In roughly South to North order, here’s Sightlines’ picks for the 2018 West Austin Studio Tour.
DORF presents: Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lifes, #342
5701 Lewood Drive, 78745
Eric Manche and Sara Vanderbeek take a proactive response to the arts venue crisis in Austin, converting their two-car garage into DORF, a furnished gallery space ready for pop-up shows. To inaugurate DORF, the pair has put together a very impressive exhibit of Texas-based artists who are taking fresh, contemporary inroads within landscape, portrait, and still life genres: Elizabeth Chapin, Jeffrey Dell, Joey Fauerso, Ana Fernandez, Raul Gonzalez, Jules Buck Jones, Drew Liverman, Raymond Uhlir, Vincent Valdez and Sara Vanderbeek.
Virginia Fleck & Yuliya Lanina, #324-#325
1900 Larchmont Drive
What’s not to celebrate when two powerhouse women artists pair up to once again co-show on WEST. Yuliya Laning will have her small-scale mechanical sculptures based on popular folk tales along with works on paper, while Virginia Fleck sensory interactive light sculpture and interactive sensory sound sculpture.
Read: “Studio Visit: Yuliya Lanina”
Elizabeth Decker & Amy Scofield, #320-#321
207 Dunlap Street
Amy Scofield makes both large- and small-scale sculpture from any manner of repurposed material including dead trees, broken glass, bike tubes, junk mail and household rubbish. Elizabeth Decker paints fun, expressive abstractions.
Thornton Road Studios, #279-#298
2311 Thornton Road
Long before there were any studio complexes in East Austin, there was the Thornton Road Studios. And the artist tenants of Thornton Road Studios have kept on, successfully fighting a rezoning attempt that would have seen the complex replaced with a mixed-use development. For WEST, more than 20 Thornton Road artists welcome visitors.
W. Tucker, #275
2108 Arpdale St.
Using his non-dominant left hand to draw, and thus affect an unpracticed style, Tucker works on an intuitive level. And yet there’s conceptual rigor to his sublime, emotive images.
Blackbox: Stella and Leon Alesi, #F
1017 W. Milton St. Unit A
NOTE: Blackbox is only open the first weekend of WEST.
Stella and Leon Alesi live their artistic practice like few, their living space more a working studio and gallery. For WEST, they’ve filled it with Stella’s newest geometric works on paper and large color field paintings and Leon’s evocative photographic portraits.
Catherine Lee’s “The Ney Project,” #126
304 E. 44th St.
Catherine Lee’s elegant abstract sculpture on the grounds of the Elisabet Ney Museum are a must-see. So is the Elisabet Ney Museum.
Read: “Unexpected Elegance in the Landscape: Catherine Lee’s ‘The Ney Project'”
Laura Latimer, #25
6814 Pioneer Place
Laura Latimer is always up to something, using found objects and man-made materials such as wire and plastics for complex, and often large, sculptural installations that calls “remnants of nature.”
Caroline Wright, #104
4905 Caswell Ave.
Exuberant, expressive abstract landscapes inspired by music and dance are Caroline Wright’s calling card.
Jason Webb, #107
5509 Guadalupe St., #1
There’s something melancholic about Jason Webb’s paintings of curbside piles of discarded household items and abandoned buildings.
