In November of 2018, Christ Church participated in the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST) for the first time. This opportunity allowed us to join the arts scene in Austin in new ways, contributing to the flourishing of our city and the greater culture. It also allowed us to open our doors to the people of Austin, offering hospitality and love through thoughtful artistic engagement. We couldn’t be more excited about it.
We had nine artists participate in our first exhibition. You can see some of their work below.
Terry Barnes | Website
Terry’s work strikes a balance between stark realism and the elements of God’s creation, bringing the viewer into an experience of being within the context of the art itself. His paintings reflect a strong emphasis on lighting and bold use of color, representative of painters from the Impressionistic era such as Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. His abstract and more contemporary pieces reflect his admiration of modern artists including Kandinsky, Fratz Kline, Charles Schorre and Makoto Fujimura.
Vera Bowen
In 2011 I began an intentional journey of recovery. In this space of healing I experienced God’s extravagant love and grace through beauty, especially in the natural world. Painting is a tangible way for me to say yes to God’s invitation to join him in the divine dance of creativity and joy.
Shaun Fox | Website
As I go through life, I try to find interesting or beautiful things to capture along the way, and I find a lot of them in day-to-day life – from people I’m with to the spaces we’re in.
Jan Florence Garven | Website
Paul Klee helps me understand art a little bit by saying, “Art does not reproduce the visible – rather it makes visible.” The mixture of various media has enabled me to make visible my understanding of life. I want to capture the ordinary and mundane as part of the larger view I am seeing. I go to my kitchen, garden or local hardware store for most of the elements of my work. These materials evoke an organic corporeality that mimics a familiarity of nature’s terrain. Texture, light and color help me explore the domain of perpetual change within my own body and the material world around me. Much of my work encapsulates the womb as a source of life, using seeds, water, folds, mulch, and the repetitive use of circles that symbolize the cycle of life. I have struggled with ovarian cancer and chronic pain, and although I cannot create life from my womb, I continually look for the continuation of creation and birth in various forms.
Cheryl Kaufman
My art is inspired by material objects and images created in the Middle Ages that reflect and explore stories and invisible, immaterial truths. The detailed renderings I create are the result of constant interplay between the symbols used in the medieval past and my desire to make these symbols relevant in the historically contingent present. I focus on miniscule markings in ink or glaze that work together and contribute to the final image. Each mark is an integral part of the whole, just as each particular minute in time is significant and every person makes a significant mark in history that leads to the present that we now inhabit.
Eric Kaufman | Instagram
The primary goal of my art is to create a resonance between the physical and the conceptual that allows the exploration of realities beyond those ordinarily seen. Starting from a belief that all art is found art, I explore the emergence of beauty and creativity from the mundane, and the transformation of objects by destructive natural processes, especially those instances where new order seems to arise out of chaos, as a metaphor for human resilience. I employ changes in context—the physical, spatial, environment in which these objects and images are viewed, the setting they have been taken out of—as a means of understanding how we see ourselves both as individuals and in community.
Amy McCullough Mosley | Website
I enjoy putting art on every day items we can enjoy in our lives. I am often inspired by nature and as of late the illustrations and printmaking of Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, and Mucha. I’m a huge fan of gig poster artists; Jay Ryan is a favorite. Favorite mediums include pen and ink, block printing, and acrylic paint on fabric.
Bryson Owen | Website
My work is an investigation of intuition via intellectual, moral and cultural suppositions. Although unseen, these ideas are not disembodied or benign, but mercilessly nuance our relationships, thoughts and activities. I seek to give, albeit incompletely, visible form to portions of these incarnate suppositions for contemplation. I propose that individual, colloquial response to materials and space are not only telling of our singular experiences, but allude to inherent characteristics of humanity. I have found in each sculptural consideration a point of confrontation, rich in meaning, spurring common dialogue.
Caleigh Taylor | Website
Caleigh Taylor is an artist living in Austin, Texas. She loves making art that tells a story in whatever medium she can. In “Here there be Dragons” the lore of the uncharted seas teeming with dragons is parallel to the unknowns of life. While western cultures have always viewed the dragon as a dangerous and greedy monster, eastern cultures tell dragons to be spirits of luck and good fortune. With this in mind and a bit of humor, the artist wishes to change how anxieties of life are viewed – not as the scary unknown, but as the adventures of fortune and change.