There’s a phrase you’ll find all over Trick Hat Workway: work softly. It’s the downtown Austin coworking space’s whole philosophy, a hosted, light-filled place built to convene with nature and community, where you’re as likely to be pointed toward Mellow Johnny’s or Butler Pitch & Putt as toward a conference room. When New Waterloo set out to fill its walls, the brief matched the ethos: workplace art with range and warmth, heavy on Texas, generous with detail, and quietly surprising once you slow down to look.
That’s the kind of collection we love to build. Here’s some of what’s on view.
The Austin storytellers. No Austin collection feels complete without Willie, and Trick Hat has him twice, through the lens of Scott Newton, official photographer for Austin City Limits since 1979 (more via PBS). His shot of Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic was made from onstage, standing between the drummers, the moment Willie turned and caught his eye. It’s history, photographed from inside the band.
Playing with weight and perception
William Cannings [confirm], Professor of Sculpture at Texas Tech, makes steel look like it’s holding its breath. He welds flat sheets into sealed pockets and inflates them with hot, pressurized air, then finishes them in glossy automotive paint, so a genuinely heavy object reads as buoyant and soft. His piece Swarm brings that trick of the eye into the space. Nearby, a suite of 5 Jeffrey Dell screen prints anchor the room with color.
Texture you want to touch
Anya Molyviatis [link, confirm] hand-weaves her three-dimensional textiles on AVL dobby looms, using deep color gradients and physical depth to pull built interiors back toward the natural world, her piece What if? is a standout in fiber. And in Infinity Series No. 16, Kenny Nguyen, a former fashion designer from Bến Tre, Vietnam, hand-cuts silk into hundreds of paint-dipped strips and layers them into what he calls “deconstructed paintings,” somewhere between painting and sculpture. (More on Kenny in our artist spotlight.)
Photography that bends time and culture
Look closely at Pelle Cass Couples, Paris: it’s a single frame built from around a thousand photographs shot over an hour or two from a fixed tripod. His rule is strict, “change nothing, just add and subtract,” and never crop, so every figure stays exactly where and when it happened. For pure joy, there’s David LaChapelle‘s Elton John: Egg on His Face, the 1999 portrait so beloved it became the hero image of the V&A’s Fragile Beauty Exhibition. Rounding things out, a serene, nearly weightless work by Wimberley’s own McKay Otto, who paints in translucent layers and once studied alongside Agnes Martin (our conversation with McKay; more via Glasstire).
We’ve loved partnering with Trick Hat on art and wine tours through the space, walking the collection together with the stories behind each piece. It’s the best way to experience a workplace built, quite literally, to be lingered in.
Curious about workplace art for your own office? See more of what we do at CoCollect’s Our Work, or say hello.
