As part of Future Front’s ongoing experiments in Public Space Partnerships, we use our frameworks for community design and collaboration to bring dynamic programs to the public. This project was made possible through Saya Woolfalk’s commission by the Austin Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment (ACME) Art in Public Places (AIPP) program to create a permanent artwork installation at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS).
Over the summer, Future Front hosted a local cave tour and collage zine workshop, in support of global artist Saya Woolfalk’s upcoming art installation at the Austin Airport.
Alongside 16 community members, we journeyed out to Longhorn Cavern State Park in Burnet, Texas to explore the caves and community-source nature rubbings and found sounds. Following the trip, we gathered at Future Front’s location on 1900 E 12th to assemble collages and field notes within “In the days of various light,” a site-specific archival installation by mixed media artist and generational Austin resident Xochi Solis. While crafting, we shared oral histories around Austin’s relationship to nature and community arts subcultures.
Facilitated by Future Front director and alternative musician Jane Hervey, materials collected at the session were used to create “Be A Cavern,” a 56-second mix and visual artwork. The track and the trip’s educational design will inform Saya Woolfalk's public artwork, alongside the development of Woolfalk’s Woods Woman Method curriculum for place-based art-making.
EXPLORE CAVE TRIP PHOTOS.
All photos by Tova Katzman, courtesy of Saya Woolfalk Studio
LISTEN TO “BE A CAVERN” (2026).
“the art of preservation,
the preservation of art
includes you,
our geology,
the law of uniformitarianism.
the story does not tell itself.
the present is the key to the past.
our stories move like water
in our community,
in our ground,
in our land —
invisible forces of erosion that shape the surface.
be a cavern.
be a nightclub.
do it in style.”
Be A Cavern is a 56-second mix, compiled by recording musician and composer Jane Claire Hervey, following a public Cave Trip hosted by the artist at Texas State Park Longhorn Cavern. Organized in support of Saya Woolfalk’s AIPP commission at the Austin Airport, the trip explored Saya Woolfalk’s place-based, empathy-driven art-making process, connecting Central Texas caves to the world-building power of Austin’s creative underground. Historic rivers shaped this region. The city’s DIY scenes and everyday people do the same.
The track features found sounds collected outside of the cavern (from birdsong to cicada hums and the slow pivot of tires), as well as creative commons recordings from Jane’s participation in Golden Hornet’s cross-border MXTX Sample Library, including snippets of “Leisure Tourniquet” by Austin-based orchestral musician Henna Chou and maracas by Vanessa Burden. Over these layered audios, Hervey dictates the 16 Cave Trip attendees’ field notes and collages like a poem.
MEET THE ORGANIZING ARTISTS.
Photo Credit: LaMont Hamilton
Saya Woolfalk (Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. With the multi year projects No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women's lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.
She has exhibited at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces throughout Asia, Europe and the United States including solo exhibitions at the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (2012); the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (2014); the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (2014); SCAD Museum, Savannah, GA (2016); Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2016); Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE (2016); the Mead Museum of Art, Amherst, MA (2017) and group shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among many others.
Works by the artist are in the collections of major institutions including, among others, the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Mead Art Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum; the Newark Museum; the Chrysler Museum of Art; and the Seattle Art Museum where her major multi-media installation, commissioned and acquired by the Museum, is on extended view. Solo exhibitions of works by Saya Woolfalk are also currently on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO (through September 1, 2019) and the Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI (through August 18, 2019).
Woolfalk is the recipient of numerous honors, awards, and commissions. She has delivered numerous public lectures at museums and universities throughout the United States including a recent TED X Talk. She is represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York and teaches in MFA program at Yale School of Art as well as in the BFA and MFA programs at Parsons: The New School for Design.
Committed to craft and cultural study, Jane Claire Hervey is an independent writer and alternative musician for global projects. She has played stages like South by Southwest (SXSW), hosted fine art karaoke tours and composed for an international cross-border album between Austin and Mexico. The daughter of a Texan naturalist, her music is a practice in witnessing, blending sonic landscapes and spoken word with the Gulf Coast tropics.
Alongside her songwriting, she has maintained music and culture columns for publications like Forbes and BuzzFeed since 2012. Jane is also an established, award-winning creative executive, public curator and arts nonprofit founder. At Future Front, her community-designed programs have welcomed 250K+ visitors, distributing more than $1M in commissions and local support to independent artists, musicians, filmmakers and craftspeople in Texas.
This pioneering work in public programming, emerging creative infrastructure and experimental arts has been recognized by ADWEEK, Texas Monthly, The National Endowment for the Arts and the City of Austin’s Hall of Fame for its undeniable impact on Texas culture (from the DIY underground to public parks). As a guest curator and keynote speaker for spaces The Contemporary Austin, Soho House and the Recording Academy, she has become a known advocate for contemporary Texan stories, creative leadership and the intersections of cultural strategy and public infrastructure.
A fifth-generation Texan, Jane makes art, lives and works in Austin, Texas.
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