2020

WHERE IS HERE

East Austin
Ages 0 to 100

Where is Here is a portrait of a community, circa 2019: photographs of people who live, work, grew up, or frequent the thereabouts of East Austin, one of every age, newborn to 100.


The project was organized by Keyheira Keys & Phillip Niemeyer. The portraits are the work of six photographers, identified in the caption of each photo by their initials:

Arius Holifield – AH
Montinique Monroe– MM
Tyeschea West – TW
Bertie Pearson – BP
Hector Hernandez – HH
Ryan Junell – RJ

 


Organizers’ Statement

Where is Here took a year to plan and a year to execute. The first shoot was February 17, 2019. The last was February 18, 2020. The show opened with a reception February 29, 2020. It closed after a week to do our part to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. We posted the entire show, and some extras, above.

The people in these photographs have stories. You may know something about someone in one of the photos—tell us! — hello@northern-southern.com We hope, as a next step, to document these stories.

This project is the effort of a collaborative community. We had help from so many: Monique Foley, Angelica at Parson House, all the great people at Conley-Guerrero Senior Activity Center, Luci and Dana at Miller fine art printing, Adrian Armstrong of Brown State of Mind, Six Square, Miriam Conner, Paloma Mayorga and Big Medium, Rachel Freeman, James Turner, Stella Alesi, and Ashley Ellis. Thank you, also, to Michael Lee of KUT.

We hope we have done our little bit to contribute to the history and love of this place.

— Keyheira Keys & Phillip Niemeyer


For Juneteenth 2020, Northern-Southern purchased a full page in The Austin Villager. The Villager is a free and independent newspaper for East Austin published by Tommy Wyatt since the early 1980s.

WHERE IS HERE in The Austin Villager held by publisher Tommy Wyatt, June 19, 2020
JAN–FEB
2020

Naomi Schlinke
James Turner

James Turner and Naomi Schlinke paint collages and collage paintings. Making becomes a product of movement, simultaneously improvisational and planned, repetitive and unique.

Schlinke’s recent pieces are self-contained meditations, calm but evocative like a wild ritual or a sacred freedom. Visual and kinesthetic, her practice draws upon her early years as a dancer in 1970s San Francisco. Turner is grounded, humble. He calls his works “drah-rins”. They feel like long walks with old friends.

Visting Hours Saturdays 3–6:30pm

Artist Talk Happy Hour
Wednesday, February 12, 6-8pm
(talk at 7pm)
“12th on 12th”

Show closes after visiting hours, Saturday February 15.

Zine for the show interviewing Turner and Schlinke [pdf]

Press Release [pdf]

NOV–DEC
2019

work (and/or/as) conversation w/

Carter/Reddy
Greg Foley
Karen Gelardi
Rick Griffith
Mykola Haleta
Dev Harlan
Elaine I-Ling Shen
Prem Krishnamurthy
Karel Martens
Meredith Miller
Christina Moser
Meghan Shogan
Simon Walker
Tigress Tile
Transmountain
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong

WORK PLAY MONEY LOVE WHAT IT IS WHAT COULD BE BOTH NEITHER ART DESIGN surveys creative practices that overlap cultures, primarily professional design and fine art, but also politics, business, spirituality, and social change. Never outliers, just rarely discussed—hybrid art-design practices have blossomed in the twenty-first century. The show is a conversation about art-design as a profession shaped by contradictory pressures and motives. We attempt to find—and share—ways to talk about the ways we work now.

Zine interviewing the show’s participants [pdf]

Press Release [pdf]

Nov 4
Austin Design Week Preview

For Austin Design Week, the show will be presented mid-installation as the backdrop for a open conversation about doing and thinking. Artists and curators will chat with visitors and refreshments will be served. We will talk about how we should talk about the work we do now. — Monday, Nov 4, 2-4pm

Nov 9
Opening Reception

Refreshments and conversations — Saturday, Nov 9, 6–9 pm

Nov 16–17, 23–24
E.A.S.T. Tour #133

Nov 23 — Saturday
Greg Foley <– –> Mike Reddy Q & A

4:30pm

Nov 30 — Saturday
Elaine I-Ling Shen <– –> Meghan Shogan Q & A

4:30pm
Visiting Hours 3-6:30 pm

Dec 7 — Saturday
Visiting Hours — Saturdays, 3-6:30 pm

Post-Play Workshop
4:30pm
Join us at the gallery for an interactive workshop developed by Prem Krishnamurthy and collaborators. We’ll take 30 minutes to imagine the future of work, play, and us.

Dec 11
Last Chance Happy Hour
5–7 pm

Dec 12
Closing

Sep–Oct
2019

HOUSE PLANTS is a suite of shaped canvas that live on the walls like sentient plants, less tamed than coaxed. The paintings are domestic-sized. They expand the spaces around them, nourishing the air of the room. Modernist but winking, folky yet sophisticated, kind, exact, unique and warm. In two words: Brad Tucker-y.

HOUSE PLANTS is Tuckers’s first solo show in his hometown of Austin in over a decade.

Closing Reception with Artist Talk
October 24
Thursday
6-8pm

Talk with Brad Tucker, 7pm
Participate in a new piece of art with Brad by dancing, 8pm

A zine [pdf] with Brad Tucker interviewed by Kate Green

Works list [pdf]

Press Release [pdf]

HOUSE PLANTS installation view, photo by Scott David Gordon
AUG–SEP
2019

Sev Coursen
Michael Hambouz
Christine Heindl
Candace Hicks
Amanda Julia Steinback
Phillip Niemeyer
James Turner

Objects as feelings: sunbeams from broken devices, breezes through screen doors—an August frisson.

12th on 12th Happy Hour
Thursday, September 12
5-7pm

Last Chance Visiting Hours
Saturday, September 14
3–6:30pm

Or make a last minute appointment, email hello@northern-southern.com. INLAND BEACH BALL will close September 14, 2019.

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

Inland Beach Ball installation view, photo by Scott David Gordon
Christine Heindl, “Hexagram of the Heavens”, 2018, acrylic, water-based enamel, coins, mirror on canvas. 18×18 inches
May 30–July 9
2019

slow portraits in an age of instant images

Adrian Armstrong
Dawn Okoro
Jean Smith
Laura Lit
Ryan Sandison Montgomery
Saul Jerome San Juan

Six contemporary points-of-view on the human face and figure in painting, drawing, and sculpture, curated by Phillip Niemeyer.

Download a pdf of the LIKEsNESS zine with artist interviews.

Laura Lit, “Johana”, 2019, paper clay, acrylic and oil, 10x8x6 inches

Closing Reception and Artist Talks
Monday, July 8
6–8:30pm
Talk with Dawn Okoro, Adrian Armstrong, Laura Lit, Saul Jerome San Juan, moderated by Keyheira Keys at 7pm

Normal Visiting Hours
Saturdays until July 9
3–6:30pm

Schedule a Visit
We want to show you this work, and are available to show it most days with notice.
Email: hello@northern-southern.com

Apr 6–May 8
2019

Virginia Fleck
Ted Carey

REBRIS presents two contemporary Austin-based artists working with discarded, post-consumer materials: Virginia Fleck and Ted Carey.

Download a pdf of the zine for the exhibition with artist interviews

Ted Carey‘s assemblages regard things as words. Recognizing matter as embedded with both personal and universal associations, his witty and economical arrangements serve as a poetry of gestures. A recent piece at Museum of Human Achievement exemplifies: suspended from a two-by-four, an inverted lawn chair and an umbrella of dry leaves dangle in absurd and counter-intuitive equilibrium. Each Carey installation is unique to its surroundings, riffing off the given architecture and the particularities of place. We are excited to see what Carey does with Northern-Southern’s front gallery.

Likewise, Virginia Fleck has free reign over the back gallery. Fleck is known for ebullient plastic bag mandalas and glittering installations of aluminum can tabs. She uses post-consumer materials as media of joyful defiance, unearthing the hidden beauty of disposable items that continually pass through our hands. Most recently at The Femme Abstract exhibition at EAST 2018, she showed a master-work: a cascade of hundreds of thousands of linked aluminum can tabs.

The ready-made is a tradition at least a century old. In recent decades the medium has matured into one open with possibility and edged with relevance. Human-made debris is the omnipresent material of our times. Fleck and Carey operate in a cultural sphere where re-use as art is no longer a novelty. Freed from shock, they arrange with nuance: Koi ponds of junk.

Virginia Fleck, installation view
Ted Carey, “Paul revered”, 2019
ONGOING

Where is Here is a project to photograph at least one person of every age—newborn to the most senior—of the people who live, work, grew up in, are from, or frequent the thereabouts of East Austin around East 12th Street.

We want to include you and your group, family, friends.
Email hello@northern-southern.com

Where is Here is curated by Keyheira Keys with Phillip Niemeyer.

Photographers (a growing team): Tyeschea West, Arius Holifield, Hector Hernandez, Beartie Pearson, Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon, Ryan Junell

Special thanks to Miriam Conner.

DEC 15, 2018 – FEB 1, 2019

Jaime Zuverza & Transmountain
---
Rachel Freeman

INSIDES is a complementary pair of domestic dream-rooms. Artist Jaime Zuverza and design duo Transmountain (Gil Moreno & Lindsey Culpepper) collaborate on furniture-art fusions in the front gallery. In the back, Rachel Freeman creates an all-over installation of artwork. Two rooms converse, each heightening the experience of the other. INSIDES is genre-ignoring—drawing, painting, woodwork, design, installation, curation all put to use. The work is sensual and precise, sturdy and protean.

Artist Walk-through
with Jaime Zuverza, Transmountain, and Rachel Freeman
Saturday, January 12, 4:00pm

Download catalog (PDF)

Midnight Vanity by Transmountain, paintings by Jamie Zuverza
Rachel Freeman, “Uttering Thistle”
Nov 3–Dec 1
2018

Joseph Phillips

An artist and home-builder Joseph Phillips thinks a lot about how people shape and replicate nature. His first solo show in six years,“‘SCAPES”, imagines built environments of absurd survival luxuries and compartmentalized dreams. The clean, exact gouaches have a sunny hardness and a canny sense of the dismal. The work is political, complex, and fantastic.

Download catalog (PDF)

Sep 22 – Oct 14
2018

SHAWN CAMP

Shawn Camp’s EQUIVOCATION is an installation consisting of a wall painting, a video, a loop of sound, and a large back-lit painting in a room with subtly shifting light. The experience is a mediation on the cyclical nature of being and an abstraction of the way we perceive time and space.

Download catalog (PDF)

Read the review in the Austin Chronicle.

Shawn Camp, Equivocation (installation view), 2018, backlit oil painting
Aug 18 – Sep 12
2018

a celebration of creative living

Stella Alesi
Kel Brown
Cattywampus Press
Rachel Freeman
Robert Jackson Harrington
Adreon Henry
Matt Macomber
Ryan Sandison Montgomery
Phillip Niemeyer
Deb Norris
Gretchen Phillips
Mike Reddy
Beth Schindler
Elaine I-Ling Shen
Amanda Julia Steinback
Donya Stockton
Leslie Webb
Alyssa Taylor Wendt

Celebrate creative living at Northern–Southern with a group show of art, design, and other things that people make. Experimental and low-stakes, the show is a summer rejuvenation of purpose, an answer of why.

The catalog features a short interview with each contributor, asking why they make and why they made the thing that’s in the show.

Download catalog (PDF)

JUNE–JULY 2018

Matthew Steinke

Three acoustic robots emote music accompanied by found voice recordings and projections. Each of the robots mimics a human personality disorder: Cluster A (odd, eccentric), Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, erratic), and Cluster C (anxious, fearful). The robots “sing” round robin in a group therapy session.

The show closed July 31, 2018.

Download catalog (PDF)

Cluster A and C, installation view
Cluster A, installation view
Cluster B
Cluster C

Matthew Steinke is a composer, animator, inventor, and artist. An Austin native, he came of age playing in post-punk bands in the DIY scene of Olympia, Washington. Over the past two decades, Steinke’s robotic installations and performances have been presented in museums, galleries, and festivals across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In Austin again, he built and has performed with an ensemble of new and robotic instruments, OCTANT. He was a finalist for the 2016 ArtPrize. His concert/multimedia performance NO PLACE was a stand out of the 2017 Fusebox festival.

MAR 24 – MAY 5
2018

The first solo show for New York-based painter, and former Austinite, Michelle Marchesseault. She filled the gallery with paintings (serial rainbows, gestural abstractions, perfect imperfections) and flowers.

Download catalog (PDF)

Michelle Marchesseault, “A lady came out”, 2017, acrylic oil plaster
installation view
Michelle Marchesseault, “Clicks”, 2017, acrylic oil
installation view
JAN–MAR 2018

Dev Harlan
Laura Lit

New York based Dev Harlan negotiates the conceptual spaces between digital ephemera and inert mineral. Here he projects tightly controlled, geometric pattern onto replicas of natural rocks..

Laura Lit has an adept hand at realist figurative painting. In this series, the only reference she uses is what is seen when eyes are closed, letting the subconscious influence shape and form.

Download catalog (PDF)

Laura Lit installation view
Dev Harlan installation view
Dev Harlan
Laura Lit
Laura Lit
Dev Harlan
DEC 2017–JAN 2018

Angel Oloshove
Anne Austin Pearce
Chris Bakay
Clarke Curtis
Forlane 6
Gabriel Dawe
Jessica McClendon

Uncover, unveil, undress, expose. OVERNEATH is a collection of layered mysteries: underwater installations, fossilized t-shirts, alien eggs, boxes of squished color, self-deconstructing portraits, and paintings of phantasmagoria. These artists use texture to delineate form and conflate exterior and interior space.

OVERNEATH opened with a reception, Friday, December 8, 2018, 7–10 pm, and closed after visiting hours, Saturday, January 6, 2018, 3–6:30pm.

Download a catalog (PDF)

Gabriel Dawe (boxes), Chris Bakay (shirts)
Angel Oloshove (sculptures left and right), Jessica McClendon (mixed media painting in center)
Forlane 6 Studio
Anne Austin Pearce

Installation photos by Katie O’Connell.

Oct 2016—Jan 2017

ART AND DESIGN ON THE GO
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport

Adam Palmer
Adreon Denson Henry
Amanda Julia Steinback
Brad Tucker
Dan Lam
David R Head Jr
Donya Stockton
LAND
Lisa Choinacky
Mason McFee
Mike Reddy
Phillip Niemeyer
Ron Geibel

photographed by Bill McCullough

Installed across the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, CARRY ONS was a show of contemporary Texas art and design. In small cases lining the concourse, were displays of art/design objects small enough to be toted under a seat or in an overhead compartment. In some instances, the objects could themselves be considered luggage (sacks, baskets, skateboards). Posters accompany the objects as advertisements for non-commercial, often oblique, thoughts.

Brad Tucker
Mason McFee
Donya Stockton
Amanda Julia Steinback

In two large display cases on opposite sides of the concourse, Mike Reddy and Lisa Choinacky installed twenty-plus feet long drawings on the experience of travel. Mike Reddy’s Between Gates is a warm observation of the commuter crowd. Lisa Choinacky’s Air Routes is a set of ten connected ink drawings, visualizations of human-scale jet streams.

Mike Reddy, Between Gates
Lisa Choinacky, Air Routes

Before the closing, Bill McCullough photographed the show focusing not on the art as much as the travelers who stopped to look.

RonGeibel, Lick
photo by Bill McCullough
Mike Reddy, Between Gates
photo by Bill McCullough
Lisa Choinacky, Air Routes
photo by Bill McCullough

CARRY ONS was curated by Phillip Niemeyer & Rachel Freeman with Audrey Molloy of ABIA. Design and Installation by Phillip Niemeyer, Cory Hurless (ABIA), Audrey Molloy, Allie Mattson and Ethan Lee Odness.

JUL 2016

Shawn Camp
Lisa Choinacky
Jeffrey Dell
Rachel Freeman
David R Head Jr
Adreon Denson Henry
Rebecca Whitehurst & Candice Schnurr
Leslie Sisson
Phillip Niemeyer

In a celebratory anything goes spirit, friends of N-S hung art over the course of a night for an impromptu final show at the 1800 Koenig Lane space.

Leslie Sisson of the Moving Panoramas played an acoustic set. Rebecca Whitehurst and Candice Schnurr performed an 10-minute experimental dance piece once every hour of the reception.

Jeff Dell (print on left),
Rebecca Whitehurst (performance),
Adreon Denson Henry (picture at right)
Rachel Freeman

Red Dots, shown for the first time at GOING OUT OF BUSINESS IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS, is an audience-participation piece on the economy of art-making. The dots, like the ones usually indicating a sale of art, are sold for a quarter. The purchaser may place the dot anywhere (on the composition target or not). The buyer becomes the maker, and the picture is made by its incremental sale. The value of the work is in an actual money in the locked red collection box, key thrown away.

Claude van Lingen placing a red dot
Josephine Niemeyer placing a dot
JUN–JUL
2016

INVITATION

Debra Broz
Erin Cunningham
Candace Hicks
William Hundley
Mark Menjivar
Meredith Miller & Deborah Poe
Joseph Noderer
Jessamyn Plotts
Becki Smith
Donya Stockton
Simon Walker
Jaime Zuzvera

The penultimate show at 1800 Koenig Lane, INVITATION gathered a collection of open intimacies and floating questions.

Paintings, design objects, installations, photographs, performances, graphics, sculptures, boxes, embroidered books, and poems await in a room where all are welcome, for free. Curated by Phillip Niemeyer & Rachel Freeman.

Jaime Zuzvera (painting on left),
William Hundley (center photograph),
Joseph Noderer (painting on right),
Donya Stockton (baskets on mirrored base)
Erin Cunningham A Little Lace, A Little Bling from Ladies Knuckles Series, 2015, copper, sterling silver, cubic zirconia
Erin Cunningham
A Little Lace, A Little Bling from Ladies Knuckles Series, 2015, copper, sterling silver, cubic zirconia
Leon Alesi (photographs on walls),
Candace Hicks (embrodiered books on table)
Mark Menjivar
APR 2016

PERFORMANCE AND DOCUMENTATION

Brad Tucker as Bad Trucker
Caroline Gormley
Jared Leibowich
Bridget Evarts
Lisa Choinacky
Benjamin Cissner
Matthew Steinke/Octant
Monika Rostvold
Rachel Freeman
Sarah Saltwick & Katy Taylor
Sean Ripple
Shafer Hall
Sol LeWitt Bootlegs

BLUE FLAMES and WARM ASHES were companion events. BLUE FLAMES was a day-long show of music, performance art, experimental theater, poetry, story-telling, and visual art as choreographed movement. Weeks later, WARM ASHES presented documentation and remains of the previous show.

A flame is a verb as a noun — the object (the plume of fire) is an action (burning, a rapid chemical change). The is is a does. Ashes are what flames leave behind.

At BLUE FLAMES, Lisa Choinacky drew and hung two large pieces. The video documentation and the pieces were shown at WARM ASHES. Artist Bridget Evarts spoke as Liza Minnelli at BLUE FLAMES. At WARM ASHES she made a encore appearance, signing 8×10 glossies photographed at the previous event. And so on… Poets’ readings were made into texts. Stages for performance became installations. Singers’ songs were played on an old tape recorder at the spot in the room where the tape was recorded.

Lisa Choinacky

Caroline Gorely
Bridget Evarts as Liza
Sean Ripple
passenger Instructions for “This is Hardcore” – a performance for car
MATTER is a one-actor play about an astronaut written by Sarah Saltwick and performed by Katy Taylor at BLUE FLAMES. For WARM ASHES, Taylor’s space suit costume was displayed floating weightless above the room.
Sol LeWitt Bootlegs are instruction art pieces very loosely based on Sol LeWitt wall drawings and geared toward drafts-people of any skill level. Two were made during BLUE FLAMES.