Neighborhood Nonprofit Spotlight: Sugar Land Art Center and Gallery

SUGAR LAND, TX- Patch talks to Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery Executive Director Bobbi Templin and Gallery Director Anita Nelson about the work the center does to cultivate a relationship between art and community.

Patch: The Artists' Attic Sale is in its fourth year. Who or what is it meant to benefit, and what prompted the center to make it an annual event?

Bobbi: It helps all artists around the Sugar Land area. It helps promote their work. This will be my first one. It gets the artists' names out and shows the public what they’re capable of.

Anita: Sometimes, it’s nice for the public to get a little bit of a break from other, possible Christmas presents, and the sale benefits the public while giving the artist a chance to promote their artwork.

Patch: How can the community get involved? What can residents do to contribute to the sale's efforts?

Anita: Show up! [laughs] When they come to the center, some people, it may be their first time, and they can spread the word. That’s one of our hopes; we put our best foot forward and show them what we’re all about, not only the gallery, but kids camps and adult classes and outreach programs with people who have Alzheimer’s. So, we have stuff going on that we want the community to be cognizant of.

Bobbi: We have people [in Sugar Land] that we don’t know, who may be artists working out of their home.

Patch: What are some of the opportunities available through the Sugar Land Art Center?

Bobbi: We have an Alzeheimer’s class at the women’s center.

Anita: [Women at the women’s center] have children. We want them to know they can come here. We can also offer artists a place to work and interact with other artists while they’re working.

Bobbi: There are artists that want to host classes. One thing is home-schooled children, who have an opportunity to have a group come here, and an artist here will teach the class. If a parent is a [home-school] teacher, they have a place to come and teach their classes.

Patch: Can you tell us more about the gallery's artists-in-residence program?

Anita: We have currently 17 studios. We’re a small gallery with hopes to grow because we’d like to move to a larger facility. Currently, we have 15 members in the gallery, someone who does sculpture, someone who does ceramics and glass. We also have painting with acrylics and oils. We’re trying to showcase a variety of media and the capability of people in what they do in the arts.

Patch: What other way(s) does the gallery get involved in the community?

Anita: We host receptions that people can come to for free. We have a featured artist show monthly. We also host a Hot Summer Nights event. We generally have studio artists doing a free demonstration―not only studio artists, but also gallery artists. We host it every Friday night during the summer season. We get a wonderful audience for that. [Attendees] really learn a lot about the process of a particular art form.

Patch: Is there anything else you'd like the community to know about the Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery?

Anita: People often call and ask if they have to pay to visit the center or to meet the artists in the studio. We don’t charge anything for things like receptions and Hot Summer Nights. We welcome the general public to all of it. We try to get the message out of the different aspects of visual arts and what visual arts have to offer to all the people of the community.

Bobbi: We’ll have new programs coming up, and we are always looking for new ones. An artist and I have been discussing wine-and-paint events, which will be something in the future, hopefully by the first of the new year, if not this December. If an artist wants to do a one-man show, we have the space and the capability to do that.

Learn more about the Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery through its website as well as its Facebook and Twitter pages. Stay connected to your local Patch through Facebook and Twitter.