Art and Craft in the East

If you are shopping for holiday gifts, or for yourself (why not?), the East Austin Studio Tour, known as East is where you need to be this November.

With the 15^th edition of the popular Studio Tour, the roster of artists has grown to over 530 participants. While that might seem like a visual overdose on art, the good news is that the Tour is held over two weekends, November 12th – 13th and November 19th – 20^th, so that you can pace your art fix and the credit card spending limit.  There are places to eat and imbibe en route.

While most of the exhibits reflect two and three-dimensional art and craft work, we noticed that several architectural firms will be open to exhibit the work of guest artists. If you were curious about the inside workings of an architectural firm, and don’t yet have a house to build or renovate, now’s the chance to peek inside.

(Bercy Chen Edgeland House)

Bercy Chen Studio at 1111 E 11^th Street, Ste 200, will be open to showcase the works of 4 artists, Kristy Darnell Battani, Erika Huddleston, Jeffrey Primeaux and Jason John Paul Haskins.  Kristy Darnell Battani, (paper, encaustic, oil) says that she is “overwhelmed by, and yet curiously drawn to, the deluge of information enveloping our society. I find beauty in the deterioration of information as well as the abundance of information, both in form and substance.”

(Krika Huddleston has created a series of stainless steel benches, suitable for outdoors or indoors, that are designed to recall the sense of tree-climbing.)

(Jason John Paul Haskins is a photographer who explores liturgical architecture “at two scales, the distant volume of space and the intimate details of craft and material. Great architecture has a unique ability to embody paradoxes in non-reductive form.”)

(ADLA Studio)

(At 1200 East 12^th Street, Studio B, is ADLA Studio, a landscape architecture firm with a background focused on art, ecology, horticulture and construction.)

(At Studio A, you will find Pollen Architecture & Design, a collaborative with their own design studio which will be open to visitors to view an exhibition of drawings, models, photographs, materials and samples of recent projects.)

Matt Fajkus Architecture, at 900 E 6^th Street will have their doors open to visitors. You can read about Matt’s firm here.

Austin’s skilled and inventive maker culture offers shoppers options in furniture, from customized pieces, where you are able to work with the artist and craftsman to select style and materials, to pieces already in stock and ready to install.

(At Flitch, a mill shop there will be a collection of artisans and makers who utilize the resources at 1045 Reinli Street, Unit B, you’ll find 5 exhibitors working in wood with a clear relationship to the surrounding materials.)

(Mathew Helveston at WOODSHED Artist Studio, 3502 Oak Springs Drive, will be showing ‘50s inspired wooden pieces of furniture such as beds, nightstands, tables, and chairs.)

(At 405 Springdale Road the Macek Furniture Company – Splinter Group, several artists have work on display, including Julie Konvicka and Hawkeye Glenn, with furniture from Michael Yates (read more about Michael here) and Mark Macek.)

(Stop for coffee at Flitch Coffee, 641 Tillery Street, and tour the workshop space of Hatch, where you will also see works on exhibit by several artists who source materials here. You’ll see beautiful woods here, from locally harvested lumber, domestic hardwoods and reclaimed industrial components).

(Domi Goods is the name of Philip Hernandez’s studio where he crafts everyday furniture for the home, like this dining table (above) at 4709 E 5^th Street.)

(Dining Table — Mark Epstein)

Mark Epstein – Mark Steven Design East Side Collaborative, at 2400 E. Cesar Chavez Street, #302 believes that ‘furniture design and fabrication are a microcosm of architecture. Furniture, like architecture, is structure, material, scale, texture and proportion, all attributes which I find fascinating. In a multimedia-based culture where seemingly everything—from our clothes to our food—is mass produced in fully automated form, I seek to rediscover the too-often forgotten values of finely crafted furniture and accessories through authenticity and integrity.”

(Hikari Desk A&K Woodworking and Design)

MakeATX is a laser cutting workshop at 1109 B Shady Lane where the work of A&K Woodworking and Design will be on display. Heavily influenced by Japanese design as well as Mid-Century Modern, the husband and wife team of A&K Woodworking and Design create functional pieces for the home.

For more information on these and hundreds of other artists visit http://east.bigmedium.org/participants.html and search by Medium or Type.  The website also details events, maps, shows and times. Happy Hunting!

~Georgina