Tribeza Article — Blue Genie Art Industries Press

Just east of IH-35, East Austin spreads out like a patchwork quilt of quaint dwellings, boarded-up houses, historic sites, mom-and-pop shops, weed-choked vacant lots, and new affordable housing constructions. Amid the jumble, tucked back among the neighborhood streets, are the industrial warehouses and multipurpose spaces that have attracted artists to East Austin for more than a decade. Today, more artist studios are gravitating to the East Side than to any other part of town. For Mark Macek, a talented furniture designer and one of six artisans at the Splinter Group studio on Springdale Road, the neighborhood itself is as much of a draw as the affordable rents.

"We just plain like it," he shrugged.
"But don’t tell anyone," Joseph Zambarano, a fellow Splinter Group designer, was quick to add.
While said in jest, there is some truth in Zambarano’s statement. Mark explained, "The East Austin Studio Tour threatens to blow the lid on our cozy community."

The tour, conveniently abbreviated as E.A.S.T., was conceived by the artists at Bolm Studios and launched in November 2003 as a way to promote awareness of the burgeoning arts community just east of the interstate. Due to the resounding positive response, a second tour was offered this past May, with 45 studios and more than 70 artists participating. Several thousand curious art-goers swarmed the East Side, doubling the previous tour’s attendance.

Now it looks as if E.A.S.T. might be here to stay. Another fall tour is scheduled for the weekend of November 20 and 21, and the event is being expanded over two days to better accommodate the anticipated crowds. Aside from attracting visitors and boosting sales, E.A.S.T. has also brought the neighborhood artists together in new ways, enhancing communication and collaboration as they join forces for this common cause.

For the artists at the Splinter Group, Mark Macek, Joseph Zambarano, painter Andy St. Martin, sculptor Chris Levack, metalsmith Hawkeye Glenn, and woodcraftsman Brian David Johnson, collaboration is nothing new. They share a cooperative studio space in a vast, open warehouse nestled behind the Delta Lumber company, where the air smells of sawdust, and the loading dock is piled high with timber and railroad ties. While they each take on independent jobs and commissions, they frequently band together to capitalize on their combined skill sets.

"We're our own support group. We're a community, and part of a community of artisans — and a lot of them happen to be here," Macek said, citing Archaic Stone, Blue Genie Art Industries and Ginko Studios as examples. "We're the economic driving force of East Austin."

In fact, the Splinter Group has been tapped to create everything from custom décor for the new Whole Foods Market at Columbus Circle in New York City to upscale furnishings and cabinetry for high-end West Austin dwellings. While succeeding financially is often a struggle for artists and artisans, the Group has succeeded through their diversity. "To say we can make anything might even be an understatement," Macek boasted.

One of the most recent projects to come out of the Splinter Group is the labyrinth installed in front of the new East Austin Police Substation & Forensics Lab. Composed of steel, concrete and earth, the labyrinth is, upon closer inspection, revealed to be in the shape of a giant fingerprint. Made possible through the city’s Art in Public Places program, the piece was created by designer R. Murray Lege and executed by Hawkeye Glenn, with the help of assistant Jonathan Pattie and fellow Splinter artisan Macek. According to Pattie, a self-proclaimed "newbie" at Splinter, "That's a rare thing, to be able to do work that stays on the East Side. The ability to find work on the East Side is the missing component in our life."

A large percentage of the work created at Splinter Group does indeed wind up gracing the homes and businesses of West Austin. However, that could change soon with the East 11th and 12th Streets Urban Renewal Plan and the improvements slated for the East Seventh Street Corridor. These efforts are certain to bring new businesses and residents in their wake.

"Really, the changes are just starting to happen," Macek observed. "It's a mixed blessing. It's going to raise land values. Some say that displaces, but there's evidence that people stay longer in communities that are growing and developing."

Kevin Collins, one of the principals at Blue Genie Art Industries, asserted, "East Austin was basically undiscovered in the late '90s. It's changed pretty dramatically in six years."

It was six years ago, in October of 1999, when Collins, along with Dana Younger and Rory Skagen, first moved into their own warehouse space behind the massive Goodwill Industries’ Blue Hanger Outlet just up the road from the Splinter Group. They soon transformed the warehouse’s dull metal exterior with a playful cartoon mural depicting an onion-domed palace and flying carpets, topped off with an oversized sculpture of a blue genie with a lamp, welcoming visitors from atop the building. Back then, Blue Genie was one of a handful of studios operating on the East Side. Now there are almost too many to count, but, for Collins, the influx of artists is welcome.

"There's almost like an old guard and a new energy of people moving in who are just discovering East Austin," he said. New places like Bolm Studios, Iron Gate Studios, and the conglomeration of artist spaces located in the old Mrs. Baird’s Bread factory on Tillery have helped invigorate and galvanize the neighborhood art scene. "Fear is what's slowed it down. There's a stigma people still feel about the East Side." But, Collins remarked, "For people willing to come to the East Side, they've been rewarded and surprised."

Certainly, Blue Genie has been rewarded for its own efforts. The commercial art venture as grown over the years, attracting commissions for custom sculptures, signage and décor from likes of GSD&M, Seaworld of San Antonio, and the Star of Texas Rodeo. Its massive, 10,000 square-foot warehouse accommodates fundraiser facility rentals, art exhibitions, and monthly studio space rentals alike, not to mention the annual Blue Genie Art Bazaar, held each December to usher in the holiday season.

"What I love about East Austin is it gives young people a chance to realize whatever dream they have," Collins explained. "They can say 'I'm going to make a theatre, or gallery, and if it fails, I've gained the experience’ — and they can do that because of East Austin."

Three such young artists, Quin Matteson, Elizabeth Spear, and Kelcey Edwards, are currently seeking to realize their own dream on the East Side. With backgrounds in photography and filmmaking, the trio opened Iron Gate Studios in November of 2003, fortuitously on the same night as the first East Austin Studio Tour. Located along the railroad tracks in a building on East 5th Street, the studio is set back behind a long iron gate (hence the name). While the building is a fraction of the size of places like Blue Genie and the Splinter Group, what the venue lacks in space, it makes up for in versatility.

"The space is so small we have to be really innovative," Edwards admitted. "It's like a collapsible picnic furniture set."

Designed to meet just about any need, the building is equipped with offices that convert to micro-galleries, a closet darkroom, projectors, and a 750 square-foot common studio space with a high ceiling and a large bay door. The immaculate white-walled studio space is shared by a number of renters for an extremely affordable price, and has also proven an ideal venue for art shows, photo shoots, theatrical events, fundraisers, live music performances and even avant-garde puppet shows.

"In Austin, the creative class is busting at the seams," Edwards said. "It needs to cross-pollinate." Iron Gate Studios — and the East Side in general — offer a place where such cross-pollination can happen. While more and more of the creative class are migrating eastward, Edwards asserted that she doesn’t think the neighborhood will ever lose its distinctive flavor and cultural history.

"It’s not going to convert to Montrose," she insisted, referring to the now-trendy downtown Houston district crammed with galleries, coffee shops and antique stores.

And yet, things are definitely percolating on the East Side. Change is in the air, and Edwards said that she is glad to be a part of it. "It feels like a frontier, like we're drawing a line in the sand. It encourages people to cross that line." If I-35 is a line in the sands of Austin, then these artists and artisans who call the East Side their home are offering more reasons than ever for people to cross over.