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Talking Art at the Top
The executive directors of the city's museums shed light on the local visual arts scene

By Sam Martin
Austin Chronicle
July 2, 2004

If you didn't know, the Austin Museum of Art is not going to build its new downtown facility at Fourth and Guadalupe. The reasons are numerous, but the ultimate deal breaker was the fact that even if AMOA had succeeded in raising the $43 million it would've taken to build the 250,000-square-foot Richard Gluckman design, it would still need $9 million a year just to operate it. That's more than three times the cost of running the present downtown space and the Laguna Gloria estate combined. Says Dana Friis-Hansen, AMOA executive director: "Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs."

So where does that leave AMOA, and more importantly, where does that leave visual art in Austin? There's no doubt that a city museum for Austin is a valuable and necessary cultural institution. Where else are we going to see an Andy Warhol retrospective? It's also true that a museum downtown can help spur along our sluggish economy by attracting tourists and providing employment. Yet to peg the local art scene to the rise and fall of one museum space (or lack thereof) isn't realistic and isn't an honest look at the whole picture.

The fact is, the visual arts community in Austin is having the most vibrant and productive period of its history. In the past five years, literally dozens of alternative and experimental gallery spaces have opened in town. Established galleries have welcomed a growing crowd of collectors. Arthouse has managed to become debt-free, while Mexic-Arte Museum is enjoying its new official status as the Mexican and Mexican American Fine Art Museum of Texas. And although we won't have a new AMOA building, we do still have its present space downtown as well as a newly renovated Laguna Gloria. Plus, let's not forget about the University of Texas' new home for the Blanton Museum of Art, which will house the largest university visual-art collection in the country.

What this amounts to is tens of thousands of square feet in which to display and discuss art, popular culture, and history. The question, then, shouldn't be: What are we going to do without more space? The question should be: How are these places going to stay open?

Money is always a concern, especially these days. But more crucial to the persistence of a lively visual arts community are the people involved in it. Artists are essential, of course, but they're not always great at promoting their own work. Of equal importance are the curators, museum directors, gallery owners, and anyone else making decisions about the organization and promotion of art shows. Without knowing these people, we wouldn't be able to sketch an accurate profile of the local scene. This article launches a series of features in which we help you get to know some of those decision makers in Austin's visual arts community.

Dana Friis-Hansen, Arthouse executive director Sue Graze, and Mexic-Arte executive director Sylvia Orozco are the decision makers behind one section of Austin's art community: its museums. As they tell it, art in Austin is more than the sum of its parts. Their museums have crucial roles to play in not only educating the larger community with art but also actively supporting local artists. To know these people is to begin to know how Austin's art world ticks.

Art Ecosystems

Dana Friis-Hansen (pronounced "Freeze-Hansen") is bright-eyed and energetic, and the glass of life that he drinks from is, by his own admission, always half-full, not half-empty. His official title is the Dr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Executive Director, which seems long for someone at the young age of 42. Nevertheless, the Massachusetts-born administrator has embraced the job that he was thrust into three years ago after previous director Elizabeth Ferrer resigned suddenly. There's a good chance that no one in town is more disappointed about the new space not getting built. Yet with unflagging optimism he registers his complaint and turns immediately to what the museum is doing.

"Everything was very rosy until the bubble burst, and then we realized that what had been planned when the NASDAQ was at 5000 was not feasible when the NASDAQ tanked," he says. "But when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. The fact is, Austin has a downtown art museum."

By the looks of it, that museum is doing well. On the Wednesday morning I spoke with Friis-Hansen, the galleries were positively bustling with schoolchildren and summer camp groups sitting in circles on the floor gesturing at the art on the walls as other visitors and individuals took long looks at the current exhibition, "Books and Parts of Books," featuring work by Austin artist Lance Letscher.

Also, the museum is in the best financial shape in years. After scrapping its plans for the new building, AMOA managed to eliminate its deficit and is now "in the black." Friis-Hansen has just hired a new curator. Resources are being spent on art education and locally curated exhibits by artists from Austin and around the state (and attendance is strong). Instead of being saddled with the pressure of having to run and afford a museum that was too big for the museum at present, the AMOA staff and board can focus their energies on the mission that has been seemingly overshadowed for years by the dream of a bigger, better space: to educate the community with new and exciting art while supporting local artists.

That last bit, the one about supporting local artists, may come as a surprise to many. But it is a crucial part of Friis-Hansen's total vision for this Austin museum.

"An art scene is an ecosystem with many parts to it," he explains. "And each of these parts must work together in order for the ecosystem to thrive. Museums and galleries can play a role by showing local artists' work, and at the same time artists can support themselves by working at the museum as truckers, packers, and art hangers. In other words, we want to create an incentive for artists to stay in Austin. Why would they stay if there's no place to show, no place to get a job, no critical writing about their work, et cetera? Why create your work in a vacuum?"

In fact, one of the most successful shows the museum has ever had was Friis-Hansen's brainchild. The April 2002 exhibit "22 to Watch" gave 22 artists from Central Texas (officially they had to live within a 50-mile radius of Austin) the attention the director believes they deserve. He plans to organize the show every three years. The next one is planned for the fall of 2005, after which it will head to museums in Galveston and Dallas. Says the director: "We'll be exporting Austin artists as well."

Friis-Hansen's passion for art and artists can be traced back to his university days at Carlton College in Minnesota, where he earned a B.A. in art history. During his junior year, he was the Helena Rubenstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. From 1985 to 1991, he was curator at MIT's List Visual Art Center, then moved to Tokyo to work as a curator at a private firm. His last job before moving to Austin in 1999 to become chief curator at AMOA – a job he still officially has – was senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Now, of course, he loves living in Austin. His downtown loft is close to the office and near the action. He's also an avid swimmer and starts most days bright and early at Barton Springs.

"One of the reasons I enjoy shaping the direction of the museum is that the people in Austin are curious, intelligent, and engaging, with many different interests. What we want to do at AMOA is welcome and serve the full range of people with different art and museum experiences. Austin has never had an ongoing serious museum culture, and I'm excited about helping to bring that about."

As the Museums Go, So Go Our Artists

Across the street and one block south of AMOA-Downtown, Sue Graze, the exuberant director of Arthouse, can relate. When she came to town five years ago, after working for 10 years as a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art and two years as senior curator at the Miami Art Museum, she wasn't encouraged by what she saw.

"My initial response when I was asked to take the job was, 'Are you crazy?!'" she says before breaking into a booming laugh. "At the time, the visual arts were not a significant part of the community, not like they were in Miami or Dallas."

But like Friis-Hansen, Graze has committed herself and Arthouse to making visual art in Austin more prominent – with significant success.

After growing up on Long Island, Graze went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1970 with a degree in English, even though her real passion was art history. After taking an extra semester's work of undergraduate courses, she went to the University of California, Riverside to get a master's degree in that field. When she left Riverside, she took an internship at the DMA and ended up staying for 14 years as curatorial assistant, registrar, assistant curator, and finally curator of contemporary art. She taught for a few years before becoming senior curator in Miami. In 1998 she was approached to run Arthouse, which had just opened its present location and was still known as the Texas Fine Arts Association.

Since then Arthouse has become a valuable partner in Austin's visual arts community by supporting local artists when it can and offering a diverse range of work to fill what is considered by many to be the most sophisticated gallery space in town.

"We're the only organization that is 100 percent committed to showing cutting-edge contemporary art in the city," Graze says. "And even though our core community is Texas as a whole, we have an important role to play in Austin."

Interestingly, Arthouse and AMOA have very closely intertwined pasts. The Texas Fine Arts Association – as Arthouse has been known for most of its long life – was started in 1911 by a group of amateur women artists with the singular goal of caring for the studio and work of legendary Austin sculptor Elisabet Ney. Soon, though, the group helped initiate UT's studio art program while putting on shows of Texas artists all over the state. Eventually, the Elisabet Ney Museum was deeded to the city, and in 1943 philanthropist Clara Driscoll, who was a member of TFAA, donated her estate to the group with the stipulation that it be made an art museum. That became the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, which separated from TFAA in 1961. Five years later, TFAA deeded the property to Laguna Gloria, which later changed its name to the Austin Museum of Art.

These days, the two museums still have similar agendas, at least in terms of the way Graze and her AMOA counterpart view local artists and the role museums should play in the greater Austin art scene.

"Our main constituency is always artists, and if the shows we're doing aren't bringing in artists, then that's no good," Graze explains. "We try to work with local artists as much as possible because we're well-aware that for the art scene here to continue to grow, we have to have a city where artists can live and work and become recognized in some way."

Like Friis-Hansen, Graze likes to employ local artists when she can. (Arthouse has four full-time staff members in addition to Graze and six part-time employees.) She thinks that the more successful the galleries and museums are, the more successful the city's artists will be.

As far as financial stability goes, Arthouse has managed to sail through the recent economic doldrums with apparent ease. After paying off the mortgage on its building in 2002, the organization has been operating debt-free with the help of what Graze calls "generous donors." Arthouse is ready to expand into the upstairs part of its gallery and has just posted a call for architects. The tentative plan is to create more gallery space along with artists' studios so the museum can create an ongoing yearlong artist-in-residence program for three Texas artists.

"Our artists are our seers and our prophets, and if we can't do something for them, then we need to be closing," says Graze.

The Old Guard

If anyone knows about the plight of the working artist, it's Sylvia Orozco, who opened Mexic-Arte with her ex-husband, artist Pio Pulido, and local artist and art teacher Sam Coronado in 1984 because there was no one in town who would display their paintings. Twenty years later, Orozco is still showing art, just not her own (although she still paints when she finds the time). In a nod to the museum's staying power and its value to the city and state, Gov. Rick Perry recently bestowed the space with the title of Official Mexican and Mexican American Fine Art Museum of Texas.

"Our role is a little different than the other museums in town in that we have commitment to the growing Latin and Mexican community by exploring our cultural history and showing contemporary art," says Orozco. "But like the other museums in Austin, we have a general commitment to presenting art, supporting artists, and educating the public."

Born to a Guadalajaran boot maker, Orozco grew up in Cuero, Texas, where she was the family artist from a young age. Long before she came to the capital city to study painting, she was drawing her brother's and sister's science projects and designing the bulletin board at school. After graduation from UT-Austin, she quickly discovered that no one was interested in the paintings of a young Latina abstract expressionist.

"Lots of artists in the Seventies and Eighties were creating their own alternative spaces because they were being rejected by the museums or they weren't allowed to actively participate," says Orozco. "And if you were Latino and wanted to explore Latino themes, it was worse because there weren't even any museums to get rejected by."

Now, Mexic-Arte is keenly aware of the need to support artists, in addition to bringing unusual and rare Mexican art to Austin. Its Young Latino Artists series (which recently closed its ninth annual exhibition) helps emerging artists from around Texas get a serious museum show under their belts. Mexic-Arte also sponsors an artist-in-residency program in which they pay professional midcareer artists to teach a two-week course on Latino art in schools throughout the state. This year's artist is accomplished local painter Fidencio Duran.

The museum has a similar program for local elementary schools. The courses are eight weeks long and they're taught by local artists. Like Friis-Hansen and Graze, Orozco knows an art institution is nothing without artists to fill its walls.

Orozco is also keenly aware of what it takes to keep an art space open and running, having weathered not only this last economic downturn but the one in the late Eighties, as well.

"We're famous for doing a lot with a little, though I'd rather that was leveled out a bit," she says with a smile. "By now though I think the city recognizes and the people recognize that they need Mexic-Arte and that we do a good job. We also have a good board that helps us raise money."

Still, like her colleagues at AMOA and Arthouse, Orozco knows that for the arts community in Austin to continue to grow, its institutions cannot rest on their laurels. In that spirit, Mexic-Arte has recently renovated its museum store and stocked it with fresh goods, such as hip urban gear from Mexico City and beautiful handmade jewelry by regional and Mexican artists. The museum has also received a $100,000 grant from the Houston Endowment to explore the idea of constructing a new building on the site of the old one.

"We're not here today, gone tomorrow," says Orozco. "We are about the future."

AMOA's Friis-Hansen and Arthouse's Graze couldn't have said it any better.

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Burton Wilson
Photos Illuminate 'Dillo Daze

By Erin Keever
Austin American-Statesman
July 8, 2004

Burton Wilson was a sculptor who attended the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1930s, where he began to develop a serious interest in jazz and blues. In the 1960s, after studying with photographer Russell Lee at the University of Texas, he began hanging out and shooting pictures at Austin clubs such as the Vulcan Gas Company and Armadillo World Headquarters.

By the 1970s, Wilson was a fixture at the Armadillo, documenting the individuals and groups and capturing the flavor and energy of a distinctive music scene. In "Through the Lens of Burton Wilson: The Austin Music Scene (1965-1994)," visitors to Threadgill's South are treated to public and private images: reminders of various acts playing on stage as well as glimpses of performers casually lounging or hamming it up backstage.

The more private portraits are the strongest artistically because Wilson exercised more creative control, cropping figures and posing them in front of various makeshift backgrounds. A young Bruce Springsteen is dramatically contrasted against a white background (à la Richard Avedon). Willie Nelson, in a Levis jacket and sporting remarkably short hair, reclines in a chair, quietly looking away. Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Linda Ronstadt, Doug Sahm, Big Joe Williams, Johnny Winter; the list goes on and the sheer numbers of musicians Wilson photographed is staggering.

Curated by Clifford Antone, this show was previously featured at Wally Workman Gallery. After an overwhelming response, it was extended at Threadgill's, where it seems a natural fit. (The Armadillo occupied a nearby spot on Riverside Drive; restaurant owner Eddie Wilson -- no relation to the artist -- was a prominent figure in the early Austin music scene.) While Burton Wilson's success is so much a result of his behind-the-scenes access, accessing them at Threadgill's is not exactly easy. To see the photographs hung behind oversized booths in the back room, you either have to hover over diners as they eat, secure a booth in back and crane your neck to see a few images, or stop by during off hours -- ideally between 3 and 5 p.m. -- and even then, you may have to crawl over the booths to read the labels.

'Through the Lens of Burton Wilson' continues through Aug. 31, Threadgill's South, 301 W. Riverside Drive, 472-7428 (Wally Workman Gallery), 472-9304 (Threadgill's).

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The Art of the Business of Art
Gallery owners David Berman, Steve Clark, and Wally Workman on promoting artists and selling art

By Sam Martin
Austin Chronicle
July 30, 2004

Visual artists of all ilk have a thing with money. Most don't have enough of it, at least not enough to live on while they produce their art. And many more don't know how to get it, short of working a day job that comes nowhere close to holding their hearts like the sound of a paintbrush as it dances across a canvas or the satisfying slice of a knife making its way through a fresh hunk of clay. In short, most artists go blank, get nervous, or give up when it comes to dealing with filthy lucre.

Luckily for them (or at least those who manage to get representation), there are galleries and gallery owners. Like a musician's manager or writer's agent, a gallery owner can make the difference for an artist who is selling work and one who isn't. These men and women are promoters and facilitators, but most of all they are businesspeople. If it's the artist's job to make good art, it's the gallery owner's job to sell it.

Interestingly, many artists are not only baffled by how to make money with art, but they tend to look distrustfully at those who would profit from their creative energy. (Most galleries take at least a 30% cut of sales, and some take as much as 50%.) But as any "successful" artists will tell you, having work in a gallery is beneficial, meaning higher prices for the work, the possibility for added exposure in other cities, and someone actively selling one's work on a daily basis. Most importantly, though, is the fact that by having their work in a gallery, artists can leave the business side to someone else and focus on creating.

Aside from what galleries can do for artists is the question of what they can do for the Austin arts scene. Even though the owners profiled in this article are all businesspeople first and art lovers second, each has a real commitment to art, artists, and how they affect Austin. It goes without saying that all gallery owners want to see the visual arts scene here get more attention and draw in more admirers/customers. But no one says they chose to spend their lives around art because they wanted to make money (cue laughter). It's because they have a deep appreciation for how art can enrich, excite, and educate individuals and the city as a whole.

These people welcome anyone and everyone into their galleries, whether or not the reason they're there is to buy art. That's because they're aware of the synergistic character of the Austin art scene (what Austin Museum of Art Executive Director Dana Friis-Hansen calls "art ecosystems"): It's not one museum or one artist that's going to make this town a visual art destination on par with Santa Fe; it's the fact that we're all in this together. As a result, many local galleries and museums pay dues to be part of a collective called In the Galleries Austin, which prints a brochure and hosts a Web site to spread the word about current art shows and pitch Austin as a place to come experience art.

The spaces covered in this article are all established galleries showing primarily midcareer artists, but the scene is also home to a strong contingent of alternative spaces for artists just starting out. Those will be covered in a future installment of this ongoing series on the personalities behind Austin's visual arts scene. (For the first installment, see "Talking Art at the Top," July 2.) For now, David Berman of D Berman Gallery, Wally Workman of the Wally Workman Gallery, and Steve Clark of the Stephen L. Clark Gallery have a lot to say about artists, the business of art, and art in Austin.

The Philanthropist

To know David Berman, you have to know that he lives on about 100 acres near Wimberley in a beautiful limestone house surrounded by porches. It's a short golf-cart ride down to a dammed creek where the swimming is heavenly and about 50 minutes by car to 1701 Guadalupe, where you'll find his art gallery, D Berman. For the 50-something Berman, who spent 25 years owning and operating a film business in Houston, the Hill Country is something of a paradise. Owning an art gallery (and working there four days a week) is pure gravy.

Berman has a slight build, gray hair, and a mild-mannered presence that is offset by the striking opaque yellow round glasses he wears. Although his voice is soft, he speaks with confidence, and when you get around him you can almost feel the success that has followed him all his life. While he's a relative newcomer to the art world – his gallery opened in 2000 – he is entirely engaged in and excited by what's happening to the visual arts in Austin, even more so than some longtime gallery owners around town. That could be because he's the new kid on the block, but it could be that he brings a fresh perspective to the city and its art.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Berman moved to Houston at age 18 when his father changed jobs. After a year at Lamar High School, he came to UT to study film. That's where he met his wife, Ellen Berman, a painter known for her oil still lifes. (Ellen was represented locally by LyonsMatrix Gallery until its closing in 1999.) The two married in 1968 and after college moved to New York for a year before returning to Austin to try to eke out a career in the film business. When that went nowhere, Berman took a job at the NBC affiliate in Houston. Five years later, he opened his own film company, which he ran until retiring in the early Nineties.

After moving to Wimberley in 1998, Berman still had a lot of energy to do something, though he wasn't sure what. In Houston he'd been an infrequent art collector but had always been aware of the Austin art scene because of Ellen's involvement here. He also thought that the art scene in Austin could be improved. "I felt that Austin didn't have a lot of good quality galleries, at least the kind of galleries I was used to growing up in New York and living in Houston," he says.

So when he learned that Camille Lyons was set to close LyonsMatrix, he went and looked at her space to see if it would interest him. It didn't, but on a walk around the neighborhood he ran across Galeria Sin Fronteras, a showplace for contemporary Latin American art run by UT professor Gil Cardenas, currently a provost at Notre Dame. The natural light, tall ceilings, and open space of the corner gallery appealed to Berman, so he asked Cardenas if he was interested in leasing the space. He was. "Within a few months, all of the sudden I was doing this," says Berman.

Now, D Berman Gallery shows contemporary regional art by artists living in Texas. In the four years it's been open, the gallery has won two awards from the Austin Critics Table, one for best group show and one for a solo installation by internationally renowned artist and local treasure Michael Ray Charles. Berman just had his most successful month ever, largely because of the incredible response to Lance Letscher, whom he represents and whose work he showed concurrently with Letscher's AMOA exhibit "Books and Parts of Books."

Still, the business of running a gallery hasn't been necessarily profitable. Berman realizes that the art scene here still has a long way to go before galleries like his can make it year after year and before artists are able to make a living without having to move away. "At the beginning of this year, I wasn't sure we were going to be able to operate past our five-year plan," he says. "If I were to add up the profits and losses over the four years I've been open, I would see that I've spent far more than I've taken in. But after last month, I have hope. Plus, there's no doubt we have a great community here. The MFA program at UT provides great energy. Dana Friis-Hansen at AMOA is a great advocate, and with the growth of the Blanton, things are only going to keep growing."

This optimism has led Berman and his wife to start a foundation to support the arts. So far they have given money to AMOA and have put together an advisory committee to look into future projects that might give grants to individual artists. "I think our artists deserve to be compensated for what they do, and I think it's a sad commentary that so few of our artists are able to support themselves on their art," says Berman. "For me, art can personalize and enrich an environment. You establish a relationship with something in a gallery, and then you take it home and it becomes a part of your life." Plus, says Berman, the visual arts are good for Austin. "There's a million reasons why a vibrant art scene is important to a city, and the visual arts is an area that I think Austin has been negligent in taking advantage of," he says. "Art attracts business, and it makes the city a more interesting place to live. We're not going to be Houston. We're not going to have a Menil Collection or a de Menil family or the Nashers in Dallas or the Basses in Fort Worth. But Austin has an opportunity to be a center for art."

Until then, Berman will continue his commute from his patch of paradise among the oak trees and the hills.

The Soccer Mom

The way she tells it, Wally Workman's adult life as a single mother trying to support two kids while running an art gallery hasn't been that tough. After her two sons were born, Workman would bring them into the gallery to sit among the prints and oil paintings while answering phones and talking to designers and other customers. As infants they probably made a little noise, and as toddlers they most likely got into a few things. But owning a gallery was what Workman wanted to do, so that's where you'd find her and her kids. Now that the boys are 13 and 16 years old, she has a bit more time to commit to selling art but not much. As it's always been, being around art is a labor of love for this gallery owner.

Born in Europe in the 1950s, Workman moved to Arlington, Texas, when she was a year old. As a child she would go to the museums in Fort Worth and stare at the new art being created by an increasingly experimental international art scene. She remembers being inspired by color-field painter and Bauhaus artist Joseph Albers, and after the show she and her brothers and sisters ran home to paint large colorful squares in the family garage.

As a student at UT, Workman studied art history, and not long after graduation she began helping a friend run his art gallery on Anderson Lane. Early on it was apparent to Workman that he didn't know what he was doing, and he soon lost interest, selling the gallery to Workman in 1980. Three months later she moved the Wally Workman Gallery to its present location at 1202 W. Sixth.

In the beginning, Workman sold mostly prints and serigraphs, but soon she started to take interest in local painters. Now, original art is all she deals with – most of it paintings. Most important to Workman, though, is that her artists are still all based in Austin. "Of all the galleries in town, with the exception of Bill Davis', we're the only one that shows mostly Austin-based artists," she says.

Like all good galleries, Workman has cultivated a particular aesthetic for her space that can be best described as impressionistic. One of her artists is watercolorist Gordon Fowler, husband to singer Marcia Ball. His superb depictions of stone houses and landscapes from the French countryside could easily pass for light studies from the 1890s. Another is Will Klemm, a popular artist who uses pastels to create moody natural scenes with long shadows and sunlit breaks in dark clouds. For Workman, representing Klemm, who was unknown before Workman began hanging his art and who now regularly sells out shows in New York, has been one of her proudest achievements.

"I love working with artists from the beginning of their careers," she says. "You start by showing someone's work and touting them, and they start to sell their work, and sometimes they sell so much, they can start to do their art full time. It certainly doesn't happen overnight, and sometimes it takes years of both the gallery and the artist working to make a career. This job is very cumulative."

According to Workman, the same can be said for the arts in Austin as a whole. Having watched the scene from her end of Sixth Street for almost 25 years, she says things have improved, but there's still room to grow. She also thinks that the galleries here can play an important role. "Getting people to come to the galleries is part of the whole process of growing the arts scene in Austin," she says. "If they can't get out and look, then they won't get the appreciation or the desire to start collecting."

And for Workman, that is also what's going to help get her two boys off to college.

The Art Preacher

When you walk into the Stephen L. Clark photography gallery on West Sixth, a sneaker's throw from both Waterloo Records and the gnarled-but-not-dead-yet Treaty Oak, the first thing you see is Clark himself seated behind a laptop computer at his large rustic wooden desk. Even before any words are exchanged, you'll notice his car salesman's smile and his insistent eyes staring at you through round wire-rimmed glasses.

If a gallery's purpose is to sell art, then Steve Clark has found his calling. The 57-year-old native Texan grew up in Houston and went to Southwestern University in the mid-Sixties before opening his first successful business – the original Waterloo Ice House – in 1976. There he booked bands, sold food, and even hung local artists' art on the walls. After selling the restaurant in 1991, he started looking around for something to do. Having always been a photographer himself, he figured he'd try shooting CD covers and rock shows, until a photographer friend asked Clark if he'd try to sell his work. He agreed but not before going to see another friend, screenwriter and photographer Bill Wittliff, to ask for advice. "Bill said, 'Not only is this the right thing to do, but you're the right person to do it,'" Clark says. "Then he asked me if I wanted to sell his Lonesome Dove stills." The photographs, which Wittliff shot while the television movie was being filmed, were part of Clark's collection when he opened the doors of the gallery in 1996, and they are still his best sellers.

In short, Clark has a knack for knowing a good thing when he sees it, whether that's a need for a restaurant in town or an art gallery selling quality photography. He's direct, enthusiastic, and a born salesman. He believes in art and thinks you should, too. "I preach art because I think it's important to live with a constant influx of it," he says. "Every day I wake up at 6am, and the first thing I do is listen to music. What I do here is help people surround themselves with things that are meaningful."

Clark is also aware of his gallery's role in the larger art community in Austin, but he is careful to point out the difference between what he's doing and what a museum does. "For one thing, the art at a museum is not for sale," he says. "What I do here is put good art on the walls and then sell it. Most people can afford to buy something from me, even if it's just a book." And for those that just want to come in and have a look? "I encourage them to come in, sit at the table, read my photography books, and just learn."

This enthusiasm for the business side of art shouldn't cloud Clark's awareness that for the arts to flourish here on any level, our artists need incentive to stay and keep working. "I am very much about artists getting to the next level and making a living off their art," he explains. "But to do that, we have to pay them. Otherwise, they can't pay their rent, they can't do their art, and there is no art scene."

One of the artists Clark has watched grow from an unknown to a full-time and widely collected photographer is Kate Breakey, who started her career in Austin and now lives in Tucson. Her large black-and-white hand-painted photographs are always hanging somewhere in the Stephen L. Clark Gallery, though if they're not, Clark will gladly pull out any you might want to see after thumbing through her latest book. "The first time I saw Kate's work, my jaw dropped," he says, getting up from his chair, hands and arms waving like a tent-revival preacher. "And I said, 'Kate, every day a photographer comes into my gallery and says, "I want you to represent my work," and I say, "Your work is competent, but I don't have a market for it."' But Kate's work was different. I saw someone whose work was fully realized and was in a league all its own. I knew instantaneously which clients of mine would buy which pieces, and I told her right then and there."

Breakey's photography is a perfect example of the character of the work Clark sells in his gallery. He calls it "lyrical and literate," and indeed the black-and-white images are a little of both, with Breakey's close-ups of birds, Jack Spencer's frozen landscapes, and Wittliff's rustic Old West scattered about the place. Clark, who likes to spend time canoeing or sailing, is fond of saying that everything you want to know about his artists is depicted in their art. It's also true that the artists you see on his walls are a reflection of who he is. Here is a man who, like his artists, is lyrical, literate, and very professional. He's also going to keep on preaching the good word on art in Austin.

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A creative convergence
Art from an array of mediums comes to life at the Guadalupe Arts Center near the UT campus

By Shermakaye Bass | Photos by Sung Park
Austin American-Statesman
July 29, 2004

Just inside the Guadalupe Arts Center -- a building that, at first blush, looks and feels like a college arts collective, but is not -- the trickling of an elegant sheet-copper fountain drowns out the street sounds and sets the tone for a sensory excursion that could involve an hour or a whole day.

Some might call it a magical tour, akin to threading a labyrinth, using only the tenant directory to navigate the warren of corridors where quirky tableaux punctuate the hallways and crannies between studios. Most anyone would call it a mystery tour, because at this inconspicuous hive across Guadalupe Street from the Dog & Duck Pub and three blocks south of the University of Texas, a sense of ordered chaos pervades the three floors, drawing the leisurely browser farther and farther in.

Hints of varied activities waft through hallways -- the tinny scent of solvent, the rich aroma of oil paint, the strains of muted jazz or the strumming of a guitar calling up the ghost of Hank Williams. Deeper in, down the south hall -- past Laura Harrison's clever handcrafted fountain -- the artworks of tenants crowd the walls, a profuse but engaging introduction to who's doing what within the center, where more than 50 painters, writers, thespians, photographers and other creative souls rent studio space and two dozen more lease time in the center's well-stocked darkroom.

In some ways, the center, formerly the ArtPlex, remains one of Austin's best-kept secrets. Developer Gary Peden leased the empty, boxy building to house studios, offices and a gallery in 1997, but he died two years later. What remained was a handful of reputable tenants anchoring the place, while less-serious renters used studios for storage or sometime-endeavors. Seedier elements also camped in the halls or partied late into the night on the rooftop deck.

But since former San Angelo publisher Kevin Barry assumed control in 2001, the tone has changed, shifting from a quasi-collegiate vibe to that of a professional arts colony with a two-prong mission: to nurture the creative impulses of those who rent studios there (they go from $250 to $2,000 a month) and to showcase the work of tenants and other area-based artists.

Barry and gallery manager Melissa Ladd, who is also a photographer, have introduced a more thoughtful and high-end approach to the place, mounting better exhibits in the central gallery and doing much to improve the tenants' quality-of-worklife. In the past three years, they have added new exterior signs, better lighting, regular mailers on future events, up-to-date tenant listings, arts-related workshops and a continued commitment to the First Thursday gallery night in this area that once called itself Austin's "Downtown Arts District." Where in years past the quality of art varied considerably and the odds of finding an on-site employee were often slim, the center has become a well-oiled enterprise, where art and commerce appear to dovetail easily.

'An intangible quality'

For anyone familiar with Austin's creative community, the real surprise inside the center is the diversity of talent based here: The award-winning Salvage Vanguard Theater, regional-film guru Steve Mims and his Austin Filmworks, Mr. Sinus co-creator/performer Jerm Pollet, Far East-meets-West troubadour Bob Livingston, musician and local-culture historian Harold McMillan and his DiverseArts nonprofit group, photographer Neil Coleman and his ProJex Gallery and Frameshop, Chris Warner's eclectic ArtFarm Gallery and jewelry designer Beth McElhaney, whose "Personal Adornments" studio has taken over Coleman's former ProJex space.

The building has also attracted newcomers, such as painters Honora Jacob (recently of Lexington, Ky.) and Peter McLellan (originally from Providence, R.I.). All seem to have forged a community that is equal parts social and solitary.

"Sometimes, all I'll do all day is talk about art with other artists, and I'll walk out feeling totally revitalized," says photographer Richard Griffin, who owns F8 Fine Art Gallery on West Sixth Street, but has a studio off the center's first floor. "My studio has a door that opens into the darkroom, and there are about 25 photographers who use that, and they'll spill out into my space or I'll go in and look at what's floating in the stop-bath tray."

Other times, Griffin says, he works intently, hardly glancing up when a fellow artist passes by. Invariably when a visitor or gallery-goer hovers at his door, he, like most Guadalupe tenants, will assume the host role, welcoming the viewer in -- because one reason he keeps hours here is to sell art as well as make it.

More than anything, what drew Griffin to the building is its hum, its energy. "There's an intangible quality to it, but there's definitely a reality to it, too," he says. "I think the building has a spirit, and it's a positive one. There's always something going on here."

'Like home'

The place is a hive, all right -- down to the zigzag of hallways, which splinter off in unexpected directions, creating a scavenger-hunt effect for the artful wanderer. Finding studios is relatively easy. Finding the stairways and bathrooms is a small challenge. But some would say that's part of the center's mazelike charm. One can spend hours buzzing the halls, alighting in open doorways to watch painters paint or jewelers jewel or grant-writers write grants, or to peer through the windowpanes of studios where the occupant is hard at work.

Around each corner is a new mood, perhaps a still-life. At the end of several corridors, for instance, are vignettes of sculptures, paintings, photographs and prints -- spacious niches where overflow works form a makeshift gallery for adjacent studios. In the stairways, tenants hang their creations and bits of bio, leading the viewer toward their respective workspaces. Here, a brass cantilever lamp sprouts from the wall outside a studio. There, the muted melodies of Bob Dylan or Miles Davis seep from beneath a closed door.

Almost everyone's personal sensibility spills into the common spaces, but the display fronting Bob Livingston's place -- his door-window "shade" is a vintage South American textile illuminated with blinking cactus lights -- promises particular intrigue within.

A former musical compadre of Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P. Nunn and other Texas songwriters, Livingston bases his omni-creative outfit on the second floor. Surrounded by vintage Navajo blankets and statuettes of Hindu deities, ancient arrowheads and hand-carved camel-bone knives from the Mideast, the storyteller-musician runs Texas Music International, a nonprofit production company that umbrellas Livingston's in-school "Cowboys & Indians" touring program. On a broader scale, the company exports Livingston's show, which melds traditions from the American West ("Cowboys") and the global East (South Asia and Middle East -- ergo "Indians"). A performance earlier this month in the center gallery was subtitled "Mahatma Gandhi and Sitting Bull meet Buddy Holly and Ravi Shankar."

Livingston's singular programs have been sanctioned by the U.S. State Department, which has sent him to India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Yemen, Jordan and other countries as a sort of cultural ambassador. But all of his projects coalesce in the Guadalupe studio.

"This place is like home for me," Livingston says. "It's not typical Austin, but it's very Austintatious. It keeps with a really good Austin tradition of sort of being a creative center.

"I can come in and have my little garret any way I want, and when I close my door I'm doing my own thing in my own world. But when I'm walking these halls, I'm talking to creative people, who are in general happy, because how they got here is they're at least making an attempt to make a living on their art. And many people are. There's very serious work here. People take it very seriously, because (if they're renting a space) they have to produce."

'Community, camaraderie'

Down the hall, the door to Harold McMillan's DiverseArts Little Gallery is open and classical music softly flows from it. McMillan is one of the center's longest-running tenants, along with Coleman, Warner, McElhaney and painter Amy Lindsay-Joynt. Like most of the artists here, he cites the central location and the creative vibe as a major attraction.

"I like the fact that there are a lot of different people here whose energy is committed to presenting and producing creatively in some kind of way," McMillan says. "And for a lot of us who have been here for years, there really is a sense of community and camaraderie."

McMillan says he doesn't know of another place in town, of this size and scope, that allows artists to do what they do -- which for him involves organizing events like the Austin Jazz Festival (Sept. 10-17), the kick-off event for East 11th Street's fall East End Community Renaissance Festival, or performing his "Word Jazz" evenings, an improv spoken word and jazz show, which the center hosted in late June.

"There have been attempts in the past in similar buildings" to create such a community, McMillan observes, "but this place and this group of people are the longest-standing of these arts-project warehouses in Austin. It's gone through a lot of changes, but it still has a sense of continuity."

All around his DiverseArts digs, a soothing refuge with a front gallery room and a back office space, are carved wooden figures from Haiti, handcrafted leather masks, books and bowls and musical instruments. On the gallery walls is a steamy visual narrative comprised of black-and-white photographs by Ricardo Acevedo -- "Immersion," a "film-noir photographic novella." Throughout the office are posters from McMillan's long-running but now defunct brainchild, the Clarksville Jazz and Heritage Festival.

'Fits like a glove'

Across the way from DiverseArts Little Gallery, an East Coast transplant is peering at his canvas, as waves of Ricki Lee Jones wash over him. Peter McLellan, a painter and native of Rhode Island who relocated to Austin seven years ago but only recently got his Guadalupe studio, works in a relatively no-frills set-up. That's partly because he's a recent addition to the building, but mainly it's because he's been painting nonstop since he set up shop here.

"I don't know what it is, but this place fits like a glove," he says. "I've been here working since May, and every time I meet somebody, it's like I should have been here forever." McLellan, whose cool-palette paintings evoke ephemeral moments -- stirrings of memory and nostalgia -- as well as concrete images inspired by his life on the Rhode Island coast, says this downtown haven inspires him in unexpected ways.

"When I come in, I'll try and walk around and talk to other artists, and I think that some of that (exchange) comes out in your work -- not in obvious ways, maybe in your brushwork or your color scheme," he says. "But I don't think it's conscious. This place is smaller than my garage, where I was working before, but there was no community there. And that makes all the difference in the world."

McLellan's friend Jill Alo, who told him about the opening at center (which usually maintains a waiting list of 25 or more people), works on the opposite side of the building. Her studio has the peculiar whiff of solvent, which Alo uses to give her paintings a buttery, soft-edged quality. The walls are populated with her work -- fascinating flocks of ravens (compositions that are simultaneously breezy and sinister), gestural animal studies (some comedic, some pensive) and lushly layered collages.

Like Alo's work, the atmosphere here is brisk and businesslike but suggests the paradoxes of the artist's headspace -- piles of artisan-mixed oil paint tubes spread across a large, aqua-colored patio table, but oddly the overhead lighting is fluorescent -- offset, she says, by the window to her back, which lets in southeasterly light.

"Before, this place used to be a sort of hippy, art-studenty place, but Kevin (Barry) has really whipped it into shape," says Alo, echoing the sentiment of many Guadalupe tenants. The collective of more-serious artists motivates her and sometimes intimidates her. "There are so many ideas and so many artists here. You can feel like an ant in an anthill. ... But it's fabulous at the same time because the camaraderie and support is awesome." The combination of those qualities "really helps you decide how serious you are."

The constant proverbial buzz of the hive also "helps you make your work stronger," she says.

Obviously, she is producing something strong. Come September, the Guadalupe main gallery will present "Three," an exhibit of paintings by Alo and tenants Jacob and Lindsay-Joynt.

Jacob, who moved to Austin fairly recently and took a studio so she would have "a certain rhythm" to her work, likes the occasional sensory infiltrations, which give her a break from paint and easel. "Sometimes I'll hear the musician down the hall and I'll hear him working on something," Jacob says. "It makes your mind take that in, even if it's just a quick thought that runs through your head. I'm working in a visual medium, which is very solitary (and unfolds over time), and suddenly I'm hearing something that's being created right in the moment. It doesn't distract me. Actually it's part of what I like, hearing other people communicate or create something."

For many in the building, a shared artistic environment can strike some crucial middle ground between two often polar worlds -- the internal, where ideas incubate and gestate, and the external, where, as Neil Coleman says, "you can kind of rub around ideas with each other." Like the mixing of paint or the fusing of metals perhaps -- or the stringing together of a song from individual notes.

Griffin, ever the photographic observer, compares the atmosphere to "an amusement park that you've never been to. When you come in, you can hear the rides and the people screaming, and you can't wait to get around the corner and see what it's about. The smells change, the art on the walls change. It's constantly evolving in a positive way."

He might well have been describing the artistic process, ever-evolving and striving forward. Or maybe the Guadalupe Arts Center, like all successful collectives, is an analogy for the artist's charge: to absorb the sensory world outside and from it forge that peculiar voice.

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