Creative buzz fills Artpost, envisioned specifically as a place where Austin's visual artists can harmonize

Artist hives are not new to East Austin.

Without an industrial past to leave a behind a warehouse-rich downtown, Austin artists search out neighborhoods that have the kind of flexible, affordable buildings typical of light modern manufacturing and ripe for converting into a good place in which to make an artistic mess - and for inviting a few like-minded creatives to join.

When the East Austin Studio Tour debuted in 2003, the greater public got a chance to see what many art insiders had known for a while - that the central East Austin area was rich with artists. And in the seven years since the first EAST, the scene has grown even richer. This year, the work of more than 300 artists can be seen at about 150 separate sites - at home studios, at galleries and at the many art hives where multiple artists carve workspaces out of a shared facility.

EAST is the production of Big Medium, a nonprofit artists organization that started in 2002 as a loosely formed art hive of its own in a stretch of beige warehouses just east of Airport Boulevard.

Artpost is one of the newer East Austin art hives. The three-acre plot on East Cesar Chavez Street sports a motley gathering of seven different buildings - from repurposed World War II Quonset huts to a barnlike building made of corrugated metal to a ranch house-styled cinderblock building that was once the Govalle Public Library.

And although most of the art hives that have emerged in East Austin are artist-run affairs, Artpost is the creation of commercial real estate developer Jim McCurry, a native Texan who spent a few decades in North Carolina building his career before returning to the Lone Star State a few years ago to feed 'the counterculture streak that's always been in me,' he says. And besides, he felt like visual artists needed a leg up in Austin.

'In Austin, the musicians are always at the top of the heap; they don't need any more help,' he says, noting that he signed his first tenant in 2006 soon after he purchased the property. 'But the visual artists need some place where they can come first.'

That doesn't mean Artpost is necessarily a music-less place. In fact, for EAST, McCurry's arranged for a little live music on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. But forget renting out the site for another Red Bull Moon Tower party during SXSW like in 2008 and 2009. Last year's party got out of hand and was shut down by the police, not what McCurry says he realized would happen when he agreed to rent out the property. 'I have no desire to do that ever again,' he says.

What he is pleased to see happen is to have artists such as Court Lurie, one of about two dozen who are Artpost tenants, find their way to the space. Lurie landed a lease in 2009 and loves her 800-square-feet studio with its natural light, perfect to paint her abstract paintings.

Among the tenants at Artpost, Lurie says, creative ideas are swapped right along with art supplies and words of encouragement. 'I love being a part of community,' she says, a sentiment echoed again and again by other Artpost tenants - among them, painter Katy Horan, jewelry maker Jodi Rae Brownstein, glass sculptor Nick Detrien and screenprinter Brian Maclaskey - during a recent stroll through the complex that McCurry has tidied up with a little native landscaping, fresh paint and other improvements.

Though it's a working community not regularly open to the public, the artists of Artpost host three annual open studio events separate from EAST, and McCurry and Lurie say there's the possibility they'll consider more.

Says Lurie: 'We're always looking at how we can be an incubator for the creative community.'

East Austin Studio Tour Events: Critic's Picks

(Unless otherwise noted, all events are free.)

Pay Phone Revival Project

What: Remember public pay phones? Maybe you don't remember a time before everyone had a cell phone. Artist Bridget Quinn began to regard the abandoned pay phone equipment she saw around town as moments in the urban landscape that seemed ripe for reinvention. So she went looking for artists interested in adding artistic flair (and fun) to the overlooked corners of the city where pay phones once stood center stage. Eleven artists applied their talents to abandoned pay phones at five different sites. The installations will be up Saturday through April 2011.