The Big Show 2024 Juried by Dr. Laura Augusta

The Big Show is an ambitious open-call juried competition of artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale that reflects our commitment to supporting local and regional artists at various stages in their career.

“With 140 works in this edition of The Big Show, we barely scratch the surface of this city. And yet, there are shared and unexpected conversations unfolding across the exhibition: Anxieties about the natural world partner with quiet observations of human impact on the landscapes around us. The quiet interiority of loss and remembrance sits alongside insistent whimsy and colorful playtime. Dynamic abstractions engage histories of color and form while skillful explorations of figuration reflect Houston’s many communities. There are signals of protest and moments of repair: Houston is nothing if not deeply imbricated in the worlds far beyond its vast edges. And yet the works here also sing of the city’s special something. As you visit The Big Show, I hope you intuit the depths of Houston’s rich secrets, the shadowy corners of its abundant strip malls, the muddy trails left behind in its cycles of flood and fever, the ways in which its peoples wander intrepidly through the city’s bustle and sprawl. There is no making order from Houston’s particular delights and remarkable troubles but here, in this selection, I hope you find glimmers of what makes this place a herald of the future.” — Dr. Laura Augusta

Isela Aguirre, Josh Alan, Erika Alonso, Sallie Barbee, Darla Barolini, Beatriz Bellorin, Maria Bordelon, Betty-Ann Brose, Via Aphrodite Cabanez, Chelsea Clarke, Katie Coleman, Alexandra Constantinou, Carol Sandin Cooley, Margaux Crump, Sandra de la Rosa, Nabila Dadabhoy, Laura De Leon, April DeConick, Jacinto Deleon, Roslyn M. Dupré, Jake Eshelman, Jailyne España, Diana-Sofia Estrada, Jen Figueroa, Julia Fisher, Brent Fogt, Farima Fooladi, Madelyn Foutz, DIXIE FRIEND GAY, Abigail Garcia Garza, Ian Gerson, MICHAEL GODOY, Caroline Gray, Katie Hagar, Jeanette “Joy” Harris, Lucy Malone Haslam, Juliette Hemingway, Michael Horvath, Mayra Huerta, Aisha Imdad, Cedric Ingram, Sarah Jentsch, Heather L. Johnson, Jeanne Jones, Caro Kroger, Joana Liu, Steve Louis, Renata Lucia, Elias John Lytton, Jennifer Marion, Carrie Green Markello, Jennifer K. G. Martin, Sofia Mekonnen, Jade Elizabeth Mellor, Lorena Molina, Venessa Monokian, Mark Nelson, Lay-Ing Oji, Carolina Otero, Annette Palmer, Jin Park, Naomi Peterson, Jessica Phillips, Ellen Phillips, Julon Pinkston, Gladys Poorte, Cary Reeder, Winifred Riser, Lia Rodi, Henry G. Sanchez, Michelle Schoenberg, Caz Scott, Lauren Selden, Adrienne Simmons, Kylie Sivley, Kaylan Smith, Carole Smith, Margaret Smithers-Crump, Gretchen Bender Sparks, Dreana Booker, Lisa Urban, Pavlina Vagioni, Elizabeth Waggett, William Warden, Lillian Warren, Michelle Whitney, Chris Wicker, AmyBeth Wright, XZZX, and Grace Zuñiga

Dr. Laura Augusta, is a U.S.-born curator and writer who has worked between the U.S. and Central America since 2014. Her curatorial/essay projects connect the landscapes of disaster-prone cities, thinking specifically about floods and muddiness, shared space, and everyday forms of resistance; her writing about contemporary art in Guatemala City was awarded The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in 2017. Dr. Augusta completed the Core Fellowship at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2016-2018), and was an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration in 2021. She currently works with the Archives of American Art’s Oral History Project collecting the art histories of artist elders, and is a consultant for American Art Journal’s landmark program Toward Equity in Publishing. As an independent curator, she curated more than 20 exhibitions at museums, university galleries, and artist-run spaces across the U.S. and Central America from 2015 to 2022 before being hired as Curator at the Gerald & Stanlee Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso. Located less than a quarter mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, the Rubin Center serves one of the largest binational urban environments in the world and remains the only dedicated contemporary art museum in the El Paso / Ciudad Juárez region. In 2023, Dr. Augusta launched a Central American exhibition series at the Rubin, one of the first university galleries in the U.S. to make a multi-year commitment to the region.