Copyright The Austin Chronicle
For many of the folks behind the Dougherty Arts Center, doing their job right means visitors hardly notice them. Curating and coordinating exhibits, organizing youth and adult educational programming, keeping the doors open and the center safe and clean – all of these tasks uphold the arts programming we know and love and support the artwork that catches our attention in the gallery. Yet the hands and brains engaged in this work at the DAC are also creating art of their own, on display through November in its staff exhibit – though the collection could do more to celebrate the team. The collection of multimedia works opens with theatre & event specialist Jefferson Lykins’ kinetic mobile titled “Homage to Troy.” The tiered, dangling piece connects partially transparent, pattern-filled squares and sparkling Christmas tree ornaments with utilitarian silver clasps and wooden dowels, scattering the gallery light into dazzling specks on the purple entry wall. Beside Lykins’ mobile, visitor & volunteer services specialist Cidnye Stott’s expertly woven knits adorn the space. Her wool handiwork demonstrates a varied weaving practice: crochet for “Hexagon Blanket” and weaving in her large “Log Cabin Variation.” Venturing further into the hallway exhibit, illustrations from culture & arts youth education programs specialist Catherine Chao showcase both her affinity for cute characters in “Occult Cat Botanical” and more evocative, seemingly personally inspired stylings. Her simple single-colored print, “Takes Me Back,” depicts a mirrored girl, kneeling on a tiled floor in one dimension and spinning tracks on a turntable in its opposite. The two silhouettes smile at one another – one wistful, the other exhilarated by the music at her fingertips. On the wall opposite, culture & arts program supervisor Lucy Miller-Downing’s gold-framed collage triptych follows titular “Bubbles” through three scenes of childhood joy and curiosity. The floating blue orbs drift from the hands, and baskets, of her superimposed subjects, surrounding them as they step among larger-than-life fruits and adventure-story motifs – an open door, a many-sailed ship – interlaced with skillfully cut patterns, recalling psychedelic picture books and the wonder of youthful discovery. Marketing representative Claire Bryant shares two evocative photographs in the exhibit, including “Pease Park Salmon Surprise,” a conglomeration of brightly colored trash – candy wrappers, a bottle cap, a claw hair clip – congealed in a gelatinous form and paired with a sliced lime. The Jell-O shape is reminiscent of Seventies gelatin-encased appetizers, while the trash inside recalls disheartening images of plastic-filled fish and the onslaught of trash in our natural environments, both in neighborhood streams like the one that runs through Pease Park and the wider rivers and oceans to which it eventually leads. Bryant’s second photo, “Hidden Mother,” shows a baby in a green cotton jumper nearly afloat in a mother’s lap, hidden, as the name suggests, by a blue-and-black rose-patterned blanket. Aside from the mother’s tattooed hands and a slip of her forearms, all we see is a human shape. The photo could speak to stories of adoption or the erasure of personhood felt by many mothers in the early days of childrearing. Without an artist statement or any information other than the piece’s title, it’s hard to say. Bryant also works as a teaching artist in DAC’s classrooms, where ceramicist Jon Nelson and oil painter George Huffman also instruct. Two of Nelson’s delightful three-dimensional creatures are on display, springing forth from their planet of scrappy, wide-faced whimsy. Likewise, two of Huffman’s highly textured paintings – mixing figurative and abstract, cubist and naturalist tendencies – hang on the DAC walls. These works, and many more, demonstrate the rich tapestry of aesthetic styles and creative practices that foreground the DAC’s work. Staff exhibits are a niche gallery genre I adore. It brings life and personality to the often stoic presence of museum docents and door greeters and reminds audiences how much unseen artistry contributes to a well-organized exhibit or art events. The folks behind community-fostering art centers like the Dougherty and larger-scale museums alike are drawn to their work, often, by their own discerning aesthetic eye, and are creating art alongside their other duties. What I like best about this style of exhibit is something I missed at the DAC: getting to know a bit about the employee artists. The internet sleuthing that contributed to this review is fun for me too, sure, but only provided me with a job title and maybe a bit about the creator’s other works. Reading an artist statement and job description can color in the space between institution and individual, connecting us to their multifaceted work. How we see art, how we see our jobs, and how the two might impact each other is the chief insight of these shows – and that it takes all kinds of artists to run a museum. This article appears in October 24 • 2025.
