March 25 - April 30, 2022
From Northern-Southern:
“Rachael Starbuck, Michael Muelhaupt, and Jesse Cline live in a house in one of north Austin’s less noticed neighborhoods. Professionally Starbuck and Muelhaupt are sculptors, materials experts, and educators. Cline practices and teaches design. They are all three artists. Their new work for “fitting” engages with life. They serve growth, offer comfort, and invite play. Starbuck’s work imagines touch and its absence. Ceramic pots bulge like bags with soil. Brass rods lithely support the stems of living plants. The plants, nurtured by Starbuck, are descended from cuttings from her childhood home in Florida. Hand-sized and pit-fired ceramic “handholds” recreate the feel of holding Starbuck’s hands in yours. Muelhaupt sculptures are functional furniture. With some, he Frankensteins surplus furniture parts into witty pastiches, like a ’00s Droog designer. Other pieces lovingly tease modernism, upholstering pirated classics with white socks or Starbuck’s father’s old leather belts. Gentle startles, the sculptures are comfortable in unexpected ways. Cline’s sculptures are puzzles as formal meditations. Tactile, oblique, and hypnotic, the pieces are answers without questions. This work is Texas now, earth-toned punk. Radically new and subversive by being kind, gentle, crafted, warm, life-scale. Anti-Judd, Anti-Sera. Their hands make homes. —Phillip Niemeyer”
Featuring: Rachael Starbuck, Michael Muelhaupt, Jesse Cline
On View: March 25, 2022 | 2–6 pm
Northern-Southern (Downtown Austin)
411 Brazos Street #105
Austin, 78701 Texas
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