Julia C. Butridge Gallery
The Julia C. Butridge Gallery is located in the heart of the arts district adjacent to the Long Center and Butler Park at the Dougherty Arts Center, a multi-cultural community arts center providing opportunities for creative expression to citizens for over 41 years. Visitors enjoy an exceptional 2,000 square feet of exhibit space in the main gallery, and an additional 480 square feet in newly renovated gallery space. The natural collision of creative activity at the arts center contributes to the gallery’s longstanding reputation among the arts community as an accessible and nurturing venue and incubator, ideal for emerging and established artists. The gallery is free and open to the public.
On Display
Cristina Velásquez, Photography
Somos Animales Poéticos
Cristina Velásquez
On Display: August 22 – October 3, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Somos Animales Poéticos is a solo exhibition and book presentation by Cristina Velásquez, celebrating the Austin launch of her monograph published by Dust Collective in May 2026.
Built from the margins of dominant photographic traditions, the work integrates photographs and literary fragments into a visual language that becomes a personal mythology. Moving across documentary, archival collage, and staged reenactment, her compositions function simultaneously as subjects and backgrounds, following the structure of a weaving where every element is part of a larger body.
Drawing from literature and feminisms from the Global South, the exhibition rethinks photographic discourse from Latin American perspectives. From her position as a Colombian woman, artist, and mother in Austin, Velásquez’s work reclaims subjectivity against erasure—affirming photography as a medium of connection, critical thought, and poetic expression.
Website: www.cristinavelasquez.com
Instagram: @cristinavelsaquezstudio
Quentin Pace, I’m not okay but I’m gone be alright, Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 2026
On and On and On
Quentin Pace
On Display: August 22 – October 3, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
On and On and On unfolds as a series of abstract meditations, works born from the quiet labor of feeling, remembering, and connecting. Through color, form, and layered symbolism, the pieces trace emotional currents and shared human rhythms. Influenced by pop culture, braided histories, and the vast landscape of the African diaspora — most intimately Southern Black culture — Quentin Pace explores the esoteric depths of our inner world and the complex relationship between our hearts and retrospection.
This exhibition gestures toward the unseen threads that bind us. It asks viewers not only to observe but to recognize themselves, sift through memory and emotion, and sense how their own interior worlds are tethered to the lives of others, echoing on and on and on.
Website: www.quentinpace.com
Instagram: @quebishop
Yamin Li, Chaos & Order, Acrylic painting on linen, 2021
Out of Place
Yamin Li
On Display: August 22 – October 3, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Drawing from her experience as an immigrant, Yamin Li explores attachment to and detachment from place through a series of paintings that combine familiar objects such as houses, trees, figures, and toys with seemingly random fragments extracted from everyday surroundings. These psychological habitats and portraits reflect the complexities of navigating between environments and identities. Through the work, viewers are invited to experience, understand, and embrace the challenges of being out of place.
Website: www.yaminli.com
Instagram: @yaminatx
Upcoming Exhibits
Image Details: Left to Right, Minnie Rodgers, Nathan Anthony, Gargi Sharma, Stefania Garcia, Victoria Vhuk.
Outlet Within
DAC Artists in Residence Showcase
On Display: October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 15, 2026, 2-4 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11a.m.-5p.m.
“Outlet Within” showcases the work of Dougherty Arts Center’s 2026 Resident Artists Victoria Zhuk, Stefania Garcia, Minnie Rogers, Gargi Sharma, and Nathan Anthony.
Victoria Zhuk’s intuitively hand built vessels house a place where the artist’s anxiety transforms into a garden of curiosity. Stefania Garcia’s playful sculptures of insects, both real and imagined, ask the viewer to consider the beauty in the smallest creatures. Minnie Rogers navigates a quasi-medical narrative, transforming everyday items found in hospitals such as pain scales and medical gloves into whimsical sculptural forms and motifs. Nathan Anthony uses the inherently haptic nature of making sculptures to explore the relationship between handmade and mechanized production. In her final exhibit at the DAC, veteran Resident Gargi Sharma collects and reconstructs memories into familiar forms, narrating stories hidden beneath everyday objects and surfaces.
The Dougherty Arts Center’s Artist Residency is a work exchange program that provides ceramic artists with the space, facilities, time, and professional interaction that will foster their ideas, skills, abilities, and focus as practicing artists. To learn more about the residency program visit the Artist Professional Development webpage.
Faith Chonko, Tear her apart, collage and acrylic.
Errant Obsession
Faith Chonko
On Display October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11am-5 p.m.
There is an immense power that lies in our collective focus, but what are we actually doing with it? Cycling manias leave us endlessly seeking new makeup techniques and products, maximizing our bodies and faces through ritualistic diets and movements, dissecting the lives of those on a public stage, and tapping into new ways to stoke a stranger’s anger. The all-consuming forces of addiction and obsession can entirely reshape our lives and distract us from deeper purpose when that same energy could be put towards something greater instead. “Errant Obsession” explores this internal struggle, while trying to reveal what transformation and escape from the mental trap may look like. It asks the viewer to surface the undercurrent that lies within and replace their errant obsessions with benevolent ones.
Website: www.faithchonko.com
Bella Cheng, Ranbow Galls, 2024, mixed media on paper.
Regular and Precious
Bella Cheng
On Display October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Regular & Precious features recent drawings by Bella Cheng that turn the ordinary into much more. Everyday scenes and observations from nature are closely analyzed, abstracted, cut up, and put back together again. At times, these drawings resemble the much smaller architectures of life—the microbial, the cellular, the doll-like—and at other moments, scales totally out of reach—the cosmic, the alien, and the dreamlike. “Regular & Precious” is an expression of how the artist sees the world within and outside of herself, inviting viewers to see with childlike curiosity.
Website: www.bellacheng.net
Instagram: @notcuteart