Spellerberg Projects

Gallery hours
Saturday, December 9, 11am-3pm
Saturday, December 16, 11am-3pm
Saturday, December 23, 11am-3pm
Saturday, December 30, 11am-3pm
Friday, January 5, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, January 6, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Artist’s Statement

Detroit Cousin Randy (DCR) is a selection of images from Enoch Rios’ on going collection of hundreds of found photographs. The term found photography can be used as a synonym for found photos: photographs, usually anonymous, that were not originally intended as art but have been reappropriated and given renewed aesthetic meaning.

DCR consists of non-artist informed found photographs obtained from various community resources. They illustrate a curated, photographic vernacular that saturates snapshots in shoeboxes, cellphones, and family photo albums. DCR brings forth themes of nostalgia, wonder, humor, and earnestness. They are a type of visual anthropology that explores the mundane, discarded, and uncovered moments of other people to challenge the notion of authorship, quality, and originality in photography and image making.

About the Artist

Enoch Rios was born in Corpus Christi, TX and received his BFA in photography from Texas State University in 2015. He lives and works in San Marcos, TX waiting for nothing to happen. His work comes from a process of observing situations that seem out of place or unusually incongruent within a pattern of common occurrences. His photography reframes a larger picture of the mundane to highlight areas that feel dreamlike, bazaar and transitory. Sometimes the images appear idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times they seem to become a container for loss and hope.

Gallery hours
Saturday, November 11, 11am-3pm
Saturday, November 18, 11am-3pm
Saturday, November 25, 11am-3pm
Friday, December 1, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, December 2, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Artist’s Statement

“With veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say.

My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?”

– Margaret Walker “Lineage”, 1942

Exploring significant instances of black and African American history, culture, and experiences within the United States, Theresa Newsome examines how these events and historical narratives have had long-lasting effects on her own culture and identity, both from a personal and universal perspective. Throughout history, black women and their bodies have been experimented upon, stereotyped, judged, and discriminated against. Her photographic works, What my Mother Told Me, What my Grandmother Refused to Say, Sims, Objects, and her most recent series Peace I Leave with You, My Peace I Give You and Teaching Myself Manners investigates her own journey through womanhood; referencing instances from childhood, historical perspectives of femininity, and concepts of home. Newsome’s work incorporates traditional and interdisciplinary artistic practices including textile, historical photographic processes, solvent transfers, and bookmaking.

This photographic project is a documentation of my grandmother, Doris Arnita’s homecoming trip which took place in the summer of 2022. Throughout that summer we were able to visit her former stomping grounds, reconnecting with her friends, former church members, her last living sister, and finding her mother’s grave.  This was a place where my grandmother grew up, my mother spent her formative years, and where I as a child would spend every summer while visiting my grandparents. Colonial Heights and Petersburg, Virginia are both deeply historical locations, steeped with memory both positive and negative. It was a unique experience being able to revisit these locations with my grandmother after over 15 years away, seeing how the town’s landscapes have changed. Coming back to my grandparent’s house where I had once spent so many summers and holidays, now painted and fenced in with a new family. Spending hours with my aunt and grandmother trying to find my great grandmother’s grave in a sea of unkept, unmarked headstones so she could finally lay her flowers. Witnessing my grandmother revert back to girlhood after holding her sister’s hand.

Each image throughout this series is intended to be viewed as a homage to these moments, bringing recollection to the memories that I and the matriarchal members of my family have shared over several generations within this small community.

About the Artist

Theresa Newsome is a fine art photographer who explores the intricate yet delicate relationship between identity, femininity, and race within her creative practice. Drawing inspiration from her own personal experiences and observations, Newsome creates images utilizing a variety of photographic techniques including digital, historical, and alternative image-making. Through her work, she is interested in shedding light onto the nuances of the black female experience, referencing historical events, familial oral narratives, and contemporary experiences.

Theresa graduated from Texas Woman’s University where she received her MFA in Photography and Art History in 2019. She graduated from the University of the Incarnate Word with a BFA in Studio Art and minor in Psychology, with a concentration in drawing in 2015. She currently resides in San Antonio, TX as an instructor and artist.

Gallery hours
Saturday, October 14, 11am-3pm
Saturday, October 21, 11am-3pm
Saturday, October 28, 11am-3pm
Friday, November 3, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, November 4, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Artist’s Statement

“Into the Middle Distance” is an ongoing body of photographic prints and arrangements that began with a personal collection of images of the American west taken in 2013 and rediscovered during months at home in 2020. Newer images join the archive and become opportunities to measure and address the distance between my feelings and beliefs—those I held dear to then and those I try to affirm now—about what happens when I attempt to photograph the American landscape, its nature, and the content of its built environment.

In trying to make sense of all these images—each of which I had only narrowly understood as individual moments where I tried to exploit photography’s capacity to aestheticize vastness, emptiness, and ruin in order to explore personal feelings of estrangement and belonging as a first generation immigrant in the United States—I found that the pain and limitation of any one picture could be refracted, reduced, and reshaped when placed in community with others.

This process has resulted in a newfound commitment to modestly-sized photographic prints that I can make at home; a movement away from singular images towards diptychs, triptychs, and larger formal arrangements to build works; and most consequentially, to thinking about how such arrangements and connected visual affinities might help me access more expansive and collectively oriented meanings.

Sometimes photographic images, when theories of seeing and understanding are applied to them, are structured to feel like the experience of looking at a view through a window, onto the world, or as a reflection seen in a mirror, onto the self. I think photography is constructed more like a wall than a window. A wall is always an obstruction, always aggregated and opaque, and so a thing that can periodically give shade. Resting in the coolness of that shadow, I have time to wonder if this wall might also be a balm and bulwark against loneliness and isolation.

About the Artist

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan (Philippines, 1982) is a photographer based in Austin, Texas, who uses formal strategies of repetition, multiplicity, and obstruction in order to make the infrastructures (material, institutional, psychological) that support the ever accumulating ways we are asked to make, interpret, experience, and use photography, the subjects of his works.

His projects have gained recognition from Photolucida, the Magenta Foundation, and the Houston Center for Photography. He has participated in artist residencies with the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Triple Canopy, and A.C.R.E. In 2021 he exhibited two bodies of work in Austin: a solo show at the City of Austin’s Asian American Cultural Resource Center (“Filipino American Navy”) and as part of the The Contemporary Austin’s “Crit Group Reunion” (“Balikbayan”).

Gallery hours
Saturday, September 16, 11am-3pm
Saturday, September 23, 11am-3pm
Saturday, September 30, 11am-3pm
Friday, October 6, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, October  7, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Artist’s Statement

The contemporary art world and life in general have led me to beautiful and interesting places. Most of my work up to this point has approached existentialism. For a while, I have moved toward analyzing the monstrous idea of racism and philosophical ideas within Black existentialism.

How I work with this is through the creation of surreal objects with an analytical approach. I use various mediums to tackle the subject matter of racism. Mainly its effects on the Black community and other people of color. This includes the intersections with other issues within Western society.

Through research and experiments, I will continue exploring ideas of dismantling racism. However, I want to examine the effects of social death and its effect on the Black community. I want to know what that means for BIPOC people treated this way in an already regressing nation. Most of all, how we fight or reclaim our bodies, Physically and existentially.

About the Artist

Emeri Warren Harris is a San Antonio-based interdisciplinary artist. They are 29 years old and work in various mediums: painting, soft sculpture, and performance.

Emeri started their artistic career in 2012 when they went to Mississippi Delta Community College. Then, they moved back to San Antonio to attend the University of Texas in San Antonio. Throughout the years, they have discovered their voice in their work and have improved their skills and sense of self.

Currently, Emeri is exploring ideas of Black Existence and tackling Racism against BIPOC. They have been in several exhibitions around San Antonio including theBlack Sheep Exhibition, Upstairs Studio, Blue Star Red Dot 2020 and 2021, and the CAM breakout series in 2022. Emeri was born and raised in San Antonio, TX. They attended the University of Texas in San Antonio and graduated in the fall of 2018.

Gallery hours
Saturday, August 12, 11am-3pm
Saturday, August 19, 11am-3pm
Saturday, August 26, 11am-3pm
Friday, September 1, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday, September  2, 11am-3pm – Last Look


Marie Tobola comes from a classical figurative background but leans on the abstract while searching the breadth of digital imagery for impulses of freedom in fleshy form.  She graduated from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and has been painting for over twenty years. She lives and works in Lockhart, Texas.

Gallery hours
Saturday July 15, 11am-3pm
Saturday July 22, 11am-3pm
Saturday July 29, 11am-3pm
Friday, August 4, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday August 5, 11am-3pm – Last Look

Exhibition handout


Michael Villarreal received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX, and a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska. He has exhibited in solo exhibitions at ACA Gallery at Angelina College in Lufkin, TX; Art Palace Contemporary Art Gallery, Houston, TX; and Project Project, Omaha, NE. He’s been in numerous group exhibitions at galleries such as The International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE; Undercurrent in Brooklyn, NY; DATELINE in Denver, CO; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, and LA Artcore: Brewery Annex Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in several publications such as Huffington Post, New American Paintings, and Art Maze Magazine. In 2019, he was a recipient of the Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Influenced by personal photos, old and new, Villarreal’s work becomes a repository of memory, time, place, and self. Using a combination of painting, sculpture, and installation, his work makes connections between materiality and the recollection and re-interpretation of past and present experiences. Villarreal currently lives in San Marcos, TX, and teaches at Texas State University.

Gallery hours
Saturday June 10, 11am-3pm
Saturday June 17, 11am-3pm
Saturday June 24, 11am-3pm
Saturday July 30, 11am-3pm
Friday, July 7, 6–9pm – Artist’s Reception
Saturday July 8, 11am-3pm – Last Look

Exhibition handout


Artist’s Statement

Her hair was gold, touching feelings, but she had to lose her soul to be seen, the way he is. She doesn’t think; her lips are a sweet surprise, her cold hands decidedly decaying. She only had to do it, old news. The results are always perfect, but the whole expanse cannot be seen. She will lay him on a throne, invented at his birth and sprinkled with reluctance. He formulated her infinity and whittled her title down to, “a woman.”

About the Artist

Hollie Brown currently lives in Abilene, Texas. She is a member of the Center for Contemporary Arts and teaches at McMurry University. She received her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of California, Riverside in 2017. Brown also runs Little Shop of Hollies, a “tiny” business she started in 2020.

Gallery Hours

Saturday April 15, 11am-3pm
Saturday April 22, 11am-3pm
Saturday April 29, 11am-3pm
Closing Reception Friday, May 5, 6-9pm
Saturday May 6, 11am-3pm

Coordinated by Gracie Evers


Sam Foster is originally from Lawrence KS, Sam Foster got his BFA from The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) IN 2012, Studying Painting and Experimental Film. Sam currently resides in Lockhart Tx and is getting his MFA along with his partner and co studio mate Jennifer Moore at Maharishi International University in Fairfield IA in the Low Residency program. Sam makes paintings that abstract / combine forms and images, often drawing from the figure and mundane objects like fans to represent a new synthesis of meaning and symbolism. Sam has been a part of Spellerberg Projects for the past year and loves living so close to the studio.

Jennifer Moore is an artist living and working in Lockhart, Texas. Her preferred materials are household objects, broken electronics and papier-mâché which she applies to her work centering around themes of body and home. She received her BFA from Texas State University in 2018 and is currently an MFA candidate at Maharishi International University.

Andrea Wallace is a photographer and installation artist in Lockhart, TX. She is inspired by music, beauty, fashion, people, nature, design and the performing arts. Her work reveals her broad appreciation for others artistic talents as artists and performers are frequent subjects. Andrea studied art and photography at Sam Houston State University and interior design at the Art Institute of Houston. Born five years too soon, her formal education was quickly made obsolete by the dawning digital era. Many years of self re-education ensued and she is a proud perpetual student of the digital and physical arts.

Maya Endsley is a multimedia artist getting her BFA in drawing along with a minor in psychology. Her work focuses on art as therapy and feminist issues. She works mostly with pen and ink but also uses a variety of mediums. Her work has been showcased in the Student Juries Exhibition at Texas State Galleries, and she is a part of the 5th Wave Artist collective. Born in Dallas, Texas, Maya currently resides in San Marcos, Texas and attends Texas State University.

Gracie Evers is an artist working primarily in drawing and painting. She has been making art throughout her life with works ranging from realism to abstraction, and now creates with a primary emphasis on figurative and symbolic elements drawn from Biblical texts. Born in Indiana and growing up in Houston, Texas, Gracie currently lives in San Marcos, Texas where she is working towards her BFA in Studio Art from Texas State University.

Gallery hours
Saturday Mar 11, 11am-3pm
Saturday Mar 18, 11am-3pm
Saturday Mar 25, 11am-3pm
Friday, Mar 31, 6–9pm
Saturday Apr 1, 11am-6pm (Lockhart Sip & Stroll festival)

Curated by Raul Rene Gonzalez

Artwork list


Audio Stories

The visual pieces in this exhibit are accompanied by audio. Women whose portraits are featured share stories about their lives and how they feel about dance and movement. Featuring spoken word by Andrea Vocab Sanderson and selected clips from Glory Jones, Shelby Hilliard, Nanako Pastol, Sarah (Foxsar) Fox and Andrea Vocab.

Listen to the 8 minute audio here:

Longer versions of the stories can be accessed on Soundcloud.


Artist’s Statement

The Glorious Way She Moves explores the fullness and depth of the female form from youthful innocence to glorious maturity. As a multi-racial and cultural artist, I strive to address inaccurate, misplaced labels put upon cultures, race and the feminine gender. These interpretive portraits illustrate the exuberance and individuality of each muse I celebrate and emphasize the remarkable features and characteristics of women in every phase of womanhood. Through their poise and spirit, they pay homage to the legacy of generations of women who came before them. Symbolically, these portraits exemplify the self-esteem women exude as they move through their lives and the world. 

The large scale format brings the women I portray into a magnified view that recognizes their magnificence as multi-faceted human beings. In my process, I video record each woman dancing, then jump to the film’s individual frames, using them to help me expose and capture my subjects’ unique character and individuality. During their dance, I specifically look for physical and expressive nuances my subjects demonstrate, then use these individual signature movements to reveal each subjects’ aesthetic. By doing this I experience a connection to their beauty without stereotyping. It is that connection I share in my work.

About the Artist

Barbara Felix is a San Antonio native and contemporary figurative artist. She received her BFA in Graphic Communication at Texas State University in 1991, where her TSU coursework fired her love of the human figure and inspired her long pursuit to work as an artist. Felix began taking community classes at the Southwest School of Art, San Antonio in 2006. After receiving a Best of Show award in 2007 at the All-Student exhibition she began a more dedicated pursuit of art, receiving a Certificate in Drawing, Painting and Printmaking in 2013.

Felix’ ongoing series of works include: Bailando con Mi Misma (Dancing with My Self), The Color of Women, and The Glorious Way She Moves. Body movement, body language, facial expression and relationships and identity are common themes she explores in her work. She received a 1st place award at the Round Rock Arts [Re]Imagine Exhibition in 2019 for her portrait of Thelma and Barbara, and recently her work was showcased in The Billboard Creative’s We the People billboard exhibition in Los Angeles, CA. She is self-taught in animation, video and audio editing. Her animation and performance videos have been screened in festivals and exhibitions across the United States and internationally.

Felix is actively engaged in her community, as an executive board member of Contemporary Art Month (CAM); and an active member of both San Antonio Ethnic Art Society (SAEAS) and Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association (GAGA).  She has curated exhibitions for the Bijou Cinema Theater (2017-2019), Slab Cinema Arthouse (2022), and the City of San Antonio Department of Art & Culture (2022/2023). She has recently early retired from corporate graphic design in 2022, to pursue her artistic passions full time.

Artist’s Website

Gallery hours
Saturday Feb 11, 11am-3pm
Saturday Feb 18, 11am-3pm
Saturday Feb 25, 11am-3pm
Friday, Mar 3, 6–9pm
Saturday Mar 4, 11am-3pm

Artwork List


Artist’s Statement

As someone that has a career that allows me to spend time nurturing my children, I know the moments I share with them are precious and extremely valuable, especially as a father. This exhibition is about sharing those moments, between parent and child, between father and daughters. I spent several years after grad school as the “stay-at-home-parent” in our household, while simultaneously balancing my art career. After a few years of creating paintings and drawings about my own experiences, I began to collaborate with other working artists, sharing a glimpse into their world as parents.

This exhibition features select works from my Doing Werk and Artists-Parents series. The Artists-Parents series was funded by a 2020 Artist Grant from the Luminaria Artist Foundation and the City of San Antonio.

About the Artist

Raul Rene Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary artist who incorporates an astonishingly wide range of mediums and methods in his paintings, drawings, sculptures, clothing, murals, installations, live and recorded dance and other performance-based work. Largely autobiographical in nature, his work explores topics such as fatherhood, gender roles, labor, identity, pop culture, science, and abstraction.

A prolific creator who finds inspiration anywhere and everywhere, Gonzalez is known by art critics, curators, and friends alike for his unwavering energy, ambition and experimentation that has led to the creation of several hundred unique works over the past decade. He truly lives his motto: “Werk. Hustle. Sleep. Repeat.”

Gonzalez earned his M.F.A. in Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a B.F.A., Magna Cum Laude in Painting from the University of Houston. Raul is the Director, Curator, and Resident Artist at Clamp Light Studios & Gallery, an artist-run space in San Antonio where the artist currently lives with his wife and two daughters.  Raul also manages WerkHouse SA, a short-term rental property.

A Houston native now based in San Antonio, Texas, Gonzalez’ experiences living in two of the biggest metropolitan cities in the country influence nearly all his bodies of work—from detailed urban landscapes that pay homage to the workers who build and maintain our cities, to large-scale duct-tape and cardboard installations, to his paintings that document key features of San Antonio’s musical history displayed permanently in San Antonio’s City Hall.

Gonzalez has been featured in New American Paintings No. 162: West Issue, Harper’s Magazine, Southwest Contemporary Vol. 5: Collectivity & Collaboration, Create! Magazine, Glasstire, The San Antonio Express News, La Prensa Texas, Spectrum News, The SA Current, The Austin Chronicle, and Whataburger.

Gonzalez’s work has been exhibited and featured widely throughout Texas and the United States. Since 2012, his work has been added to permanent collections such as the National Mexican Museum of Art (Chicago), the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum (Albuquerque), Benson Latin American Collection (Austin), Mexic-Arte Museum (Austin), the McNay Art Museum (San Antonio), the University of Texas at San Antonio, Capital One Financial Services (Plano and San Antonio), the City of San Antonio, The Woodlands High School Art Trust, Artes de la Rosa (Fort Worth), the Whataburger Museum of Art, and The San Antonio Art League & Museum.

Artist’s Website