After 20 years as an anchor of East Austin’s arts landscape, Flatbed Press is preparing to head a new home.
Come June, the nationally-regarded fine arts press will open the doors to its new facility at 3701 Dosset Drive, at the corner of Burleson Road just south of Ben White Blvd.
Flatbed has rented 6,020 square-feet of space in a high-ceilinged warehouse-type building. Flatbed owner and director Katherine Brimberry said that in addition to offices and a considerable printmaking studio, the new space will include a gallery and a community press, a printmaking studio available for artist-printmakers to rent.
Brimberry said she was particularly excited about the community press and a some outside space that Flatbed will have exclusive use.
Recently, as part of PrintAustin, Flatbed opened its “Flatbed Goes South Moving Show and Sale” an effort, Brimberry said “to lighten our moving load.” Both framed works and Flatbed’s flat file inventory is on sale.
Through Feb. 19, Flatbed Press is having a sale on prints from its flat files. Photo courtesy Flatbed Press.Last year, Dallas-based Rosenfield Brothers Real Estate Group, owners of the Flatbed building on E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., informed Flatbed that its lease would not be renewed. It is understood that the owners plan to redevelop the property.
In 1999 Flatbed transformed the 18,400-square-foot of raw warehouse into it a gallery and studio complex, dividing up the space and subletting over the years to a changing line-up of artists, organizations and gallerists.
Among the first Flatbed tenants was the University of Texas’ Creative Research Laboratory, an off-campus project space. The CRL, as it was called, eventually became the Visual Arts Center and moved on-campus into the Art Building in the space once the original home to the Blanton Museum of Art.
Among the current tenants in the Flatbed Buidling is Camiba Art, which recently announced its upcoming move to a new location. Also in the building is Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin Book Arts Center, L_A_N D Architects, Hubbard Birchler Studio, Daniel Arredondo Studio, Smith and Hawley, NJ Weaver Studio, Recspec Design Studio, Jacqueline May Studio and Troy Brauntuch Studio.
At its new location, Flatbed Press is just down Burleson Road from Blue Genie Art Industries which relocated in 2017 after years on Springdale Road in a warehouse complex that eventually became Canopy.
