Co-Lab Projects @ Friends Fair

May 7th - 9th, 2026
The Loren at Lady Bird Lake
1211 W Riverside Dr, Austin, TX 78704

Wednesday, May 6th, 6-9pm: Launch Party with Future Front at The Jones Center
Thursday, May 7th: Preview by invitation only
Friday, May 8th, 12-7pm & Saturday, May 9th, 12-6pm: Open and free to the public with required RSVP

For Friends Fair 2026, Co-Lab Projects will present paintings by Elizabeth Schwaiger and Jeremy DePrez, performance, styling, and services by Sean Ripple, ceramics by Rebeca Proctor, and floral arrangements by Antonio Bond

Email hello@co-labprojects.org for inventory and pricing

Elizabeth Schwaiger received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011 and currently lives and works in Paris, France. In her decade-long exploration of power dynamics and the climate crises, Schwaiger uses a variegated symbolism of water, fracturing, dimensional overlay, gesture, and dialed levels of representational clarity to construct images suggestive of the interplay among unseen forces that govern our world. She has exhibited in venues in the UK and the USA, including The Walker Gallery National Museum in Liverpool, The Macintosh Museum in Glasgow, The National Portrait Gallery in London, Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Glasgow International, Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, and Co-Lab Projects and GrayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Recent projects include NYC solo exhibition Now & Now & Now at Nicola Vassell and solo exhibition Pressing Shadows at Gana Art in Seoul in 2023, as well as a solo presentation at the Independent art fair presented by Nicola Vassell.

Jeremy DePrez is a Brooklyn, New York, and Houston, Texas based visual artist whose paintings examine the shifting connections between personal identity, material culture, and the often-overlooked objects of daily life. Through painting, he renders ephemeral, discarded materials with an uncanny sense of permanence, transforming them into static artifacts that suspend the instability of value, memory, and consumer culture. Working at the intersection of personal history and broader cultural forces, DePrez’s work challenges how we assign meaning to the objects we possess, discard, or inherit. Selected solo exhibitions include Night Worker: Works on Paper 2018–2025, Front, Houston; Reality’s Coffin, Post/Times, New York; GLYPHS, Best Western, Santa Fe; Tent Posts, SUNNY, New York, Furnished Head, Marinaro, New York; Boy Meets World, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; Mind Fold, Texas Gallery, Houston; and Tenant, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York.  Selected group exhibitions include A Selection of Great Art By People Who Know What They Like (curated by Bob Nickas), The Drawing Center, New York; Hypervision, Magenta Plains, New York; Outside the Lines, Texas Gallery, Houston; Beyond the Frame, Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; Shapeshifters, Luhring Augustine, New York; Das Bild hängt schief, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and The Shaped Canvas Revisited, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. DePrez was an artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in 2015.

Sean Ripple is an artist, writer, and curator based in Austin, TX. His projects are often improvisational and interventionist in nature and rely heavily on social media and the Internet to frame the outcomes of a feverish dedication to an idea. Taking inspiration from portrait painting and divination practices like tarot and tea leaf reading, Ripple will host Friends Fair visitors in the booth and style them in fashions drawn from a variety of sources, including his personal collection. Visitors will engage in conversation to develop a look they feel works well for them, and then be given privacy to change into their ensemble. Their fit will be documented, and if the look is purchased, the visitor will be encouraged to walk it around the fair, which can be thought of as a runway for living sculpture. Ripple has been exhibiting with Co-Lab Projects since its founding in 2008. He has mounted exhibitions, projects, and interventions at Neue Welt, Time Being Books, The Contemporary Austin, Pump Project, The Museum of Human Achievement, Wurhaus, The Gatehouse Gallery at Laguna Gloria, inside private homes, numerous big box and department stores, and on internet platforms such as Tumblr, Flickr, Vine, Facebook, and Instagram. Sean Ripple is also currently Co-Lab's digital artist in residency at the colabprojectsbitres instagram account.

Rebeca Proctor is an artist based in Central Texas whose current practice responds to the tensions embedded within the domestic roles of maternal life. Working primarily in clay, she creates quiet monuments to the careful work of mothering, to the repetition of domestic labor, and to the abundance that can exist even in monotony. Her work teeters between at once utilitarian objects and symbolic sculptures - containing, protecting, and bearing the weight of it all while seeking moments of personal transformation amidst the overwhelm. Rebeca’s practice continues to evolve alongside her experience of raising two young children in the countryside outside of Austin, TX. She received her BFA in Studio Art in 2018 from the University of Texas at Austin where she focused on bronze casting and mixed media sculpture. She has held internships and residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and Penland School of Craft in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her recent exhibitions include Soft Opening at DORF Gallery and Ain’t Hold Much; Ain’t Too Much to Hold at Co-Lab Projects. Proctor is co-owner of East Side Pot Shop, a community ceramics studio in East Austin, and co-founder of Nom Ceramics.

Co-Lab’s Super Sweet 16
A summer membership drive and FUNdraiser

Sponsored by Paul and Ilene Barr, Sheehy Fine Art Services, Sergio and Carolina Alcocer, JD DiFabbio, Nomad Sound, Misc Rentals, Saucehaus, Clay Pigeon, Austin Beerworks, LALO Tequila, and Richard’s Rainwater

Saturday, July 13th, 8pm-midnight
Members get in free, sliding scale tickets available for non-members starting at $10

On July 13th we are celebrating Co-Lab’s Sweet 16th by throwing ourselves a fierce birthday party in the form of a membership drive and fundraiser benefiting our fall programming. Featuring our summer group exhibition “Inter Being”, live music by Pinkstar and Tropicana Joe, a ‘Super Sweet 16’ themed Karaoke stage, water balloon fights, tiaras, food by Clay Pigeon, and a spoiled rotten bar sponsored by Austin Beerworks, LALO Tequilla, and Richard's Rainwater.

Similar to our past fundraisers, all funds raised — whether from new memberships, tickets to the event, bar donations, or food sales — will be matched by one of our generous donors, community business partners, or event sponsors! It’s all the fun of a birthday party while doubling your donations and impact, which means the more you give the more we are able to support artists in our community and continue delivering the programming y’all know and love.

Over the past 16 years, Co-Lab has produced over 400 exhibitions and performances showcasing hundreds of local, national, and international artists. In addition to its primary programming, Co-Lab is an established and revered gathering space for community building through its free programs, events, collaborations, and participation in regional and international fairs and festivals.

We look forward to continuing this work with your support! Help us help artists by coming out to the event on July 13th! To get involved, donate, or contribute to this summer fundraiser please write us at hello@co-labprojects.org!

Cheers,
The Co-Lab Team

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER II
An open call for new artists

Open call dates: April 25th - May 25th, 2024
Application review and notification: End of May
Exhibition dates: June 15th - July 20th, 2024

Co-Lab Projects invites all Austin area artists who have NOT physically exhibited with Co-Lab in the past to apply for this open call exhibition. The application is open to individual artists, curators, collectives, or other groups who fit this description.

Submitted/proposed works may be in any medium including but not limited to: installation, video/film, performance, 2D and 3D static works, social practice, etc. Please consider the installation logistics and limitations of the culvert gallery, for example the space is not temperature or humidity controlled which means it is not necessarily an ideal environment for works on paper or photography. If you have specific concerns we’re happy to answer any questions before you submit.

Artworks do not have to be from any specific time frame. The open call title is tongue in cheek, however we do encourage applying with semi-recent work and/or new proposed work.

Works will be reviewed and selected by the Board of Directors and the format of the exhibition will be determined by these selections. For example we may decide to pair two artists who submitted separately, or build a multiple artist exhibition from several applicants, or a large group exhibition may take shape. The format will depend largely on what we receive from applicants.

Please following the link below to apply. What are you waiting for huh?!

Co-Lab Book Club
Led by Leslie Moody Castro in conjunction with Ana Segovia’s exhibition Boy’s Ranch

October 13th — November 13th, 2023
This and all future Book Club editions are FREE for Members

Book Club members will discuss via Discord and will be invited to an in-person conversation with Leslie Moody Castro and Ana Segovia on November 13th.

We will be reading both of the following books, Cartucho is very short and will not take long to finish.


- Book 1 -

Cartucho by Nellie Campobello
55 pages
Buy the book here

Cartucho: Tales of the Struggle in Northern Mexico (Cartucho: Relatos de la lucha en el Norte de México) is a semi-autobiographical short novel, or novella set in the Mexican Revolution and originally published in 1931. It consists of a series of vignettes that draw on Campobello's memories of her childhood and adolescence (and the stories her mother told her) in Northern Mexico during the war. Though long overlooked, it is now celebrated, among other reasons because it is, as Mexican critic Elena Poniatowska points out, "the only real vision of the Mexican revolution written by a woman."

About the Author:
Nellie (or Nelly) Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna (November 7, 1900 – July 9, 1986) was a Mexican writer, notable for having written one of the few chronicles of the Mexican Revolution from a woman's perspective: Cartucho, which chronicles her experience as a young girl in Northern Mexico at the height of the struggle between forces loyal to Pancho Villa and those who followed Venustiano Carranza. She moved to Mexico City in 1923, where she spent the rest of her life and associated with many of the most famous Mexican intellectuals and artists of the epoch. Like her half-sister Gloria, a well-known ballet dancer, she was also known as a dancer and choreographer. She was the director of the Mexican National School of Dance.


- Book 2 -

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
302 pages
Buy the book here

All the Pretty Horses is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. It was a bestseller, winning both the U.S. National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is the first of McCarthy's "Border Trilogy".

About the Author:
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American writer who authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He was known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, although he was raised primarily in Tennessee. In 1951, he enrolled in the University of Tennessee, but dropped out to join the U.S. Air Force. His debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Awarded literary grants, McCarthy was able to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Suttree (1979), like his other early novels, received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. A MacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote his fifth novel, Blood Meridian (1985). Although it initially garnered a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as his magnum opus, with some labeling it the Great American Novel.

I (WANT TO) KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
An open call for new artists

Open call dates: June 20th - July 31st, 2023
Application review: first week of August
Notification: second week of August
Exhibition dates: September 9th - 23rd, 2023

Co-Lab Projects invites all Austin area artists who have not physically exhibited with us in the past to apply for this open call exhibition. The application is open to individual artists, curators, collectives, or other groups who fit this description.

Submitted/proposed works may be in any medium including but not limited to: installation, video/film, performance, 2D and 3D static works, social practice, etc. Please consider the installation logistics and limitations of the culvert gallery, for example the space is not temperature or humidity controlled which means it is not necessarily an ideal environment for works on paper or photography. If you have specific concerns we’re happy to answer any questions before you submit.

Artworks do not have to be from any specific time frame. The open call title is tongue in cheek, however we do encourage applying with semi-recent work and/or new proposed work.

Works will be reviewed and selected by the Board of Directors and the format of the exhibition will be determined by these selections. For example we may decide to pair two artists who submitted separately, or build a multiple artist exhibition from several applicants, or a large group exhibition may take shape. The format will depend largely on what we receive from applicants.

View the application here and submit your ideas! What are you waiting for huh?!