The East Austin Studio Tour is one of my favorite events of the year. Some years, I open my studio to the public, and other years I don’t. In the years when I open my studio, it’s great to see visitors’ reactions to my own work, to meet new people, visit with friends who come by and sell a little work.
During the years when I take a break from opening my studio, like this year, it is fantastic to be able to get out and see so much good art in just two weekends, all on my side of town. I love it all, whether it’s visiting individual artists’ studios, group studios, or galleries. I particularly enjoy just seeing — in the paint, if you will — the great variety of excellent work, but it’s also wonderful to meet artists who are new to me, and chat with old friends.
Last weekend, my husband and I got an early start on day one at The Art Post, a great rambling Quonset hut type compound on East Cesar Chavez. The first thing we came across was a very tall guy climbing out of a very tiny red 1960 Isetta — a 4-wheeled car that opens on the front — with the steering wheel attached to that front door! Very cool.
We continued on to a string of small studios to our left, which contained wonderful oil portraits by Sara Vanderbeek, including one of Chuck Close that I absolutely love; some very fun drawings by Carolina Villareal (be sure to read some of the text or titles on her drawings); and ocean paintings covered with painted plexiglass for a different experience by Lucy MacQueen.
I go to the Art Post mainly to see what Court Lurie has been up to lately, and of course, she never disappoints. I always enjoy her paintings, and I loved seeing her new prints, which truly spoke to me. But dang me, I forgot to take pictures! So check out her site, the EAST site, or the Art Post website to see some of her work.
I’ve included a slideshow below of all the non-fuzzy pictures that I remembered to take while I was there. I didn’t manage to snap pics of all the artists’ work, nor did I even manage to get to see the work or the studios of all the artists (don’t ask me why; I certainly meant to), but of those I saw, here are a few at the Art Post that I highly recommend checking out (visit the Art Post website or the EAST site to see who I missed; you might not want to miss them!):
Tina Schweiger — love her multi-part paintings!
Kristy Darnell Battani — large and small encaustics and some very cool large works made from the pages of books.
Kelsey Jenkinson — very beautifully rendered paintings of bees and other living creatures, and she’s a real sweetheart, too.
Scott Saunders — gorgeous, intricate, complex-yet-simple(!) sculptures made of thin wood and other materials, with a tech edge to them.
Foster Talge — his constructed trees need to be experienced!!! I simply love this new one, a willow-like tree sculpture made with lots and lots of hanging chains.
Jason Webb — exquisitely drawn acrylic paintings of collections of things and the detritus of modern city life. Plus, he had some great beer on offer last weekend.
Nimer Aleck II — OK, I’m into tools, so his hand-made hammers really fascinated me: huge hammers, tiny hammers, double-headed hammers, hammer-chuks, a collection of hammers with longer and longer handles.
Paul Clarence Oglesby, Jr. — very cool, totemic white sculptures in the courtyards.
We also made it to Pump Project, Canopy, and Blue Genie on Saturday, all of which I recommend. On Sunday, we had only a couple hours, so we squeezed in Flatbed Press, which was awesome, Tiny Park Gallery, and the UP Collective. I hope to blog on these later. I forgot how long it takes to write these posts!
This weekend, we hope to make it a lot of individual studios of painters, and to some of the artists at the group studios that we missed.
And if you’d like to see all the photos I shot at EAST 2013 so far, here’s a link to a gallery of all the images: EAST-2013.
