Permitted Snooping

I mentioned last week that the East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T.) was taking place. If you don’t believe me you can go back and check. See. Yesterday I participated in the tour by grabbing my bicycle and heading east. I started my tour at my friend’s bar for a quick beer.

Actually I’m lying. I went to my friend’s bar the day before, but I was trying to figure out how to plug them in this column. Accomplished.

They had this rad sculpture on display. One of my favorite pieces of the tour.

I met up with my buddy Lee Brooks for the bike ride.

Lee and I used to make a skate zine together back in the early 2000s. Back before everybody got so fired up about the internet.

The studio tour is pretty overwhelming with literally thousands of artists participating. I totally made that number up, but there’s definitely too many things to possibly see during the last three hours of the tour, which is when I decided to check stuff out. So rather than try to specifically see stuff, we just started riding around and looking for signs that indicated an open studio. Found one.

Carly Weaver’s backyard studio. If you’ve ever visited Central Texas I’m sure you’ve witnessed the dominant presence of the Common Grackle. To me the most fun part about E.A.S.T. is getting to step into artists’ studios and see their personal workspaces. Permitted snooping.

I think Gonz might have been there earlier in the day.

Made a few right turns and found ourselves at Bearded Lady Printing.

Nerd alert. I mean that in a good way. Meaning I kinda want one of these.

One of my buddies was an original founder of Crummy House.

Zine zone. I’m glad that people still make paper zines. The internet is obviously far superior in terms of sharing information, but there’s something nice about holding a handmade object in your hands… blah, blah, I’ll stop preaching.

We actually did have one destination in mind when we started our bike ride. We wanted to go check out our buddy Davey C’s woodworking studio. On our way there we passed by Pump Projects which is a gallery/studio space that houses over 30 individual artists. I figured there’d be something worth looking at in there. I was correct. Good old Vernon.

Emilie Houssart.

Kristie Koll. I think I’m going to have to go back and buy that ramp painting.

One of my favorite pieces at Pump Projects was this interactive sculpture that The Best Wurst had installed outside of the space. I’m not normally super engaged by performance art, but this worked for me.

After deconstructing a sausage sculpture, Lee and I headed down the street to Kartwheel, which (as I mentioned) is our buddy David Clark’s woodshop.

Workspaces like this make me hyper-aware of how little I actually know about making things.

If left alone in this woodshop, I’d be missing half of my fingers within the hour.

Thanks, Dave. If you (the reader) are into super-awesome custom woodworking, check out Dave’s website. Dude’s a master at his craft.

By the time we left Dave’s shop, it was after 6 and the studio tour was officially over, but on the way back home I saw one more piece of art. If you keep your eyes open, you can see art everywhere.

I’m (hopefully) obviously just joking. But stick this in a museum and some rich dipshit would buy it. See you next year, E.A.S.T.

Previously – Okay Mountain E.A.S.T. Tour