Colorful paintings of horizons, wildlife and photographs of flowing rivers lined the walls of The Austin Winery. As local artists spread throughout the venue, each piece showed a love for the Texas environment.
The Texas Land Conservancy held a one-night-only art showcase featuring photographs, wood carvings and paintings to advocate for the preservation and safety of Texas land on Sunday. The “Art for Conservation” showcase benefits TLC’s mission to protect watersheds, grasslands and working lands while displaying local artists’ work.
“What really stands out to me is that they’re protecting land,” graphic designer Daniel Adams said. “Texas doesn’t have a lot of public land. Anything that they can try to help preserve and keep as natural as possible is really interesting to me.”
TLC dedicates itself to protecting the land, water and wildlife of Texas. Founded in 1982, the organization works to connect different people and organizations together through the love of the land.
“When you look at artists, they all have their inspiration. They all have something that they draw from,” printmaker and architect Julie Bate said. “I really wanted to try to create something that was relevant to me, but also relevant to the people around me, the people that are seeing my art in different shows and different fairs. At the very most basic level, I’m from Texas, and I wanted to try and represent that.”
Bate said she frequently creates Texas-inspired pieces that range from buildings to animals and landscapes. As a sustainable architect, Bate said she spent years focused on making her architecture work sustainable.
“The organization itself is really important to me,” Bate said. “The future of Texas is to preserve and consolidate land that is not developed on, where natural habitats are retained. It’s really important to me that we don’t pave over everything.”
The showcase allowed artists to represent their love for Texas and provided an opportunity to gain exposure. Each artist sat around the room, giving visitors the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations. In such a small venue, artists showed their work in an intimate manner.
“It’s just a beautiful alignment in my mission as an artist, to be involved with the Texas Land Conservancy,” said Stephanie Saldivar, a landscape and travel photographer. “I get to show Texas through my lens to other people that may not know what’s really available to them.”
Some artists took up to a month to create their piece. The works helped advocate for the safety of the land, and working with TLC allowed the artist to give back to the community.
“The message between all the artists is we need to bring a voice to the land because the land doesn’t have its own voice,” Adams said. “We have to put ourselves out there in order to speak for it.”
