Vision & Mission: Fort Worth Arts Lauren Saba Creates A Dynamic Space at Fort Worth Arts

As an artist, curator, and cultural leader, Lauren Saba looks back at ten years of her gallery and feels a certain sense of satisfaction, knowing that she always trusted her intuition.

The owner of Fort Works Art, Saba, is an anchor in the creative class of this rapidly growing city. Over the years, she helped establish now-notable names such as Riley Holloway, Dan Lam, Jessica Vollrath, and Rambo, who have had some of their earliest shows here. She has also created the non-profit Gallery of Dreams, launched a citywide high school art competition named after the mayor, and (most recently) showcased the inaugural exhibit of the National Juneteenth Museum.

So, it’s slightly surprising to learn the role of visionary gallerist was far from the life this Fort Worth native imagined for herself. A descendant of the Haggar family, this self-professed “poor little rich girl” felt out of place growing up amid her elite classmates at the tony Trinity Valley School. Initially intending to study theater at Northwestern, Saba dropped out and became a hairdresser yet couldn’t help but add art into the mix of her future career, launching her first curatorial attempts with shows at local salons.

By age 20, she was encouraged by a family member to return to school and complete her degree, landing at the University of Texas at Arlington under the institution’s director and curator of The Gallery, Benito Huerta. Huerta needed an artist’s assistant to handle contracts, label slides, and file paperwork, and Saba fit the bill. The exposure to an artist creating large-scale work for the likes of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport was the spark that made Saba realize an art career was within her reach.

“He seemed to be doing exactly what he wanted,” she recalls. “I saw that he had his hand in all these multiple fires: he had a magazine, he was teaching art in Arlington, and William Campbell represented him. I was seeing the ins and outs of all these things. I was so into it—it was like a master’s degree.”

Inspired, Saba decided to form an arts group with her friends. Composed of poets, musicians, and artists, the United Voice Collective launched fashion shows at Dallas bars, mounted concerts with local bands, and exhibited art in the middle of Camp Bowie Boulevard.

Recalls Saba, “I got this idea to do a pop-up on gallery night. I remember Benito came, and he’s impossible to impress, and I could tell he was impressed, so I knew I was onto something. We were so young and so dumb and had no idea what we were doing, but it was a beautiful time.”

The mix of personalities involved led to UVC “imploding” a few years later, but Saba kept going. After working for a year as a docent at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, she launched her own specialty finishes company, creating patterned walls for the elite of Dallas, including George W. Bush and Robert Staubach. Balancing her now-busy career with motherhood, she ultimately put the business on pause when she broke her foot and devoted herself to painting canvases instead.

“I was scared to climb scaffolding at that point, but I would get up every day at 7am and paint like it was my job. I made all sorts of art and decided to throw this big show and bring all my old UV Collective memories back.”

Saba’s former high school classmate J.W. Wilson (now co-owner of William Campbell) prodded her to shift back into art events. The then-partners landed on the space that holds the Shipping and Receiving Bar on South Calhoun, cleaning out 14,000 square feet of junk in return for free usage. Their first party on Gallery night in the spring of 2014 drew over 1500 revelers—from the mayor to cool, young hipsters.

Wilson and Saba expanded the event into more “happenings” well into the summer, including fashion shows, exhibits, and “sit-ins.” Realizing that local students were regularly awarded cash and prizes for their participation in sports, Saba and Wilson also decided to extend laurels to local art students, launching the first year of what she calls her ongoing “Mayor’s Show.”

By December 2015, Saba was serious about joining the art world on a larger level, so she flew to Art Basel in Miami to attend Swiss Beatz’s No Commission event. The experience was so inspirational that when she returned and spied a for-sale sign on a former furniture refinishing business on Montgomery Avenue, she knew it was destined to become her permanent gallery.

“I called the realtor, and it was mine by January 7,” she says. “I bought before Dickies (Arena) was there, and nobody knew it was going in.”

Refurbishing the space in a grassroots style, Saba removed walls and tore out brown and brass fixtures. Ready to open by April 2016, Fort Works launched with a show of then-unknown Riley Holloway downstairs and a group exhibition upstairs, setting the standard for prescient programming that continues to this day.

“We had an incredible line-up of artists that have gone on to do fantastic things,” says Saba. “I was looking for art that I found to be powerful and significant and technically good, and that happened to be the artists I met at the time—Jay Wilkinson and Jeremy Joel from (the collective) Bobby on Drums. There was this massive group of kids from the South Side, and no one had any money, so that no one could move, so they all worked together. They didn’t care about fame, money, or shows; they were being true to themselves, and that always inspired me.”

As Saba owns the building that houses Fort Works, she has managed to avoid showing “longhorns and bluebonnets,” keeping her ethos true over the years. Diversifying into renting sections of her space to tenants and events has allowed Saba to keep her dream project thriving through the pandemic and beyond. As she gears up for her tenth year in business (a lifetime in gallery years), she continues to pivot, adding a natural light photography studio and a retail component even as she strives to spot the next big thing in the artistic world.

“My family thinks I’m nuts, they don’t understand why I don’t sell the building and eat bonbons,” laughs Saba. “I guess this is cheesy to say, but this city has always supported me. This city has rallied for me, and it’s rallied for our artists.”

And that ten-year milestone? Saba is planning a big celebration in the spring of 2026 with the same festive enthusiasm she’s brought to all her endeavors.

“We want to do a big, huge event. Keeping a business here alive for ten years is next to impossible,” she muses. “It’s pretty exciting. It’s not going to make me a millionaire, but I love what I do, and I get to be around cool people. I’m usually stressed but never bored!”

— KENDALL MORGAN