On Public Invitation and Community Arts: “Open Call”
Presented by Future Front, Open Call was the 2025 Group Show for Future Front’s Artist Residency.
open call (n.) — a public invitation to participate. Creative expression is often an open call for community and connection.
Exploring the art of invitation, gathering and relating to the world, this exhibit features work by contemporary artists living and working in Austin, Texas, including: Laura Clay, Aimèe M. Everett, Rewon Shimray, Kate Nuelle, Victoria Cardenas, Samantha Asencio, Erin Carle, Sarah Bork and Yvonne Uwah.
Continue reading to learn more about the show.
Meet the Artists
Laura Clay
Laura Clay is a Mexican-American artist based in Austin whose practice spans painting, drawing, and ceramics. Working in both abstraction and figuration, she navigates themes of bicultural identity, displacement, and the balance between chaos and order. Her work is characterized by distinct gradients and textures, creating a visual language that explores personal and cultural narratives. A commitment to materiality is central to her process, from creating her own handmade paints to her recent explorations in clay. Laura holds an MFA from the National Art School in Sydney and has exhibited worldwide, with her work held in the Mexic-Arte Museum's permanent collection. She has been featured in publications like Eastside Magazine and is represented by Washington Gallery and The Cathedral ATX. @lauraclayart
Victoria Cardenas
Victoria Cardenas AKA Wavy Roller is a self-taught artist residing in Austin, TX. Her primary medium is acrylic on canvas but she also explores different mediums and canvas (lino printing, digital design, paint markers, and pastels). Her art is offered through original paintings, prints, stickers, book marks, totes and she explores, “connection and lack of connection that is around me; with myself and my own trauma, others and nature through dreamy colorful, yet tonal pieces.” @wavyrollerart
Yvonne Uwah
Yvonne Uwah is a self-taught photographer living in Austin, Texas. She began using photography out of a deep desire to connect with and acknowledge other people. Because of this, her work primarily focuses on portraiture and what emerges when investing time into relationships. She has exhibited at various galleries in Central Texas. @yvonneshoots
Samantha Asencio
Samantha Asencio aka Future Vagabond, is an interdisciplinary artist originally from New York. Shortly after graduating from Pratt Institute in 2015, she relocated to Austin, where she continued her sculptural work. Over time, she shifted her focus to embroidery and later founded the brand FV. The work explores themes of the American road trip, draws on historical references, and examines the notion of impermanence. Her practice invites viewers to consider how memory, travel, and time intertwine. @futurevagabond
Erin Carle
Erin Carle is a fine artist whose practice is rooted in painting. Her work addresses themes of inadequacy, body standards, and body dissatisfaction, often reframing them in a playful yet unsettling way through surreal imagery. Inspired by personal experiences and observed societal expectations, her work explores how cultural pressures shape the way we see and value ourselves. Brightly colored and intentionally chaotic, her paintings invite viewers to confront discomfort within a vibrant, almost humorous visual language. Erin earned her BFA from Texas State University and has exhibited in both solo and group shows across Texas. She is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she is expanding her practice into ceramics, video, and installation. @erincarleart
Sarah Bork
Sarah Bork is an Austin-based interdisciplinary artist whose photographic work centers LGBTQ+ experiences of everyday life. With a background in film and performance, Bork has spent over two decades cultivating a socially engaged practice rooted in community portraiture and text. Her current series Girls Gotta Eat is an ongoing photography and oral history project exploring the grocery shopping rituals of drag performers. Bork’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at The Dougherty Arts Center, Austin Public Library, Women and Their Work, Houston Center for Photography, and in a public billboard commission by Art + Action in San Francisco. She credits the Girls Gotta Eat community with helping her better understand her own queerness, and remains committed to collaborative work that bridges social divides and celebrates the radical potential of everyday care. @girlsgottaeat_dragportraits
Aimée M. Everett
Questioning and communicating life experiences, emotions, and memories through gestureless abstraction, figurative exploration, minimalism, intense color, form, and texture, Aimée M. Everett asks the viewer to revisit recreated memory snapshots as a state of present experience. Drawing inspiration from the rich cultural heritage of New Orleans — where the celebration of the mundane, the dead, and the living coexists with a forward-looking perspective— Everett embraces this tradition throughout her practice. @aimeemeverettart
Make it stand out
Rewon Shimray
Rewon Shimray is a native Austinite and biethnic Asian American who processes her cultural and queer identity through autobiographical paintings. Her compositions blend childhood photographs, popular iconography, and cultural artifacts to narrate her upbringing in white dominant and Christian fundamentalist spaces. Rewon’s paintings offer a site of contemplation, recognition and connection. She earned a BA in Journalism from Baylor University with minors in religion and studio art. Rewon has exhibited work in over a dozen Austin galleries, including her debut solo exhibition in May 2023, titled “SPLIT: Portraits of the AAPI Diaspora.” @artbyrewon
Kate Nuelle
Kate Nuelle is an artist born, raised and based in Austin, Texas. By day, they work as a graphic designer, specializing in brand identity and printed material for companies and non-profits related to arts, culture, and media. Their photography and illustration work brings up concerns about privacy, ephemerality, and power through eerie compositions. They have been featured through The Gallery ATX, the Michael and Noémi Neidorff Art Gallery, and ICOSA, as well as published in Verses, Glaze, Seedlings, Power Vacuum and other independent publications. @kate.nuelle
EXPLORE PHOTOS FROM THE EXHIBIT:
All photos by Yvonne Uwah
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