2024 End of Summer Letter

Dear beloved community members,


Co-Lab has officially entered its 16th year! 

While we haven’t gotten our driver’s license yet, we have grown up a lot over those years. We learned how to better adapt to our circumstances and excel when faced with challenges. These traits are reflected in our programming and exhibitions — driven by our commitment to collaborating with artists to make their ambitious projects come to fruition.

When we reached our teens, you were there to see us mature and shift our focus over the last several years. We have done this by offering exhibitions and programming that reach beyond our local community, using our space in ways that we haven’t before, and bringing conceptual challenges to the table to foster creative innovation. We also focused on diversifying our fundraising efforts by producing two annual fundraisers, hosting donor events and dinners, and creating an inclusive membership program — all of which are helping to construct a solid financial foundation for our future. 

So far this year, we braved the unpredictable elements of the early months to host Porch Swing Orchestra by Barry Stone in which local and visiting artists from around Texas performed music and projected video pieces onto our ceiling. We transformed the Culvert Gallery into a funhouse portal to another world with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson. We brought the infamous performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña to perform during Fusebox at MoHA, continuing the ongoing collaborative spirit between our institutions. The culverts were coated in rubber by Jeff Williams, and then peeled back to create sculptures that adorned the space. Our annual open-call summer group show welcomed ten new artists and friends into the Co-Lab family. During these programs, we connected artists with our donors, members, and the broader community at meet and greets, private donor parties, VIP exhibition walk-throughs, and our summer fundraiser.

We enter the next programming season with a renewed spirit of collaboration as we prepare for a group exhibition curated by beloved Advisory Board member and guest curator Alyssa Taylor Wendt, featuring the work of Kate Csillagi, Diana Welch, Michelle Marchessault, and Mimi Bowman. These four women create works that contain provocative elements that quietly derail expectations and subvert our sense of comfort. Followed by an exhibition curated by Guadalajara90210, an organization founded by respected and prolific artists Marco Rountree and Alma Saladin. GDL90210 works collaboratively with artists to produce site-specific projects in unique and challenging spaces. For their project, GDL90210 will partner with ten Texas-based artists to produce an exhibition utilizing both the Culvert Gallery and the one-acre sculpture yard. This project connects Texas artists with these respected international curators, a relationship we have been fostering through years of exchange between our US and Mexico communities.

Throughout the last few months, many of you have vocalized your excitement for the elevation of our programs and development efforts. While we continue to make artists' visions come true, we have also worked diligently to challenge ourselves to think outside the box when it comes to our organizational capacity and how we are able to produce these programs, we could not do either without your support.

This is all to say that we have been laying a foundation for growth, one that we are committed to building upon, and one that will take us into the future as an emerging institution, eventually culminating in the construction of our new facilities. A building requires stability, your monetary support ensures the organization continues shoring up the framework of what is to come and keeps us moving in a direction that is exciting and innovative. We are looking forward to the fall programs with excitement and your generous donation will directly and substantially support these projects.

Please consider using the links below to donate and/or become a member today! Thank you for your ongoing support and all you do for the Austin art community! 


Sincerely,
Leslie Moody Castro, Director and Itinerant Curator
and Directors Sean Gaulager, Austin Nelsen, Christopher Burch, and Vladimir Mejia