Julia C. Butridge Gallery
The Julia C. Butridge Gallery is a free, public exhibition space located within the Dougherty Arts Center. The gallery provides emerging and established artists with a space to share their work while giving audiences access to a range of creative practices and perspectives. Through exhibitions and programs the gallery fosters learning, exploration, and connection between artists and visitors.
JCB Gallery 2028 Open Call for Artists
The Julia C. Butridge (JCB) Gallery at the Dougherty Arts Center is accepting exhibit proposals for the 2028 gallery season beginning November 9, 2026.
Applications may be submitted November 9, 2026 – January 24, 2027, at 11:59pm.
Located within the Dougherty Arts Center (DAC), the JCB Gallery provides exhibition opportunities for emerging and established artists at any stage of their career. The gallery welcomes a wide range of artistic practices and perspectives with exhibitions often exploring cultural, educational, and socially relevant themes such as identity, environment, and unique artistic processes.
There is no fee to submit an exhibition proposal, and all exhibits and related events are free and open to the public. Applications include an artist statement, exhibition description, and images of proposed or recent work.
Have questions about the submission process? Email jcbgallery@austintexas.gov
On Display
Image Details: Left to Right, Minnie Rodgers, Nathan Anthony, Gargi Sharma, Stefania Garcia, Victoria Zhuk.
Outlet Within
DAC Artists in Residence Showcase
On Display: October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Sunday, November 15, 2026, 2-4 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11a.m.-5p.m.
“Outlet Within” showcases the work of Dougherty Arts Center’s 2026 Resident Artists Victoria Zhuk, Stefania Garcia, Minnie Rogers, Gargi Sharma, and Nathan Anthony.
Victoria Zhuk’s intuitively hand built vessels imagine an inner garden-a place of refuge, growth, and possibility in response to an increasingly uncertain world. Stefania Garcia’s playful sculptures of insects, both real and imagined, ask the viewer to consider the beauty in the smallest creatures. Minnie Rogers navigates a quasi-medical narrative, transforming everyday items found in hospitals such as pain scales and medical gloves into whimsical sculptural forms and motifs. Nathan Anthony uses the inherently haptic nature of making sculptures to explore the relationship between handmade and mechanized production. In her final exhibit at the DAC, veteran Resident Gargi Sharma collects and reconstructs memories into familiar forms, narrating stories hidden beneath everyday objects and surfaces.
The Dougherty Arts Center’s Artist Residency is a work exchange program that provides ceramic artists with the space, facilities, time, and professional interaction that will foster their ideas, skills, abilities, and focus as practicing artists. To learn more about the residency program visit the Artist Professional Development webpage.
Faith Chonko, Tear her apart, collage and acrylic.
Errant Obsession
Faith Chonko
On Display October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11am-5 p.m.
There is an immense power that lies in our collective focus, but what are we actually doing with it? Cycling manias leave us endlessly seeking new makeup techniques and products, maximizing our bodies and faces through ritualistic diets and movements, dissecting the lives of those on a public stage, and tapping into new ways to stoke a stranger’s anger. The all-consuming forces of addiction and obsession can entirely reshape our lives and distract us from deeper purpose when that same energy could be put towards something greater instead. “Errant Obsession” explores this internal struggle, while trying to reveal what transformation and escape from the mental trap may look like. It asks the viewer to surface the undercurrent that lies within and replace their errant obsessions with benevolent ones.
Website: www.faithchonko.com
Bella Cheng, Rainbow Galls, 2024, mixed media on paper.
Regular and Precious
Bella Cheng
On Display October 10 – November 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Austin Studio Tour: November 14-15 & 21-22, 2026, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Regular & Precious features recent drawings by Bella Cheng that turn the ordinary into much more. Everyday scenes and observations from nature are closely analyzed, abstracted, cut up, and put back together again. At times, these drawings resemble the much smaller architectures of life—the microbial, the cellular, the doll-like—and at other moments, scales totally out of reach—the cosmic, the alien, and the dreamlike. “Regular & Precious” is an expression of how the artist sees the world within and outside of herself, inviting viewers to see with childlike curiosity.
Website: www.bellacheng.net
Instagram: @notcuteart
Upcoming Exhibits
Steve Dubov, In Significant Form – Insignificant Form, Shrine for Susanne Langer’s: Philosophy In A New Key, “Life-Symbols: The Roots of Sacrament”, ceramic.
What is Sacred?
Steve Dubov
December 5, 2026 – January 16, 2027
Artist Reception Wednesday December 9, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: Wednesday, January 13, 7-9 p.m.
What Is Sacred explores art ideas and environmental realities in the modern world, considering preservation in contrast to decay. Ceramic containers hold books containing essays that have shaped the art world while drawings reflect humanity’s reshaping of the environment. The work commemorates and preserves influential ideas and images, bringing them into conversation with the realities of the present.
Website: www.stevedubov.com
Instagram: @stevedubov
Malti B Lee, 100 Days of Postpartum (detail), cord and mosi on panel, 2026
백일 (Baek-il): From Me to You
Malti B Lee
On Display: December 5, 2026 – January 16, 2027
Artist Reception: December 9, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: January 13, 2027, 7-9 p.m.
For the first 100 days of her son's life, artist Malti B Lee tied one knot a day. The result is a journal of 100 maedeup knots marking baek-il, the Korean hundred-day milestone, tied in a traditional Korean craft the British Indian artist learned while pregnant in Korea. Color holds the mood of each day. Special knots mark celebrations and firsts, while plainer ones record days when there was little left to give. Together they trace the awe, joy, tears, and loss of self that come with new motherhood.
Alongside the knots, a series of new paintings map the four places her son inherits: Korea and the US through his father, and India and the UK through her. Lee gathers residential facades, historical details, and unremarkable buildings, the everyday architecture that makes a place feel like itself. The knots record time; the paintings record place.
Website: www.maltiblee.com
Instagram: @maltiblee
Negative Space, InstaTX
InstaTX: Instant Photography Explorations of Texas
Negative Space
On Display December 5, 2026 – January 16, 2027
Artist Reception: December 9, 2026, 7-9 p.m.
Artist Talk: January 13, 2027, 7-9 p.m.
Negative Space is a collective of visual artists based in Central Texas. United by a shared fascination with photography as a medium that bridges memory, emotion, and subjective reality, they explore the interplay between permanence and the ephemeral using analog processes, expired and experimental materials, and innovative photographic manipulations. InstaTX explores their diverse experiences of life in Texas through artistic experimentation and alterations of the image as reflections of identity, nostalgia, memory, decay, and fragmentation.
Featuring Angel Huerta, Marie Ketring, Karen Stone, Derrick Wansom, and Robin Winter
Instagram: @negative.space.atx
Exhibition Spaces
The JCB Gallery presents 22 rotating exhibitions each year across three exhibition spaces. Each space allows exhibitions to reach visitors throughout the building and connects visual art with DAC’s broader creative programs and resources.
- South Gallery - 2000 sq. ft.
The South Gallery is the largest of the three exhibition spaces and serves as the entrance to the building. - East Gallery - 480 sq. ft.
The East Gallery extends through the hallway of the DAC’s East wing, alongside adult
studio art classrooms. - West Gallery - 480 sq. ft.
The West Gallery extends through the hallway of the DAC’s West wing alongside no cost reservable creative spaces and the artist resource center.
How to Exhibit at the JCB Gallery
The JCB Gallery hosts an annual open call for exhibition proposals. The gallery welcomes artists with a wide range of artistic practices, perspectives, and experiences to apply. There is no fee to submit an exhibition proposal, and all related exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.
Applications for the 2028 gallery season open November 9, 2026 - January 24, 2027, at 11:59pm.