Artist Statement: “I share my space with pigeons. They have a home in our backyard where they are free to come and go. They live in our house when we raise the parentless young or nurse the injured. In the mornings the pigeons leave their loft, circle our house and then they are gone… until they return, which they always do. I watch them and I long for the views that they may see from the sky; to rise above the chaos where it is quiet and to see land in all its colors stretch to the horizon. These scenes I find when I am on a road trip, cresting a hill or gazing out a plane window. It is those fleeting moments I try to capture and hold still in my drawings.”

Artist Bio: Gabel Karsten moved to Austin in 1993. Her work over the last 25 years has spanned the disciplines of printmaking, filmmaking, painting and sculpture. She is a recipient of the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund and a City of Austin Cultural Contract Grant. Her work has been exhibited and collected throughout the United States as well as abroad and is part of the permanent collection of the Jones Center for Contemporary Art and Art in Public Places for the City of Austin.

Gabel earned her BA in Studio Art from the University of California at Irvine and she studied a year at Il Bisonte International School of Graphic Arts in Florence, Italy. She currently lives on the east side of Austin with her husband, two sons and a menagerie of animals.

“This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.”

artwork: Gabel Karsten, Untitled, one continuous length of 16 gauge baling wire, 12″ long, 2018