Free Family Day- Field Walk & Clay Sculpting

Join Mexic-Arte Museum for a two-part family day on Sunday, June 28th from 11am - 4pm!

This Family Day is for ages 8+ and it is free to attend! Mexic-Arte Museum offers FREE ADMISSION every Sunday, thanks to HEB and Downtown Austin Alliance.
This workshop will take participants from the Museum's galleries to the banks of Lady Bird Lake, then into sculpting with clay at the Museum, weaving together Austin's ecological landscape, Mexican American and Indigenous history, and the transformative world-building of contemporary artist Saya Woolfalk.
Part 1: Reading The River
Participants will meet outside Mexic-Arte Museum at 11am to walk to Republic Square, where they will study the Blackbird sculpture (a monumental grackle sculpture by Kincannon Studios honoring the Mexican American community displaced from the neighborhood in the 1920s), and then continue to Lady Bird Lake to observe the watershed, sketch the landscape, and collect natural texture tools.
Part 2: Sculpting The Zanate
Participants will return to the museum to build their own terracotta hybrid guardians from their field observations: chimeric figures that are part human, part zanate (Great-tailed Grackle), part myth, and part future, imagined as permanent inhabitants of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) future tunnel.
The workshop series is inspired by the work of Say Woolfalk, whose Empathies and ChimaTEK series explore what happens when species, cultures, and histories absorb one another. Students will engage with Aztec water deities Taloc, and Chalchiuhtlicue, the 5th Street Mexican American Heritage Corridor, and the living ecosystems of Lady Bird Lake as raw material for their sculptural work.“Every guardion these students build carries the landscape it was made from," said artist Chance Ramirez. "The clay, the texture tools, the deity symbols, the waterway lines pressed into the surface, all of it comes from Austin.”
This series was developed in connection with a larger public art project by artist Saya Woolfalk. Woolfalk has been commissioned by the Austin Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment (ACME) Art in Public Places (AIPP) program to create a permanent artwork installation at AUS. AUS and AlPP have engaged artists from Austin and beyond to shape new permanent public art installation for the airport's ongoing Journey with AUS expansion. The students’ guardians developed in the Sculpting the Zante workshops are designed with that space in mind: figures standing at the threshold between departure and arrival, between the familiar and the unknown. Participants' work will be documented and contribute to the final AIPP artwork at AUS.
Sculpting the Zante is part of Mexic Arte Museum's commitment to art education that is rooted in place, community, and cultural memory. This workshop is open to youth and families who register. All workshops are free. All materials provided. No prior art experience necessary.
About Saya Woolfalk:
Saya Woolfalk is a New York-based artist whose work constructs entire imaginary worlds exploring transformation, hybridity, and cultural synthesis. Her Empathics series and ChimaTEK installations have been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
About the AUS Art in Public Places Program:
The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Art in Public Places program is part of a broader civic commitment to integrating Austin's cultural identity into one of its most traveled public spaces. The Journey With AUS expansion currently involves 23 artist-led teams in active community engagement across the city.

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