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Cover Story: 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
July 29, 2004

The Guadalupe Arts Center building may not draw your eye, but inside you'll find eye-popping art.

Guadalupe Arts Center. 1705 Guadalupe St., 473-3775, www.guadalupearts.com.

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.

Top: Honora Jacob says that although painting is a solitary process, she doesn't mind the sounds coming from the musicians and other artists at the center. Below: details from Honora Jacob's studio.

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.

Bob Livingston, who performs 'Cowboys & Indians,' an in-school touring program, says his Guadalupe studio 'is like home for me.'

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."

Musician Harold McMillan has seen artists come and go at the center. 'It's gone through a lot of changes, but it still has a sense of continuity,' he says.

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'

Painter Jill Alo says of the center: 'There are so many ideas and so many artists here. ... The camaraderie and support is awesome.'

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."

Richard Griffin owns F8 Fine Art Gallery, but he also has a studio at the center. 'I think the building has a spirit, and it's a positive one,' he says.

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.

Top: Peter McLellan has painted in his no-frills studio at the center since May. 'I don't know what it is, but this place fits like a glove,' he says. Below, details from Peter McLellan's studio.

"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.