Springing Forward: Issue 1

A Word From the Editor

March has arrived, and with it, longer evenings that gradually dispel the lingering chill from the earth. As the veil between the physical and the spiritual worlds thins, so do the boundaries between seasons. The ground softens underfoot, patches of ice persist in the shade, and sunlight flickers in and out. This transitional moment feels like the perfect backdrop for our latest exhibition, Out of Bounds: Pushing the Lines Between Technology and Art, which anchors this month’s editorial. Just as the weather blurs the line between winter and spring, this exhibition challenges our sense of where art ends and technology begins.

As the first daffodils arrive alongside Women’s History Month, I’m reminded of early computer art pioneers like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, women who worked at the very fringes of the art world, their contributions too often overlooked. While Out of Bounds isn’t exclusively dedicated to women artists, it shines a light on women working in contemporary digital art and technology, tracing a line from Lovelace’s first algorithms to the quiet revolutions of artists like Kacie Lees, Sarah Buckius, and Alison Hiltner. It seems the early pioneers' influence is everywhere, even if their names aren’t.

As you move through this issue, you’ll find projects that tug at the boundaries between disciplines and stories that pull apart the usual myths about art, technology, gender, labor, and artistic authorship.

First Friday Exhibitions

Out of Bounds: Pushing the Lines Between Technology and Art

Our March exhibition brings together a daring group of artists who wield artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and digital media to ask what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by machines. As editor, I was struck by the presence of so many women, voices historically muted by technological advances and the machinery of industry and capital. Their stories, and the ways they’re changing the field, are explored further in our latest feature: “These Women Are Rewriting the Rules Around Art, Technology, and Gender.”

‘Out of Bounds’: An Exhibition Statement From the Curator

Curator Kirsten Bengtson-Lykoudis describes Out of Bounds as a place where the usual lines between art and technology are unraveled, examined, and reimagined in the most unexpected ways. She traces these experiments back through time, connecting today’s digital explorations to the long history of artists adapting to whatever tools they find at hand. Change, we’re reminded, is the only constant.

Art and Tech

These Women Are Rewriting the Rules Around Art, Technology, and Gender

In this week’s feature, we meet a group of artists who are neither intimidated by technology nor content to let it dictate the terms of engagement. From Alison Hiltner’s sci-fi-inspired installations to Kacie Lees’ neon-lit meditations on connection, their work slices into tangled questions surrounding gender, labor, and artistic authorship. Explore the full story and see how these voices are redrawing the map in Out of Bounds.

News + Events

Open Call for Artists: ‘Modern Love: Reflections on Intimacy and Eros’

NOT REAL ART is calling for submissions to Modern Love: Reflections on Intimacy and Eros, a spring exhibition curated by Kirsten Bengtson-Lykoudis and open to all artists for the first time. The show is after bold, honest takes on desire, heartbreak, and connection. Submit up to four works by April 1 for a shot at features, interviews, and a place in the online show opening May 1.

Q+Art Interview

Painter Malti B Lee on Tracing Global Roots Through Austin’s Architecture

Last month, I sat down with Austin artist Malti B Lee, whose work—on view in our January exhibition, Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State—traces a personal cartography across multiple continents and countless city streets. Malti shares how becoming a mother, moving to Austin, and an enduring preoccupation with Islamic and Indian architecture have shaped both her process and her sense of home, where she is in the world.

Contemporary Craft

Appalachian Artists Make Their Mark at American Craft Made Baltimore

A recent travelogue from our sister organization, ArtsvilleUSA, follows Western North Carolina’s makers as they carry the spirit of the mountains to American Craft Made Baltimore, turning the 49th edition of the East Coast’s largest juried fair into a showcase for ceramics, textiles, and woodwork rooted in place and tradition. Highlights included Angelique Tassistro’s playful new ceramics, Anna Bryant’s subtle monoprints, and Ross Pottery’s folk-inspired designs.

Podcast

FotoFest at 40: Chris Wicker Unpacks Houston’s ‘Global Photo Party’—and His Own Absurdist Art

Chris Wicker, new media provocateur and exhibitions manager at FotoFest, joined us for last month’s podcast, where he unraveled the wild logistics behind Houston’s 40th-anniversary photo biennial and offered a glimpse into his own multidisciplinary practice. His video work, now part of our January exhibition Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State, slips seamlessly into the digital frontier explored in Out of Bounds. Chris’ art peels back the glossy veneer of Southern culture, exposing the rituals of NASCAR and the relentless tide of American consumerism.

Exhibitions

Adrian Cox: 'The Well of Dreams' at Corey Helford Gallery

Figurative surrealist Adrian Cox returns to Corey Helford Gallery with The Well of Dreams, a solo show featuring more than twenty intricate oil paintings that expand his mythic Borderlands universe, a world we explored in depth during our interview with Adrian. Drawing on dream journals, Grail legends, and experimental rituals, Adrian’s latest chapter follows his character Maker on a surreal quest through psychic and spiritual terrain.

Moncho 1929: 'Masks' at solo.

Moncho 1929’s new series, Masks, pushes viewers to reconsider identity and perception through paintings that conceal more than they reveal, a natural evolution for an artist whose mural work has long conjured magic and mythology (catch our previous interview with Moncho 1929, aka Dan Monteavaro). The show’s striking facial coverings open up subtle dialogues, sidestepping politics for something more personal and enigmatic. On view through April 12, with an artist talk on March 22.

The Final Stroke

If this issue traces a line, it’s a shifting one, drawn by artists who don’t fit into neat boxes and by stories that resist tidy endings. Whether it’s AI experiments or hand-thrown clay, digital frontiers or the daily work that keeps creative lives afloat, the boundaries are less fixed than we imagine. As ever, the questions outnumber the answers, but perhaps that’s the point.

With curiosity and gratitude,

Morgan Laurens, Editor-in-Chief