Meet Drew Austin | Interdisciplinary Artist, Curator, and Non-Profit Worker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Drew Austin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Drew, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
When I first started my career I fell deeply into the “hustle” culture that the art world perpetuates. I remember attending openings as a young emerging artist (of which I still am, just a little older) and feeling so down on myself if I didn’t have a ‘good’ response to the age-old question: “What are you working on?”

I held many part-time jobs, worked on projects constantly, and created my own opportunities, and all of this work I’m extremely grateful for in hindsight. Still, it’s something that is really difficult for me to subscribe to at this point in my career. There is value in balance, in rest, in thinking, in doing nothing.

I once had a professor tell me about the well; sometimes your well is completely full and needs to be emptied, but when the well becomes empty, you have to work to refill the well. This is the same in an art practice, where sometimes you need to output and make make make, and other times you need to stop making and get back into the world and become curious again. You need to look at art, read, watch film, have conversations, and eventually that well becomes full again.

I just transitioned away from working in the art field full time, from running a visual art program at a local non-profit, to now being a program manager for a different non-profit that is art adjacent. The transition has been difficult, wonderful, and long, which has made me consider balance a lot in the past few months. I had a position that some would consider the top of a ladder for my field, and yet, I never felt fulfilled because I was outputting all of my creative energy every day at my work. All of my social events were somehow tied into my work, all of my friends were also colleagues. Having some separation between the two has been a nice shift and has allowed me to want to engage in the art world again, rather than feel like it was another work function I needed to attend.

I’m exploring what it means to live life and beginning to become curious about the world I inhabit again, rather than a cog within it. It feels nice and it’s also difficult, but I’m learning to live in the discomfort and create space for myself to exist fully in the world.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My work is all about light, shadow, and perception, and is grounded in the practice of noticing and/or deep looking. My work revolves around things that go unnoticed or things that are so ubiquitous in the world that we fail to notice them within the milieu of our daily lives. That can be sort of abstract, but I’m speaking about the beauty in the formation of weeds, the slight sparkle that you see on freshly fallen snow, the bright cascade of light from a streetlamp down a dark alley, or the moving shadows of rain inside your car from the windshield late at night.

Something that makes me feel as if my work is doing its job is when I get sent images or videos or short messages from people noticing something within their house, light casting through their workplace, or a little rainbow refraction coming through a glass-accented door. People are looking deeply and, because of my work placing those tiny moments at the forefront, can stop and recognize it as a thing of beauty. Those are always exciting moments for me and little flags for me that I’m doing the right thing.

As a queer man, I think a lot about the things that go overlooked, underestimated, or things that get cast aside. Especially in the moment our country is living through right now, I think this vein of my work is more important than ever. Though often indirect, themes in my work revolve around queerness and most likely manifest through depictions of weeds and/or invasive plant species; plant forms that are often despised, irradiated, or cut down without any remorse. The flip side: most of these species come back stronger, in larger forms, and often defy all odds to find new places to grow. This is how I view my story and how I view the story of my community. You can tell us we don’t exist, that we don’t have a seat at the table, or don’t belong, and you’ll probably see us there anyway, looking fine as hell, and with a few friends.

A lesson I’ve learned, and am still learning, is to create for yourself and to be bold. I’ve found that the best works, the works I’m most proud of, or the works that are the most well-received come from the heart, are scary to exhibit, and are often the work that I keep thinking about long after the show. Drawings, things that maybe feel half-baked, or that thing that has been on the wall for years are often the works that spark intrigue with viewers and are the works that are the hardest to create again.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’ve had many people along the way who were crucial to my development in my career, so to name a few (definitely not all):
-Jessica Kooiman Parker (curator, collaborator, friend, mentor)
-Kaitlyn Tucek (member of my chose family, artist, visionary, wall to bounce things off of)
-Adam Gordon (mentor, advocate of me and my work, leader in community)
-Katie Caron (personal and professional mentor, inspiration for so much of my work)
-The teams at ReCreative Denver, the Dairy Arts Center, and The Wayfaring Band
-countless artists and arts professionals that took a chance on me, trusted me, or provided me with support

Website: https://www.studiodrewaustin.com

Instagram: @studiodrewaustin