theroyalturkey.com
Fluorescent Lighting Installation by Courtney Blanton “El Loco” by Pepe Mateo Mas 1945 - 2007 Painting Photo by Brittany Dawn Short
What started in San Diego as a pop-up concept in 2016, Wonderspaces is now a national arts organization with spots all over country ... including one right here in Austin, just over a year old.
Wonderspaces seeks to fill a gap in the art world: their artists play with light, sound and ideas, creating multi-sensory experiences that on-site staff are trained (hard) to install. But if you’re anything like me, meaning Wonderspaces has already targeted you via Instagram ads, let me disabuse you of my former notion: it’s more than a light show! (Though the light shows are fantastic.) They’ve got new pieces every four to six weeks, and some that are not only interactive, but straight-up crowdsourced. “Our Top 100” by Jody Servon, on display now, is a community-built playlist that asks visitors to share their favorite songs — and more importantly, the memories they attach to them. The result? A displayed set of stories about music and its meaning, accompanied by a real-life Spotify playlist.
New this month, you can check out “Arc” by Ian Brill: an audiovisual piece that invites visitors under an archway of twinkling digital creations, constantly in a state of disruption. It’s pieces like these that epitomize the success of Wonderspaces: to host art that’s playful enough for kids, contemplative enough for grownups. Speaking of grownups: there’s a bar! Enjoy a signature cocktail while traipsing around Wonderspaces, giggling and selfie-ing to your heart’s delight. wonderspaces.com BIG MEDIUM
Big Medium enjoys something of a bridge status here in Austin, elevating the contemporary art community with shows and gallery space, while carving out funky, feelgood events that allow you to walk right into an artist’s backyard (they produce the annual Austin Studio Tour). But at their gallery proper, housed in Canopy Austin, an art and business collective on Springdale Road, they source evocative pieces from the world over.
“We strive to help artists play,” says Coka Treviño, Big Medium’s Curator and Director of Programming, who tells me about EPCOT: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a multi-media work by artist Jerónimo Reyes-Retana. One of her favorite recent pieces at Big Medium’s gallery, EPCOT shone a light on Playa Bagdad, a fishing community near the U.S.-Mexico border, situated perilously close to the launch site of SpaceX. EPCOT is an “ongoing field research process throughout the community of Playa Bagdad,” where environmental protections are scarce, SpaceX rages on, and in the quest to colonize Mars, a piece of Earth is treated as more or less disposable. The artist made recordings of a launch from Playa Bagdad, so that visitors can experience what locals experience: shaking glass, caused by eardrum-pounding engine noise.
This month, you can check out work by Ariel René Jackson and Michael J. Love, winners of the fourth annual Tito’s Prize. For their work (running through January 8, 2022), they both interviewed their grandmothers, and use their words to inform a unique piece set with animation and lighting. It’s a reflection of Big Medium’s vision: to make space for art that utilizes every available human sense, and invites us into artists’ process of discovery. bigmedium.org
Sharon Keshishian
Austin Glows Up
THESE ARTISTS ARE KEEPING NEON ALIVE IN OUR CHANGING CITY
By Veronica Meewes Photos by Drew Anthony Smith
IT’S NO SECRET THAT AUSTIN LIGHTS UP AT NIGHT, BUT SOME WILL TELL YOU it burned a lot brighter back in the day. And we’re not talking about the buzz of nightlife (that is surely alive and well), but rather the neon giving life to its streets. These glowing signs sparked joy and awakened a calling for Todd Sanders on his first visit to Austin in 1990.
“As I drove through the city, I saw that neon, and all of a sudden I knew: this is where I want to live,” he remembers. “This is what I want to do. I want to make neon signs.”
The Art Institute of Houston graduate hooked his Spartan trailer up to his truck, drove it to Austin and found work at a neon shop called Ion Art, located then in downtown Austin. Artist Sharon Keshishian founded the studio in 1986 with her husband Greg after learning the art and science of neon bending at a small shop in Houston. Now, Ion Art occupies a 20,000-square-foot space in South Austin and employs 35 artists, designers, fabricators and project managers.
Neon bending consists of delicately blowing into different sized glass tubes while bending the molten glass into shapes. Natural gasses (neon, argan, mercury and helium all produce different colors) are added to the tubes and sealed off with electrodes on each end. The electrodes are then hooked up to transformers, which amp the power up to a high voltage to illuminate the tube. Keshishian has been the only female tube bender in Austin for the last 35 years, and one of few in the country — and now she’s teaching the art to her two daughters, ages 24 and 26.
“We started off as an art company, but then it evolved into a signage company because people started asking us for signage and architectural decor,” says Keshishian, who is best known for the colorful ATX sign outside of Whole Foods’ flagship store, but has designed and fabricated signs and sculptures (both with and without neon) all over the city. “Now it’s kind of circled back to being more of an art company again, which is very exciting.”
After Sanders honed his craft working for Keshishian, he branched out and opened Roadhouse Relics, a commercial neon sign shop of his own, in a rundown fruit stand on South 1st Street. His very first customer was Eddie Wilson, the owner of Threadgill’s.
“He’s like a father to me,” says Sanders. “He gave me a chance early on. I pulled into the parking lot of Threadgill’s and said, ‘Eddie, my name is Todd. I’m the only guy in town that loves neon as much as you and I want to start restoring and repairing it for you.’”
Sanders went on to restore and maintain hundreds of signs for Threadgill’s and a roster of other clients over the course of 25 years. But in 2005, thanks to the encouragement of his now-wife (who he proposed to in neon, of course!), he decided to turn his commercial sign shop into an art studio and gallery showcasing his own flawlessly distressed, vintage-inspired western Americana works.
“If you want one of my neon signs, it has to look like it’s been on Route 66 for 50 years,” he says. “And I don’t think I could have started that anywhere but Austin.”
For the first couple years after the rebrand, he focused on building props for movie sets, commissioned by directors like Robert Rodriguez and Terrence Malik. Then The New York Times listed Roadhouse Relics as a must-see gallery in Austin, and business blew up. Now he ships his large-scale neon art pieces all over the world. He’s created commissioned artwork for celebrities like Kasey Musgraves and Willie Nelson, and he’s shown in galleries alongside artists from Shepherd Fairey to Jasper Johns.
“I became interested in [neon] as a ‘folk art’ back in the seventies, especially after an esteemed Yale architecture professor de-
clared that neon signs were in fact both art and architecture, and were worthy of academic study as such,” remembers Evan Voyles. “I have often said that neon signs are a sculpture, cloaked in a painting, underneath a line-drawing-in-light. There is no other medium like that!”
When Voyles grew up in Austin, he remembers his mom referring to Burnet Road as “the neon jungle” (which inspired his design company of the same name). He returned to the city after graduating from Yale as an English major, teaching himself the craft by dissecting and reassembling his extensive vintage neon collection. He built his first sign in 1991 and has now crafted over 500 more, including most of the iconic pieces that light up South Congress Avenue.
Though illuminated signs are just as popular as ever, proper neon is becoming a bit more obsolete, as many businesses are turning to less expensive LED lights for commercial signage. Furthermore, neon artists are finding it harder and harder to source the materials they need to keep creating; there is a shortage of colored glass tubes, which need to be imported from Murano, Italy, and many of the companies that used to sell neon components have gone out of business.
“In the ‘golden age’ of neon — the 1930s, 40s, and 50s — neon wasn’t just evocative: it was the dominant technology available,” explains Voyles. “Now we have plastic faces and vinyl graphics and fluorescent lamps and LEDs to compete, but none of those is in any way as evocative as genuine, handmade neon signage — probably because it is handmade and produces a light and an intention and gut feeling that no latter-day technology can match.”
“There’s something about neon — the gas and the glass — that kind of speaks to a more primal part that LED can never match,” Sanders agrees. “I always think of neon like a modern campfire or a full moon: it really affects you spiritually.”
Besides being replaced by newer technology, neon has been threatened through the years by dark sky ordinances and increasing regulations in cities across the U.S. While Austin hasn’t entirely outlawed it, the Historic Commission has implemented a lengthy and costly permitting process that makes it a lot more difficult to install new neon signage, particularly in certain neighborhoods — like downtown Austin.
“Back in the 1950s, the petroleum industry started trying to outlaw neon because a lot of the new plastic faces were made from petroleum,” explains Sanders. “So they started demonizing neon and it went from this elegant light form to becoming symbolic of the seedy part of town. And it’s unfortunate because, when neon left downtown Austin, that’s when a lot of downtown started dying.”
“All those downtown buildings used to have neon signs so it really is historical; if you look at some old pictures of Congress from the 40s through the 60s, nearly every other sign was neon,” says Keshishian, who says she has debated with the Austin Historical Society on multiple occasions and continues to advocate for what she calls a dying art form.
But Voyles sees things differently: “Neon — at least in Austin — is not a dying art, per se. It is thriving in the hands of the craftsmen and craftswomen who pursue it. There are fewer of us than ever, certainly, but we are busy.”
“I think what’s gonna really happen with neon is it’s going to be more used as an art medium in the future,” predicts Keshishian, whose most recent projects include a sculpture for The Rolling Stones latest tour and several neon installations for Elon Musk’s Starbase community in Boca Chica, Texas.
She’s also bringing neon to the people in other forms; from 2017 through 2019, Ion Art built dozens of fantastical, interactive neon installations and sculptures for a party called Surreal, which they hosted on their six-acre property. Though last year’s event was cancelled due to COVID, the next Surreal will be a 10-day neon extravaganza held at Zilker Botanical Garden this April, with funds supporting the city’s parks. What better way to illuminate this unparalleled urban art form?
“I got a good feeling about Austin from the neon, so I’m proud to have been a part of giving other people that feeling,” says Sanders. “What it does is create this identity, where the whole city becomes its own collective work of art.” ionart.com roadhouserelics.com
Todd Sanders
Photo by Clay Grier
The Jewel of Music Lane
LOCAL JEWELRY RETAILER NAK ARMSTRONG OPENS ITS FLAGSHIP STORE IN SOCO
By Darcie Duttweiler Photos by Brittany Dawn Short
FROM THE SIDEWALK, IT’S NOT EASY TO TELL WHAT’S IN STORE FOR you as you walk into the new Nak Armstrong flagship at the SoHo House development on Music Lane.
Nestled next to a greenery wall neighboring Aba, the shop is practically a jewelry box in itself. When you step inside, you’re greeted by a 10-foot-tall, freestanding chartreuse velvet pod that’s reminiscent of a luxurious gift just waiting to be unwrapped. (Interestingly enough, it houses the showroom’s restroom.) Once past the box, you’ll find gorgeous hand-cut mosaic marble tiles at your feet, evoking a Milanese vibe. A peppering of terracotta tiles reduces the stuffiness and lends a slightly more casual feel.
Farther in, in the center of the store, deep green and walnut display cases proudly show off the colorful pieces from both the eponymous line and Armstrong’s newest
Nakard collection. Farther in the back of the space, a comfortable kidney-shaped couch, embroidered chair, a Fort Lonesome framed upholstered art piece, along with green succulents make you feel like you’re in a downtown condo of a close friend who has exquisite taste, which was by design, according to Armstrong.
“We wanted to have a classic design but also a residential feel. It’s intimate, but you’re a part of a community,” he says. “It’s a mixture of luxe and casual. Mixture of masculine and feminine. It should be comfortable for men and women to shop in here.”
Much of the store’s design inspiration was drawn from a visit Nak and his spouse Walter made to Milan, which instilled a love for the city’s mid-century Brutalist architecture and use of muted jewel tones. That aesthetic is echoed throughout the store, from the floor to the velvet trimmings, all of which make the showroom the perfect vessel in which to peruse the gorgeous jewels. “Our jewelry has a lot of layers and details, so we decided that we need to show the layering of the store, but in a more subtle, monochromatic way because we don’t want to compete with the jewelry. We want to highlight the stones and all the work, but we’re in a small space so it can easily become overwhelming,” Armstrong says. Quietly opened last winter, the flagship space was three years in the making with Austin’s Ann Tucker and her team at Studio A Group. Although CFDA-winning fine jewelry designer Armstrong has been selling out collections at luxury stores like Bergdorf Goodman, Moda Operandi and Barneys for 10 years (and for longer with his previous award-winning line Anthony Nak), having a space all his own was important to him so that he could dictate how his jewelry was displayed. “This was an opportunity to say who we are as a brand, from top to bottom, in every detail,” Armstrong explains. “This is how we want to show our brand. The store is the center of the universe where everything radiates.” While the Nak Armstrong collection is goldbased with precious gemstones, the new diffusion line Nakard aims to make Armstrong’s pieces more accessible to a younger crowd who might just now be starting their own jewelry collections. “It serves as an entry to the brand,” he says. Although the two lines are separate with different metals and stones, the intricate designs can clearly be seen in every piece. Using his signature stone plissé technique in several pieces (in which the metal is pleated and almost appears in waves), Armstrong shows off his background in both architecture and textile designs beautifully.
“Our jewelry is made to be worn like a piece of clothing. It should feel of your body and not something apart from it,” Armstrong describes.
Along with the unique silhouettes and the unexpected use of color, Armstrong’s designs are distinctively his. And, unlike most jewelry designers, the majority of the stones used in the two collections are hand-cut to each specific piece, instead of the other way around, which he likens to an interior designer creating their own wallpaper.
“It gives us something entirely our own,” he says before laughing. “I never do things the easy way!” nakarmstrong.com
Hot Times in the City
EXPLORING THE ART OF GLASSBLOWING AT GHOST PEPPER GLASS
By Amanda Eyre Ward Photos by Gregg Cestaro
“IFIRST SAW GLASSBLOWING WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD,” says Katie Plunkard, the owner and manager of Ghost Pepper Glass, a wonder of an art studio and classroom in East Austin. “I was on a family trip — a cruise. One of the ports was Malta. We toured around the island and ended up at a glass studio. I kind of got fascinated with it. I just got hooked.”
Plunkard stands in front of her studio’s main melting furnace, which burns at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit and is named “Beyonce.” Along with Education Coordinator Shara Funari and a team of fellow artists and instructors, Plunkard maintains the studio to teach glassblowing and have a chance to create.
Her dogs, Archer and Ghost, lounge on cots far enough away from Beyonce to feel a bit of the cool Austin night. The studio is named after Ghost, a white German Shepherd.
“I love spicy food, so Ghost is affectionately called ‘ghost pepper,’” she says. “Our logo has a fiery pepper, but on our t-shirts and business cards and everything, there’s a very subtle kind of hidden silhouette of Ghost in all the imagery.”
My husband and I have come to Ghost Pepper Studio to take an evening glassblowing class. We’ve been married for twenty years, so we jump at the chance for a “hot date” when we can find it. When I told him I had planned an adventure and to wear closed-toe shoes and bring lots of water, he smiled — ever game. Now, we stand in Katie’s studio, preparing to make our own treasures — I’m making an ornament, and Tip, a terrarium.
The studio hosts a variety of classes, from one-night dates and private lessons to team-building workshops to weeks-long craft seminars. (All the classes are listed on the website; Katie says her favorite groups are work gatherings where people start out nervous and end up laughing.) Ghost Pepper is also a gallery featuring the work of local artists like Michael W. Hall, Chaos Woods and Love Studio Ceramics. Katie’s own artwork is breathtaking. “I play with patterns,” she tells me. “I love the type of glassmaking that utilizes something called cane, like candy cane — so sticks of glass, kind of ribbons of color. You create a pattern, and then you stretch it. Then you bundle it, twist it again.” Katie shows us a video of this process, and we admire her affordable and intricate glasses. She also designs cups and vases that inspire thoughts of peacocks, trying to “emulate the feather pattern and the peacock eye and put it onto something.” Her favorite pieces (and mine) are sculptures she calls “urban aviaries.” They’re large vessels that Katie fills with scenes of birds and branches and flowers on the inside. In the sweltering studio, my husband and I put on safety goggles, and I hoist a blow pipe. With Katie supervising carefully, I insert the metal rod into a furnace filled with glowing, molten glass. I turn the pipe, “scooping” up glass and then (again, with Katie’s help) moving it to a metal table where I twist the malleable orb in color. Jamming metal pliers into the glass blob to move the color around is immensely satisfying. Then I place my masterpiece back into the maw of Beyonce to heat the glass again. Katie explains there’s no thermometer because you can tell “from the movement and color” of the glass how hot it is, how hot it needs to be. (It seems important to point out here that I could not tell … clearly this knowledge, second nature to Katie, is earned through years of work.)
Eventually, we use a pump on one end of the rod (“No blowing during Covid,” Katie explains wryly) to inflate my glass into a sphere. Katie twists a “hook,” and we set my gorgeous object aside to cool. I love the way it turned out — a blue orb shot through with white I twisted a bit, like a dreamy winter blizzard.
Relaxing afterward at a picnic table in the side yard of the studio, I tell Katie how exhilarating and fun I thought it was to work with hot glass, to stand so near to Beyonce. “She’s a beast,” says Katie, grinning. ghostpepperglass.com
