Fresh art spaces are popping up like wildflowers all around the Metroplex. Tired of waiting for opportunities, local artists-turned-curators have decided to go the DIY route, showing the work of friends and colleagues in living rooms, workspaces—even a storage shed.
The space with the most longevity and influence is Michael Mazurek and River Shell’s PRP Agency. The artist-run environment, housed in a bungalow on Fabrication Street, recently celebrated 10 years of innovative programming.
“PRP means so much to me,” says artist and gallerist Brent Birnbaum, who opened his own space, Cheerleader, last fall in the Mansfield Street warehouse he also uses as a studio. “Their punky DIY vibe and aesthetic I connect to. I wouldn’t be enjoying doing what I’m doing if they weren’t also doing that. I feel so much camaraderie with them—we’re all in our own lanes but going down this highway together.”
What drew Birnbaum, formerly based in New York, back to Texas was the same pioneer spirit that drove Shell and Mazurek to create a ‘space for everyone’ in 2016.
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Permanent Research Project set the tone for a generation of DIY art spaces. Photo courtesy of Michael Mazurek.
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Art is everywhere in Ryan Semegran’s apartment/gallery…even hanging by the refrigerator. Photo courtesy of Ryan Semegran.
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A humble storage shed becomes an incubator for artist’s ideas both inside and out. Photo courtesy of Jillian Wendel.
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Cheerleader’s open-door, cat-positive personality housed in a warehouse invites the art world to come in and stay a while. Photo by Brent Birnbaum.
“Michael and I used to work for Goss-Michael (Foundation) together, and at the time we felt we could do some things together and make a space for ourselves,” Shell recalls. “Michael had this idea to make a space for outsiders, but still educated and elevated. Some people are like, ‘If you didn’t go to this school, you can’t show,’ but we opened the doors. If you’ve got the sauce, you can show.”
Having initially started the roving gallery Jessamine in 2023 alongside artist Oshay Green, Greg Meza was inspired by what PRP and the now-defunct Beefhaus and Oliver Frances Gallery were doing at the time.
“It felt like it was a slow time within alternative and artist-run spaces, so we had a show up in Daisha Board’s old space during the 2023 art fair before moving to the Belmont,” he recalls. “We renovated out that cul-de-sac side (of the hotel), put fluorescent lights up, painted the walls, and made 14 rooms into an exhibition space. It was almost like a commune-type situation—we had 12 artists on the property with studios there.”
As Green has since moved on to Paris, France, and the Belmont is currently under renovation, the guerrilla environs of that particular Jessamine iteration are but a memory, yet Meza perseveres with pop-up shows and art fair exhibits.
“We did NADA New York last year, so I’m pushing more into commercial territory, which is what we’ve been doing since our first show in 2023, when we got a work acquired by the DMA,” he explains. “But the newer spaces like Cheerleader, PRP, and The Shed Show aren’t commercial spaces; they want to be removed from that. There are not enough opportunities for the amount of artists that are here, so people are using their own resources to show art in their own ways.”
Independent curator, artist, and writer Jillian Wendel, who also works for visitor services at the Dallas Contemporary, didn’t look beyond their backyard to create the perfect gallery. After curating at the Belmont, they turned a 9×12-foot shed behind their rental home into their own project space.
With an affinity for installation-based work, their curation features emerging and mid-career artists who traffic in “playfulness, sexiness, radicalism, and anarchy,” including upcoming shows by Kaylyn Grace, Joseph Schuler, and Chuck + George.
Wendel doesn’t profit from sales, so artists keep the full fee for their work—an approach also used by 2 Bed 1 Bath’s Ryan Semegran, who shows the work of friends and colleagues in their Oak Cliff apartment. As a curatorial assistant at the Contemporary, Semegran turned the small living room, kitchen and bathroom they share with co-founder Kassidy Stines into an ad hoc gallery as a “labor of love” last December.
“I’ve seen spaces come and go, but now I think it’s my time to put stuff out there,” they muse, “This is my baby outside of what I do at DC. Ultimately, if I suddenly have a million dollars, I’d love to have my own project space brick-and-mortar, but this is me getting my feet wet with a fun DIY project to prove I can do it.”
Perhaps the most accomplished gallerist in the mix is Birnbaum, who has also opened art spaces in Rockaway Beach and upstate New York. Naming his gallery Cheerleader as an allusion to Texans’ obsessions with sports and a funny nod “to me being a cheerleader for other people’s work,” he says, “I’m just as passionate about promoting artists as I am my own ideas.”
“I’m connected from 20 years of running around and going to weird spaces all over the country,” he says. “I’ve always had a Google doc of artists before I even thought about curating—this is my language, and I just go through the list and think about what rhythm I can create from show to show. I’m really curating what I wasn’t seeing in the art world. If I weren’t running this, I want to go to a gallery that has cats running around and raw walls.”
Relaxed environments, adventurous programming, and inclusivity underpin every DFW DIY gallery. And, as each generation advances in the art world, they continually sow the seeds for a future crop of spaces.
Says Wendel, “I’m not just putting on a show, I’m building an experience people think about after they leave. It’s very infectious: People go to these things and want to experience more of it.”
—KENDALL MORGAN
