Banner with four images - one of a dance performance, one of women chatting at an art exhibit, one of a man at a pottery wheel, and one of an art teacher and child painting together.

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.

Upcoming Exhibits

A collage of five different ceramic works of art. The first circular faces, the second a surface with gravel like pieces, the third a rock like texture with etchings, the fourth a ceramic pill bug, the fifth ceramic flower like structure.

Image Details: Left to Right, Minnie Rodgers, Nathan Anthony, Gargi Sharma, Stefania Garcia, Victoria Zhuk.

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: Sunday, 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 imagine an inner garden-a place of refuge, growth, and possibility in response to an increasingly uncertain world. 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.

A circular collage of a women cutting out pages from a book

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

A collage of abstract illustrations in many different colors

Bella Cheng, Rainbow 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