Lawndale Art Center building Renovation Project
After a long and painstakingly planned two-year undertaking, Lawndale Art Center will commemorate its 25th Anniversary year as an alternative Houston art space in a newly remodeled facility. The first exhibition for 2005 brings Eleanor Williams, former Director of Lawndale Art Center (1994-2000), to curate a group show in the Main gallery of recent works by artists who have exhibited at Lawndale in the last 10 years. Kenneth Beasley will grace the Small gallery with drawings and sculptures based on the form and color he finds in the folds of laundry. Betsy Odom – known for the pastoral images she creates using colored duct tape – fills the Mezzanine gallery with a sculptural menagerie of creatures made from every-day things. The opening reception will be on Friday February 4, 2005 and the work will be on view until March 12, 2005.
Lawndale acquired the former Barker Brothers Studio as a permanent home in February 1993. Considered one of Houston’s important existing Art Deco style buildings, the Barker Brothers Studio was designed, built, and owned by Joseph Finger (1887-1953), a prolific Houston architect active in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. He was born and trained in Austria and came to the United States in 1905, opening his own office in Houston in 1914. Mr. Finger was especially associated with modernistic architectural design. He was responsible for such important Houston examples of this design style as Congregation Beth Israel Temple (1925, now the Heinen Theater of Houston Community College and listed in the National Register of Historic Places) and Houston City Hall (1939).
Mr. Finger built the Barker Brothers Studio in 1931 as an investment during the heyday of South Main Street: Houston’s first—and foremost—auto-oriented suburban business corridor. Along with the Neo-Gothic style Trinity Church (1919) and the Spanish-Mediterranean style Isabella Court (1929), the Barker Brothers Studio represents the street’s central role in the history of early 20th century Houston.
Architect Richard Fitzgerald preserves the historical Art-Deco Style façade of the former Barker Brothers Studio while adding a new rear façade with a patio and sculpture garden. The restoration has provided Lawndale with expanded gallery space, new lighting and restrooms (the restrooms will be considered a particularly plush addition for anyone who visited the space pre-renovation), and data cables in every gallery to facilitate more digital-driven artwork as the need arises. An elevator has been installed to bring visitors from the ground to the third floor which now houses the administrative offices, a study room open to the public for research into Lawndale’s archives, and improved studio space that will be offered at no cost to Houston artists on a competitive basis.