Max Fields is the Associate Curator and Director of Publishing at FotoFest. He has presented numerous exhibitions and has written for and overseen the production of multiple museum and gallery publications. Fields’ exhibitions and projects have been reviewed in publications including Frieze, ArtForum, Art in America, and Aperture among others. Recent projects include Public Life (2020–21), African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other (with Mark Sealy, 2020), and Gareth Long: Kidnappers Foil at the Blaffer Art Museum (2019-20). His current exhibition, In Place of an Index, is produced and presented with the 2021 Texas Biennial and is co-curated with Ryan Dennis and Evan Garza. His upcoming exhibition includes the 2022 FotoFest Biennial, co-curated with Steven Evans and Amy Sadao.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Kendyll Gross serves as the Art Galleries at Black Studies' Curator of Public Programs. She holds a BA from Emory University and an MA in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where she specialized in the art of Mesoamerica, and modern appropriations of ancient art forms. She has worked with the Blanton Museum of Art as a Graduate Teaching Fellow, and with UT’s Mesoamerica Center as a Curatorial Research Assistant. Her public education experience includes researching and preparing lectures for a range of audiences—from K-12, to university groups, to museum volunteers.

Yohanna Tesfai hails from Dallas, Texas and is currently the Public Programs Manager at the San Antonio Museum of Art. She worked for several museum institutions prior to SAMA including the Mexic-Arte Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art where she was the McDermott Fellow for Community and Gallery Teaching. She holds a BA and MA in Art History from Emory University and The University of Texas at Austin, respectively. In her free time, she enjoys reading both historical and science fiction, and loves thinking about alternate realities and liberation.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

The Creative Standard Committee would like to invite you to May’s Artist’s Happy Hour. We’ll gather informally on zoom since we can’t yet get together in person, to chat, network, schmooze, share resources, laugh, and nurture friendship. This is an opportunity to share what we are dreaming about and working on in our own practices, within collaborations, and inside of pandemic life. What we are celebrating and what we are grieving. We will meet monthly and enjoy getting to know each other better through the virtual platform until we can meet in person again safely. Each Artist’s Happy Hour is an open and engaging space to dialogue and share with other local makers and creators about what life is like being an artist in Austin.

Rakhee Jain Desai is an interdisciplinary artist whose work creates a dialogue about immigrant identity and belonging. Her current body of work utilizes the centuries-old, wax-resist textile technique, Batik. The combination of Batik, an Eastern craft, with other mediums is a signature process. Born in Canada, raised in Houston, Texas, and having lived in Asia for a decade, Rakhee’s global lens is evident through her choice of palette and use of motifs and symbols. Rakhee has exhibited across the USA, Singapore, and Portugal. She was selected as a featured artist for the Imago Mundi Benetton Foundation - representing Singapore’s contemporary art in the 21st Century & Beyond. She was the first cohort recipient of the Tempo2D program by the City of Austin Art in Public Places. The Batik mural named ‘A Place To Call Home’ is now on permanent view at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport.

rakheejaindesai.com


Alexandra Robinson grew up in the military and has lived all over the world. Because of the semi-transient nature of moving every two years she has a longing for place and identity and explores these themes in her work. Robinson was raised with her immediate family; an intersection of her Mexican and Jewish heritage which has cultivated a complexity in how she sees and experiences the world. She received her MFA from the University of Cincinnati and currently teaches at St. Edward's University in Austin, TX. Robinson lives with her husband and two daughters. She has exhibited throughout the country and internationally.

alexandrarobinsonart.com

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Natalie is a freelance writer, artist and co-founder of Almost Real Things. After graduating from UCSB in 2013 with a degree in Studio Art, she ventured out of her comfort zone to join a more collaborative creative community. In Austin she found just that, and co-founded Almost Real Things, a free magazine and growing community for creators of all mediums to explore ideas, develop professional skills, connect with other artists and reach a wider audience.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

ICOSA is an artist-run nonprofit space that showcases a diverse range of contemporary art and programming. Founded in 2015, ICOSA was originally located within Pump Project's former studio complex. In June 2018 ICOSA moved to the nearby Canopy Art Complex, East Austin’s blossoming gallery and studio hub at 916 Springdale Road. The gallery houses track lighting, high ceilings, and 1500 square feet of exhibition space.
ICOSA is a 501 (c)(6) organization that is home to a collective group of artists, well known nationally and internationally, who have received numerous prestigious awards and grants and whose work is featured in various major collections.

Mission
ICOSA is a network of artists committed to providing exhibition space free of the constraints of the traditional gallery model, as well as a platform for dialoguing with audiences. ICOSA’s culture empowers artists to develop their creative and professional ambitions, continuously culminating in a wide range of events, from art shows to educational programs, as well as in cooperative partnerships with diverse
organizations.

ICOSA’s programming ignites ideas and relationships between the Austin and global art communities: compliments of its member artists who are producing some of the region’s highest-caliber contemporary art and art discussion. ICOSA preserves a sustainable lifestyle for local artists and engages in dialogue with art lovers throughout the region and beyond.

@icosa_art
Icosacollective.com

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

The Creative Standard Committee would like to invite you to the first of a monthly “Artist’s Happy Hour”. We’ll gather informally on zoom since we can’t yet get together in person, to chat, network, schmooze, share resources, laugh and nurture friendship. This is an opportunity to share what we are dreaming about and working on in our own practices, within collaborations, and inside of pandemic life. What we are celebrating and what we are grieving. We will meet monthly and enjoy getting to know each other better through the virtual platform until we can meet in person again safely. Each Artist’s Happy Hour is an open and engaging space to dialogue and share with other local makers and creators about what life is like being an artist in Austin.

"I make environments that resonate with the experience of migration and cultural memory. My work looks at fusing together the seemingly opposite in life: alien and familiar, uncertainty and hope, aggression and stillness―the yielding resilience that I see as the feminine strength, overcoming great obstacles, like dripping water that eventually penetrates stone. Underpinning my practice is the need to better understand how migration and diaspora impact human experience through encounters and separations, displacements and assimilations, the intimacy of memories, and the gravity of time."

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations. Oftentimes embodying transience, fragility, and the passage of time, Liu’s immersive installations are engaged with multifaceted dichotomies: lightness contrasted with heft; fierceness countered by resilience, and chaos balanced by quiet order. Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, scissors, paper, stone, fire, and water, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural narratives. Janet Koplos spoke of Liu’s works as “materially simple but metaphorically rich” (Art in America Review, April 2009).

Beili Liu’s work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe and across the United States. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Center (2016, 2011), Hua Gallery, London, UK (2012), Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2011), Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, Shanghai (2009), and the Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco (2015, 2008). Liu’s work has been showcased in group exhibitions at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2012), Hamburg Art Week, Germany (2012), the Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania (2011), and the 23rd and 25th Miniartextil International Contemporary Fiber Art exhibitions in Como, Italy (2015, 2013), among many others.

Beili Liu is a 2016 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant recipient. Liu has been designated the Texas State Artist in 3D medium (2018) by the Texas State Legislature and the Texas Commission on The Arts. Beili Liu’s work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts (Museum of Southeast Texas, 2014) and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant (Women and Their Work Gallery, 2013). Liu has received artist residency fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Center, Studios at MASS MoCA, Facebook AIR, Fiskars AIR, Djerassi Foundation, and Fundación Valparaíso, Spain, among others. She received a Distinction award at the Kaunas Biennial Lithuania (2011), and was honored by a San Francisco Mayor’s Award (2008) for her contribution to cultural exchange.

Liu’s work has received critical reviews from publication including Art in America, Sacchi Review, UK, Helsinki Sanomat News, Finland, Morgenbladet, Norway, China Daily, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Hamburg Abendblatt, Vita (Life) Magazine, Italy, ArtSlant, The Huffington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Examiner and LA Confidential.

Born in Jilin, China, Beili Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas, USA. Liu received her MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is the Leslie Waggener Professor in the Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

beililiu.com

Annette Carlozzi is a champion of local artist communities who stays abreast of international developments and has a keen eye for emerging talent and a steadfast commitment to looking beyond labels. Best known in Austin as the founding modern and contemporary curator at the Blanton and as co-leader of The Contemporary’s Crit Group, Carlozzi has built an expansive curatorial practice creating seminal exhibitions (Luis Jiménez, Peter Saul, Paul Chan: Present Tense, Mike’s World, Desire), producing important commissions (Nancy Holt, Siah Armajani, Betye Saar, Teresita Fernández), and acquiring major works by a wide range of contemporary artists (Acconci, Mendieta, Ligon, Kim, Adkins, Lozano, Jacir). After training at Walker Art Center and serving as the first professional curator at Laguna Gloria Art Museum (now The Contemporary Austin), she served as Director of the Aspen Art Museum, Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, and Visual Arts Producer for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Named to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2013, Carlozzi is now an independent curator. Her latest project—After Carolee: Tender and Fierce—is on view now at Artpace, San Antonio and features a new work by Beili Liu, along with works by 13 other Texas-affiliated artists.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Katie Stahl is co-founder and Executive Director of SAGE Studio. She is a practicing artist with over ten years of experience working with adults with disabilities in an art setting. In her own art practice, Katie paints under the name Houndoggle Art.

Lucy Gross is co-founder and Director of External Relations at SAGE Studio. She is a practicing social worker with over eleven years of experience working with adults with disabilities. In addition to her work at SAGE, she currently works at AISD’s Go Project, a transitional program for special education students ages 18–22, and The University of Texas in their inclusion program for adults with disabilities.

Lucy and Katie founded SAGE Studio (@sagestudioatx) in 2017. They have represented SAGE as speakers at SXSW EDU in 2019 and co-curated exhibitions at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City in 2019 and 2020. They are passionate about integrating artists with disabilities into the contemporary art scene in Austin.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Michael Anthony García is a multidisciplinary artist & independent curator, and a founding member of Los Outsiders curatorial collective. He has curated large-scale exhibitions of international artists in & out of the US, co-hosts intersectional conversation podcast El Puente and is publisher for POCa Madre Magazine. 

www.mrmichaelme.com

Bug Davidson is a motion image artist and film/theater director interested in communicating through visual language intersections of media & representation, social corporeal choreography, akousmata & action, and the enchantment of cinematic gesture.

bugdavidson.myportfolio.com

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

The Creative Standard committee formed by artist, co-founder, and board member of Big Medium, Jana Swec, Big Medium board member and founder of One Story Productions, Aaron Weiss, and artists Caroline Wright and Court Lurie, will discuss their practices, and the vision and goals for Creative Standard in 2021. They’ll open a conversation to address our community’s needs, and how the program can serve our creative sector.

Aaron Weiss is the founder and owner of One Story Productions, an independent documentary production company creating customized videos used for marketing, websites, social media, community awareness and fundraising. Aaron’s career is dedicated to telling a wide variety of stories through his work. He is a graduate of The New School University in New York City, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Media Studies. Aaron demonstrates to organizations the value of telling stories through film-stories that create awareness, innovation, and change. He has created compelling videos for more than 100 organizations around the world and is dedicated to making a difference through his storytelling abilities with his passion for helping those who are disadvantaged and underrepresented.

onestoryproductions.com

Caroline Wright (MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; BA, Brown University) dances across her large abstract paintings, bringing music and movement into the visual field. After Brown, Caroline moved to Paris and lived in an abandoned state building in Belleville, with artists from all over the world. This unique experience imprinted in Caroline the possibility of a life made through art. Caroline returned to Austin in 2007 to participate in the burgeoning art community of her hometown. She loves encouraging artists to take up space, explore deeply, and make a living with their art. Through performance and her collaborative spirit, Caroline invites you to deepen your awareness and experience her artwork with all your senses.

carolinewrightart.com

Court Lurie is a queer, Jewish, abstract painter from Chicago. She lives and creates in Austin, Texas, where she has called home for 15 years. She is a professional artist with gallery representation at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in NY, Costello Gallery in Phoenix, Addison Gallery in Miami, and JGo Gallery in Park City, UT. Her work has been featured in many design and lifestyle magazines, on the set of several films, ABC Studios, HGTV, and hangs in public and private collections across the country. She co-created Artpost, with a developer and a group of artists in 20 + studios in East Austin where the Govalle Library used to live. Artpost lived for 8 years strong. It was a hub of activity during the East Austin Studio Tours each year and was a pillar of community, joy, collaboration, mutual aid, shared reality, and friendship. 

Court is an ordained minister, self proclaimed Kabbalist (which has been reserved for only very studied men in their 40’s), in the Jewish tradition. She is a Reiki Master, has trained in trauma sensitive yin yoga and meditation. She ritualizes daily life through art making, poetry, connection, conversation, music, road trips, fresh air, magic, and serendipity. She is a great softball player. A percussionist, singer, guitarist. She has a long history with spoken word poetry and performed on queer stages across the country almost 20 years ago. If you ask her for a poem, she may just spit one there on the spot. Her life is about living in the present moment and listening to its message. Learning how to listen. And being awake enough to respond with intuition and integrity. 

courtlurie.com

Jana Swec received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2001 with a focus in Studio Arts. After moving to Austin in 2001 and moving into a shared warehouse space with a few other artists and called it Bolm Studios, she became a member of the three person collaborative group, Sodalitas, made up of herself, Shea Little and Joseph Phillips. The three artists mainly focused on the process of working with each other and included performance, painting, community collaborations and temporary/permanent installations. In 2002 they co-founded the artist-run organization, Bolm Studios, now known as the non-profit Big Medium, which provides programs such as the East Austin Studio Tour, West Austin Studio Tour, a year round gallery that focuses on mostly Texas based artists. and the Texas Biennial.

In 2008, Jana began to work on her solo work more and began with drawings of anthropomorphic trees, which would define her work for the next decade. This work presents a unique and beautiful balance between powerful formal abstraction elements and organic growth. The trees are a primary source of imagery, which explores a visual partnership with forms that resemble elephants, whales and other elements of the natural world. Using these trees as the core subject, she explores the beauty and darkness of nature, life, and death.

In 2014, Jana began to work with her brother Joe Swec and his sign painting business. This opened her to a world of large scale painting and murals. Jana loves the connection murals have with the public. From the performance of making them in front of people and the conversations it starts, to the viewers interpretations after the mural is long finished. When she’s not making art, she’s a singer, wife and a mother of three. 

littleswecart.com

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Brooke Burnside was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. She earned her BA in Film from Vassar College and her MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. She recently graduated from the Masters of Architecture program at the University of Texas at Austin and is now a designer at Mark Odom Studio. Burnside has shown work in Nassau, Bahamas, at MASS Gallery and Ivester Contemporary in Austin, as well as at the Spring Break Art show in New York City. She was a recipient of the 2020 Big Medium LINE residency and also participated in the 2020 Willow House residency for Black Artists in Terlingua, TX. Through drawing and collage, Burnside's work explores geography, position, memory, and the transgressive potential in abstract documentation.

Tammie Rubin’s sculptural practice considers the intrinsic power of objects as signifiers, wishful contraptions, and mythic relics while investigating the tension between the readymade and the handcrafted object. Using intricate motifs, Rubin delves into themes involving ritual, domestic and liturgical objects, mapping, migration, magical thinking, and sensual desire. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, and her sculptures are part of public and private collections. Her work has received reviews in online and printed publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Glasstire, Sightlines, fields, Conflict of Interest, Arts and Culture Texas, Ceramics: Art & Perception, and Ceramics Monthly. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Rubin lives in Austin, TX, where she is an Associate Professor of Ceramics & Sculpture at St. Edward’s University.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Raul De Lara immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12 and has been a DACA recipient since 2012. Growing up in Texas as a non-English speaker, feeling neither from here nor there, his work now reflects on ideas of nationality, language barriers, body language and the sense of touch. His sculptures explore how stories, folklore, and rituals can be silently communicated through inanimate objects, tools, and foreign environments. De Lara often works with wood, a material that always shows the passing of time on its skin. His aesthetics and materials are inspired by the shared backyard between the United States and Mexico. 

De Lara received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been awarded the Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship, a Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency, the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award and he recently completed his fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Virginia Lee Montgomery (VLM) is a filmmaker, sculptor, and facilitator working between Austin, Texas and New York, NY, USA. She received her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and her MFA from Yale University in Sculpture in 2016. Her artwork is a research practice of feminist metaphysics. VLM interrogates the complex relationship between physical and psychic structures. VLM also works as a professional scribe, a Graphic Facilitator. In her artwork, VLM turns her professional skill-set, "mind map scribing", inwards to render the contours of her subconscious and open portals into unknown psychic realms. She has had solo exhibitions with New Museum (NY), Times Square Arts (NY), Museum Folkwang (Germany), Wright Lab at Yale University (CT), The Lawndale Art Center (TX), False Flag (NY), and Hesse Flatow (NY). She has exhibited internationally at institutions including Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark), SculptureCenter (NY), La Panacée-MoCo (France), The Hessel Museum at Bard College (NY), The Banff Centre (Canada), Socrates Sculpture Park (NY), The Shaker Museum (NY), and The Menil Collection (TX), among others.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Interview conducted by Rigoberto Luna.

Adrian Armstrong is a multidisciplinary artist from Omaha, NE now living and working out of Austin, TX. Armstrong received his BFA from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2014. His work expands throughout different mediums such as music, painting, and printmaking, but his primary medium of choice is ballpoint pen.

Through portrait and figurative practices, Armstrong’s work explores black identity and how the black body is perceived in predominantly White American spaces. He aims to portray what it means to be an African American living in modern America. Often using himself as an “every man” symbol, Armstrong’s work touches on topics such as depression within the black community, systematic oppression, and identity erasure; but on the other side of the spectrum explores nostalgia, growth, and success.

adrianarmstrongart.com

Rigoberto Luna is the Co-founder and Director of the Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, TX. Since 2010 Luna has developed numerous exhibitions with a heavy focus on Latinx artists of Central and South Texas. Recently Luna has served as the juror of the Third Coast Biennial National Juried Exhibition at K Space Contemporary in Corpus Christi and panelist for the Third Annual Tito's Prize at Big Medium in Austin. Luna has also served as curator for multiple exhibitions with the City of San Antonio's Department of Arts & Culture and the World Heritage Office. Recently, Luna joined the team at Big Medium in support of the Texas Biennial.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. To view past conversations, visit our Coffee Chats Archive.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.

Melding her Fine Arts degree from The University of Minnesota with her experience in marketing and branding, Jill Schroeder started grayDUCK Gallery in 2010. After 10 years of advocating for local and regional artists, this Minneapolis expat is finally getting comfortable saying, "Y'all."

Join us this Thursday at 11am for a Juneteenth ATX focused Coffee Chat hosted by President and CEO of Edge of Your Seat Consulting, and Acting Executive Director of Six Square Pamela Benson Owens plus, Regine Malibiran, Director of Programs and Innovation at Six Square and the Marketing Representative at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center. Juneteenth ATX is a collaboration with several Black organizations in Austin’s historic East side, this year’s Juneteenth celebration emphasizes not only the timeless themes of freedom and perseverance but also recognizes the unprecedented times we’re currently living through.

Six Square – Austin’s Black Cultural District (formerly known as Austin’s African American Cultural Heritage District) is the first Black cultural district in the state of Texas and the only cultural arts district in the city of Austin. The organization was created in 2013 as an outgrowth of the City Council’s African American Quality of Life Initiative, which detailed widespread disparities, racial biases, and a decreasing Black population. Since inception, Six Square has been dedicated to improving the quality of life for African American residents through preservation of historic Black spaces, artistic cultivation, and by serving as a catalyst for social and economic development.

Pamela Benson Owens is the President and CEO of Edge of Your Seat Consulting, Inc and is currently serving as the Acting Executive Director of Six Square. For 23+ years Pam has owned Edge of Your Seat Consulting, a unique consulting firm that is dedicated to assisting for-profit and nonprofit entities. The firm’s major focus is to provide methodologies that help manage perceptions and narratives about complex and challenging issues with courage and strategic passion. Pam feels she is most effective when she partners with organizations from the inside out in order to streamline the hierarchical needs, create infrastructure, coach teams, shift organizational cultures and, of most importance, help leaders become more effective. Clients’ transformations are the essence of her work, and they’re also what bring her great joy and empirical pride. Pam leverages humor and honest storytelling to create a memorable and applicable strategies for sustainable and substantive change.

Regine Malibiran is a creative specializing in writing, communication strategy, and event production. She is the co-founder of missfits productions, which offers events for the female Asian American community of creatives and entrepreneurs in Austin. Regine is heavily involved in the Austin minority cultural arts space as the Director of Programs and Innovation at Six Square and as the Marketing Representative at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center. As a lover of words and stories, she is committed to elevating unheard and marginalized voices through her work. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with degrees in English and Public Relations. She also loves cats, trying new food, and Beyoncé.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. Our last May Coffee Chat speaker is Vladimir Mejia.

Vladimir Mejia is the Director of Social Media and #bitres curator at Co-Lab Projects, a member of Ink Tank Collective, a founding member of rossie dustin and a multi-discipline artist who works in Installation, Sculpture, Photography, Performance Art, Printmaking and Digital Media. Using interaction, humor, abstraction and writing to tackle politics, race relations, generational divides and the ever-evolving relationship between people and technology.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.

Tammie Rubin is a visual artist who transforms familiar objects into mythic sculptures and installations that explore the gaps between the readymade and the handcrafted object. Her material-and-process-driven works open up dream-like spaces of unexpected associations and dislocations. Rubin received a BFA in Ceramics and Art History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and an MFA in Ceramics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Born and raised in Chicago, Rubin currently lives in Austin, Texas where she is an Associate Professor of Ceramics & Sculpture at St. Edward’s University.

Rubin has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, recent selections include Women & Their Work, The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, The South Dallas Cultural Center, and The Carver Museum. Rubin founded Black Mountain Project along with fellow Austin-based artists Adrian Aguilera and Betelhem Makonnen, and she is a member of ICOSA Collective, a non-profit cooperative gallery. Rubin recently completed a Facebook Artist in Residence project and has an upcoming solo exhibition at The East | West Galleries at Texas Woman’s University.

tammierubin.com

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.

Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator working in Austin and Detroit. Her recent projects reference ritual, animism, mysticism, architecture and history using video, sculpture, staged photographs and performance. Earning her MFA from Bard College, she has shown and performed internationally since 2004. Her three-channel video H A I N T premiered at the Visual Arts Center at UT Austin and she’s currently finishing a video project about inherited memory. In addition to her three two-woman shows at ICOSA Collective in Austin, she has exhibited extensively including: Women and Their Work, Austin (2015); Co-Lab Projects, Austin (2012, 2010); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2011); and Babel, Norway (2009); TSA, Los Angeles (2018); Wassaic Project, New York (2018); DEMO Gallery, Austin (2017); Third Man Records, Detroit (2016); New Museum for Contemporary Art, NY (2011); and Miami Art Basel (2008); Museum of Art and Design, NY (2013), Deitch Projects, NY (2005) and Fusebox Festival, Austin (2012). She is a recipient of several awards, including Official Winner of the International Istanbul Film Festival Award for H A I N T (2018) and the City of Austin Cultural Council Grant (2015-2020). She is currently a candidate for a second Masters Degree in Museum Studies through Harvard and plans to open a small non-profit museum in the near future.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.

Based in Austin, Texas, Robert Jackson Harrington creates artwork from everyday materials that center on the concept of potential. Harrington received his BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent exhibitions include Useless Systems, at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, Texas and The Accelerationist, at Space HL in Houston, Texas.

Currently he directs the Museum of Pocket Art and is a member of the Center for Experimental Practice and the curatorial collective, Los Outsiders, based in Austin, TX.

**Please note that this Coffee Chat will occur earlier, at 9am rather than 11am

Join us for a Coffee Chat celebrating Big Medium International Exchange artists Justin Balleza and Jorge Molina! The influences and experiences gathered from the artists' time in Spain will be shared at the Coffee Chat through artwork and storytelling.

The Spain International Exchange is produced in partnership with Inés Batlló. This program is an exchange of ideas and cultures between Texas and Spain based artists.

In a country where art thrives, and old masters inhabit every museum, Big Medium provides an opportunity for artists to be inspired in an immersive way. Inés Batlló, who splits time between Austin and Barcelona, facilitates the program by hosting the artists who visit and coordinating relevant, enriching activities.

Developing grant writing skills is one of the best ways to secure funding for your artistic pursuits. The process is also foreign to many artists who could be benefiting from this kind of funding. Join us for a presentation from David McMichael who will share his grant writing experience with both small and large projects.

David McMichael is an artist and grants professional in Austin. He manages a grant portfolio of ~$700k/year at the Paramount Theatre; he created a fiscal sponsorship program in 2018 for Co-Lab Projects and currently supports a roster of 12 visionary weirdos like Diptych, Glowed Up, and Lifted Traces; and he does his damnedest to guide the unruly teen hyperreal film club along with his two co-parents Jenni Kaye and Tanner Hadfield. Sometimes he writes things like maximalist film lists or saucy fables or makes short films about dystopian cults.

Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art. Our August featured speaker is M.E. Laursen. 

M.E. Laursen is an artist living in Austin, TX. She is the Associate Director & Curator at Pump Project, an artist-run non-profit that provides exhibition and studio space to emerging and established artists. Since receiving her BFA in Studio Art at The University of Texas at Austin in 2015, she has worked in various fields. Her experience has reinforced her commitment to advocating for programs and space at the intersection of artists and community. During her free time she volunteers and work trades for organizations she loves. 

The focus of Creative Standard is to convene artists regularly; provide information, opportunities, and resources; and to create and maintain standards of professionalism and integrity for the creative community to adhere and uphold.

Join us for our next Coffee Chat featuring Rebecca Gomez, Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Programs at Mexic-Arte Museum.

Coffee Chats are opportunities to learn from leaders in our community about their experience, insight, and career. Complimentary coffee and light breakfast is provided.

Rebecca Gomez earned her B.A. in Art History from Southwestern University (2007) and her M.A. in Art History and Criticism from the University of Texas at San Antonio (2011), focusing on Latin American Art and writing her thesis on “The History, Collection, and Display of Chicano/a Art in San Antonio.” Rebecca served as assistant to the curator at the UTSA Art Collection for three years; interned at the Royal Academy for the Arts (London, 2006); and curated the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibit: Art of Devotion: 18th and 19th Century Mexican Religious Folk Art (2007). Her written work appears in peer-reviewed publications, including Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas (University of New Mexico). She currently works at the Mexic-Arte Museum as the Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Programs. She has served as the project director or curated nearly 40 exhibitions. She presented a paper on Proyecto Changarrito for the Inter-University Program for Latino Research Conference: the Mapping of Latino Research (2017).