Community Calendar

Nature-inspired sculptures by the globally renowned artist will be on view April 16 through October 30, 2022 The San Antonio Botanical Garden presents its newest exhibition, Rooted, by acclaimed contemporary artist Steve Tobin. More than 20 towering, nature-inspired sculptures will be on view throughout the Garden from April 16 through October 30, 2022. Artist Steve Tobin selected San Antonio for the world debut of his new sculptures, along with some of his favorites, to create the largest monumental sculpture exhibition of his 40-year career. “I look at nature in a different way than others. So, you get to see my interpretation,” says artist Steve Tobin. “Roots are unearthed and clouds are at your feet. My work is meant for the art disenfranchised. You don’t need to be an art lover to appreciate what I do.” Experience the forces of nature through the artist’s eyes including root systems towering up to 30-feet high, polished clouds resting on earth, bronze steel egg-laden nests reaching up six (6) feet into the sky, south Texas heat-tolerant massive icicles, and spiraling tornadoes affectionately named, “twisties.” The exhibition also features Tobin’s Steelroots and Bronze Root series exposing nature’s strength, grace, and complexities. There are also root-inspired events and programs available including workshops and nature camps. To learn more about the Steve Tobin “Rooted” exhibition and to purchase tickets please visit, www.sabot.org

Featured art by artist, author and designer Becky Crouch Patterson, Hondo Crouch's daughter. Opening reception July 16 at 5:30 p.m. The Museum is closed Sunday and Monday.

Fake Plastic Forest is an exhibition featuring the work of contemporary photographers and lens based artists dealing with themes of artifice, truth and fiction, and the theatricality of our interactions with nature. Collectively these themes relate to ideas of preservation, the transcendent practice of going into nature, and seeking representations of nature to process and release intense events and emotions such as fear and grief. Our various relationships with nature are revealing of personal and collective selves. The urgency to reflect on these relationships is ever-present as we globally contend with our impact on our environments and consider transnational identity. The artists selected can be considered in the context of numerous other female photographers throughout the history of the medium who have used their environments, both natural and humanmade, as the site/studio the work is made, and a part of the subject. These artists used the context of vast landscape, forests, and trees as site and rooting subjects to pivot from and address themes such as psychology and mysticism.

The Other Side brings together a small selection of films referencing ideas of transitions and events that foundationally change someone, i.e. “to be on the other side of something.” Works also alludes to ideas of mortality and the spiritual concept of metaphysical selves entering a new plane.

This group of films was selected from Darmstadt Sezession’s 2021 prize shortlist for our collaborative Projection/Projektion grants and screenings programs. This will be the first screening of these films in San Antonio.

The Veterans Book Project is a library of books authored collaboratively by artist Monica Haller and dozens of people who have been affected by, and have archives of, the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In their printed format, the books provide a place or “container” that slows down and materializes the great quantity of ephemeral image files that live on veterans’ hard drives and in their heads.

Each book re-deploys volatile images with the aim of rearticulating and refashioning memories. It stands both independent of and in concert with the larger collection.

Riley Sharbonno and his story sets the framework for the Veterans Book Project. Riley and his story (Onestar Press, 2009) was authored by Haller and veteran Riley Sharbonno from the hundreds of digital images Sharbonno shot while deployed in Iraq as a nurse at Abu Ghraib prison. Riley and his story came out of a four-year, opened-ended collaboration and established the framework for the Veterans Book Project. www.rileyandhisstory.com

Travel Distance explores the military experience of service members and their families. The artworks featured represent how veterans and their families have processed, moved through, purged, and reclaimed their experience around military service.

Deployment and relocations can be and often are confusing times. Individual military members grapple with their daily tasks at hand while processing their distance from home and the future. For families who have undergone multiple deployments, there is a constant reshuffling of the household order. On the other side, everyone mourns the lost time and attempts to put the pieces back together. But the pieces often do not fit like they did before.

The exhibition also explores the multitudes of the veteran-identity. Veterans are parents, siblings, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, environmentalists and more. Even though service members and their families are widely depicted in the media from insurance commercials to sniper movies, the common media portrayal does not represent the uniqueness and differences within the veteran population.

San Marcos Premium Outlets is proud to host its back-to-school denim drive, “Do Good with Denim”, to support sustainability and positively impact the community.

In collaboration with Austin Habitat for Humanity ReStore, San Marcos Premium Outlets invites shoppers during the busy back-to-school season to drop off their denim-exclusive clothing to be recycled July 25 to August 22.

Customers will be able to contribute new or gently used denim apparel items to the Do Good with Denim drive and will receive a complimentary, reusable shopping tote while supplies last and a 10% off coupon to Austin Habitat ReStores. Retailers including Aeropostale, Lucky Brand, Nautica, Neiman Marcus Last Call, and vineyard vines will all be drop off locations for the community to donate their denim items. The San Marcos ReStore will also serve as a denim drop off location. All donations will then be sent to the San Marcos ReStore, a non-profit organization that continues to impact the community through reusing, reselling, and recycling. Since 1992, Austin Habitat ReStores have diverted over 46 million pounds of reusable items from landfills.

Bring a smile to a senior- deliver a meal!! We serve more than a meal; we provide vital social contact and a safety net. You will be delivering the meals in your own car in the 78207 neighborhood, the near west side. The cooler you will receive with the meals is 42 inches long, 19 inches wide, and 20 inches deep (Igloo 150-Qt. Maxcold Performance Cooler). It fits most SUVs and 4 door cars in the back seat or trunk. You arrive to pick up the meals at 10:30 am (2802 W. Salinas, 78207) and can complete the route within 1-2 hours, then return the cooler. We give you the route including address, names, and phone numbers so you can call when you arrive at the home. This is great to do in pairs so one person can drive and navigate, and the other can call the seniors upon arrival and hand-deliver the meal. It can be done with one person, but it will take a little longer. If you are a pair, only one person needs to register, but we ask both to complete the volunteer application. Only the driver needs to upload a driver’s license. Please notify Susan.Barnes@HNS-TX.org if you will be attending with another person. All volunteers must wear a mask at our site and while delivering. Please complete this volunteer application before you register. You only need to complete it once. When you register on Givepulse https://givepul.se/5qf63a , you will be able to access the application and handbook online. If you would like to fill out a paper version, please email Susan.Barnes@HNS-TX.org with any other questions you may have. Her cell is 512-917-2778

Carbonate of Copper features international and Texas-based visual artists and scholars who work in varied media to examine questions of circuitry, flow, foundation, and cultural inheritance, particularly in relation to infrastructure, the environment, and geological time. The exhibition sits in company with the award-winning poem and forthcoming volume Carbonate of Copper by Houston-based writer Roberto Tejada. Featured artists include Gwenneth Boelens, Anna Mayer, Kate Newby, George Smith, Josie Ann Teets, and Roberto Tejada. The use of the poem is one of a conductive thread, establishing a unique counter-response to the writing’s exploration of vibrant matter – objects alive in their complex interrelationships, entanglements, and tendency for open-ended change. In the poem and exhibition, labor and extractive processes are positioned in contrast to our everyday experience of being used, of using, of residue, squandering, of constraint, of rebuilding, and preservation.

The artwork in Carbonate of Copper evokes deeper thought by requiring closer contemplation of material and process. Artpace alumni artist Kate Newby’s installation, I love you poems (2018-2022), for example, investigates the way material interventions are made in response to a site’s particular temporal, physical, and geographical conditions.

Jennifer Teets told Artpace, “Carbonate of Copper considers what we inherit and its inextricable connection to socio-environmental shifts in Texas and at large. The exhibition is a transdisciplinary experiment focusing on the cross-pollination of the visual arts and humanities, with unpublished and rare works by both writers and artists. Dr. Tejada’s conversation with Dr. Cecilia Balli will undoubtedly be an important public forum to share thinking around material culture and border politics in the now.”