Artists

Selecting artwork for the space is as key to the overall aesthetic as the materials themselves.  All of the pieces seen throughout the space are the works of two local artists – Martha Gannon and Margo Sawyer. 

- Martha Gannon

“When we say that Martha is a local artist, we mean it.  She lives about two blocks from the hotel and we fell in love with her bunny paintings the moment we saw them.  There’s an intrigue and softness they bring to the room.”

- Kimber Cavendish and Vicki Faust, owners

Martha’s background is in studio art and she has been producing sculpture for the past twenty years.  She started painting seriously in 2001.  A common theme in her work is a playful integration of longing (for innocence, for perfection) with a present, engaging reality.  She paints in oil both on panel and canvas and employs animals, often anthropomorphic in their dress and actions, situated in context derived from the West Texas desert.  She spent much of her youth in West Texas and continues to reside there part-time.  She also lived and worked in Italy for a period of time and makes frequent visits there to work.

For more information, please visit www.marthagannon.com

- Margo Sawyer

“We’ve known Margo forever and beyond her undeniable skill as an artist, we just really like her as a person.  When we first saw the boxes she’s doing we were blown away.  They are beautifully simple, but completely brilliant.”

- Kimber Cavendish and Vicki Faust, owners

Throughout her career, Margo Sawyer has created installations, which translate the notion of an ancient sacred space into a contemporary vocabulary. She is particularly interested in relationships between the experience of space and the experience of transcendence -- and the ways in which architectural and ritual can converge to create a forum for contemplation and reflection. She has exhibited nationally in New York, Los Angeles, New Haven, Houston, Austin and internationally in the United Kingdom, Italy, India and Japan. In addition to her career as an artist, Sawyer is a Professor of Sculpture/Studio Art in the M.F.A. Program right here at the University of Texas at Austin.

For more information, please visit www.margosawyer.com