HOPE Outdoor Gallery Makes Its Long-Awaited Return

Austin is getting its hope back.

Or rather, it’s getting HOPE back, as in the HOPE Outdoor Gallery. For almost a decade, anyone driving down Lamar could look up toward Baylor Street at the 12th Street junction and see graffiti artists covering and re-covering and covering once more what looked like an abandoned construction site with art. Every time you’d drive past, it would be different, layers upon layers of paint built up from endless streams of artists who perfected their craft on this borrowed space.

Six years ago, that all stopped as the Foundations, one of its many nicknames, closed, and the team behind began the process in earnest of finding a new home.

Now founder Andi Scull stands on that ground, making the last preparations for the new HOPE Outdoor Gallery, resettled out near the airport. The plan is to have the site open well before the end of the year, permits permitting. It may seem like another delay for eager artists after years of waiting, but Scull seemed happy that she could make the announcement. “People need good news,” she said.

It’s good news for the rest of the team, too. A mainstay of Austin’s club scene as a partner at Hotel Vegas and Volstead Lounge, Charles Ferraro started with HOPE as one of the very first artists but now works as head of events – although, as head of hospitality C.K. Chin noted, their jobs often blur. They’ve still got a lot of work ahead, getting the gates finally open and then starting day-to-day operations, but after six years it’s a task they’re more than ready for – to open the gates on Austin’s constantly evolving open-air art gallery.

“It’s like a giant Etch A Sketch,” said Chin, who said he was always attracted to the idea of “this semi-permanent creation kind of thing that the average person hasn’t gone through in a long while.” He compared the experience to watching his 2-year-old daughter “go through a box of crayons in a month because she just loves to doodle.” That’s something he hopes to experience with her older brother once the gallery is open. “I’m just waiting for the day when I can put a can of spray paint in his hand and come back in two weeks and see if it’s still there.”

The new site sits on an 8-acre stretch of scrub off US-183 and under the flightpaths, out in that former farmland neighbored by small factories and storage for landscaping firms. However, unlike the original site, which was found and repurposed, this is purpose-built. There are actually four distinct sectors: a larger office complex with a courtyard; a circular structure, roofless with a curtain wall and a viewing platform; a garden and picnic area, its borders prescribed by rubble; and a small village of shipping containers, set to become offices, arts spaces, and whatever flex space staff, artists, and visitors need.

The arrangement almost seems a little haphazard, but there’s a hidden secret. Look out the window of your plane as you’re landing and departing from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, and you’ll see that the buildings spell out a word: HOPE.

The concept of hope is fitting for HOPE Outdoor Gallery, which has gone from a wild experiment on some construction debris to arguably Austin’s biggest contribution to visual art. Scull said, “From the very early years to now, we get contacted by other cities asking us, ‘Can you tell us how you did your art park?’ and we’re like, how can we explain this secret sauce?” Looking back on an erratic history that’s spanned almost two decades of hard work, derailed plans, and unexpected community building, Scull’s not sure there’s really a playbook to learn from, “but we can at least share the story.”

A sneak peek of the new HOPE Outdoor Gallery off US-183 // Founder Andi Scull Credit: John Anderson © 2025 // Design by Zeke Barbaro

FROM DARFUR TO VENICE TO AUSTIN

In 2006, Scull, a graphic artist by trade, had been working on high-profile ad campaigns while also running monthly Burn the Box arts showcases in Austin and Los Angeles when a friend showed her an early cut of a new documentary about the genocide in Darfur called The Devil Came on Horseback. She was so shocked that she contacted Marine veteran and reporter Brian Steidle, who was at the center of the film, and told him, “You need a campaign. You need something that people can digest easily.” 

That’s where she first came up with the idea of HOPE – Helping Other People Everywhere – and reached out to legendary graffiti artist Shepard Fairey to help. The pair had got to know each other when they’d been commissioned by Kobe Bryant to design new logos for his KB24 brand. By complete coincidence, Fairey was launching a new wing of his OBEY clothing line, OBEY Awareness, and he joined the project, designing a T-shirt and poster with 100% of the proceeds going to the HOPE campaign. “I walk into Urban Outfitters in the mall and this shirt’s everywhere,” Scull said. “Four months later, OBEY Clothing [says], ‘We have $46,000 for you,’ and it’s everywhere. There’s athletes wearing the T-shirt. It was real.” 

But HOPE soon became about more than just one film as Scull put Burn the Box on permanent hiatus and put all her effort into the initiative. Some projects were international, like education initiative HOPE for Senegal, but increasingly she centered her efforts back in her hometown of Austin, with art installations, the Adopt-A-Wall program, and most pivotally, the HOPE Farmers Market. When that was founded in 2010, she had the idea to hold a public art show to get the word out. She knew about an abandoned construction site on Baylor Street, knew the owners through other folks in the nonprofit sector, and realized that this could be something unique. That’s how the first HOPE Open Air Gallery event came to be, as a kind of promotional event for HOPE Farmers Market. The first invited artist? None other than Shepard Fairey.

FOUNDATIONS OF A GALLERY

The very existence of the original location was an aberration, a happy accident caused by the intersection of bad geology and financial misfortune. The concrete slabs had been poured in the 1980s as part of a condo project. Urban development legend has it that no one had done the required soil tests, and so the project had to be abandoned. Like any empty space, the site inevitably attracted graffiti artists and taggers. When Scull saw it, she saw potential beyond a one-off awareness-raiser for the market. She saw “a space for artists who typically have to work on pieces in the dark or under stressful conditions, and don’t typically get to work on their art to the level that their mind was taking them.” Luckily, the owners understood her vision and signed off on this first HOPE Outdoor Gallery. Its success was immediate, which Scull called “proof that people lack safe spaces to be expressive, and to experience expression.”

Victor Ayad and Andi Scull at the original HOPE Outdoor Gallery on Baylor Street in 2014 // Shepard Fairey’s OBEY piece Credit: Photos by John Anderson © 2014 // Obey photo courtesy of HOPE

Looking back on those early days on Baylor Street, Ferraro called it “a cool organic space.” At that point, there weren’t many places for Austin artists to meet and network, so “having a space that was the epicenter of street art in Austin was really important.”

The Foundations was just one of many nicknames the old site picked up. The Hill, HOG, the art park, the graffiti gallery, even just Baylor Street – it was all things to everyone: a safe space, a park, an outdoor selfie studio, a gallery, a classroom. Musicians would shoot videos there, drone pilots would learn to film there, families would go for picnics. One time, Scull said, “I saw this group doing some little song-and-dance thing. I go over and say, ‘What are you guys doing?’ 

‘Oh, we’re filming a birthday video for our grandma.’ 

I look up, and there’s this guy recording himself tap dancing. I walk up to the top and there’s a van unloading for a breakdancing competition.”

On top of all that free-form artistic achievement, Scull has one particularly proud boast about the old site. “We [were] the number one marriage proposal site in the city. Who else can say that?”

The space also created a controlled environment for street art at a time when the city was cracking down on vandalism and tagging. The inherent social contract of HOPE meant it was OK to spray over someone else’s work – encouraged, even – while tagging the iconic Austintatious mural on 23rd Street, or any of the street art on a private building, is still a crime.

Yet with all those positives came enormous problems for the team: insurance costs, porta-potty hassles, the constant struggle of keeping the area safe and clear of trash and debris (“We became the number one recycle project in the city, ever,” Scull recalled), and the perpetual fear of someone climbing up the wrong wall. Scull winced: “I saw a woman in high heels, carrying her baby, starting to walk up the side of one of the hills. I’m like, ‘No, no, don’t do that.’” Moreover, they had to constantly remind people that this wasn’t a public or city-owned park but still private property that was open to the public.

The real problem with the original location was exactly that – the location. A couple of blocks away from one of Austin’s busiest thoroughfares but still in the heart of the small Clarksville neighborhood, there was friction over parking and late-night noise. And the clock was always ticking: The idea that 1.25 acres of prime Downtown real estate could avoid development indefinitely was always absurd, and owner and developer Victor Ayad made it clear before the park opened that demolition and construction would likely start within the next three to five years. If anything, Ayad was always the quiet hero of HOPE’s story by not only letting the team and the community use the space but also picking up the property tax bill that still needed to be paid. According to Scull, that wasn’t the only thing he was picking up: “He’d put on a hat and pick up garbage and literally pretend he was one of the maintenance guys so he could meet and hear and talk to people.”

For all its value to the community, and how quickly it became embraced by artists and art lovers, Scull always knew that the Baylor location was an experiment with a limited life span. Plus, getting mad that the gallery had to relocate is missing the point about street art. It is by its very nature impermanent, lasting only as long as the structure upon which it was created – and then often not even that long. Somewhere under all those layers of paint, those original Fairey images remained, encrusted under strata after strata of other works of art. They’re lost, recorded only in photos and memories.

And the artists knew that what they were making wasn’t going to last. Scull said, “I went out there one day, and an artist was doing the big wall, the 80-foot, and people would come the next day and say, ‘Oh my God, someone’s already tagged that art up.’ They had no idea that the artist specifically did that just to take a photo just to get a commission in Russia for their professional career.”

Similarly, Scull and the team always knew that the Foundations would be demolished to make way for something new, “and by 2014 we knew we had to find a permanent home.”

NEW HOME, NEW HOPE

In the earliest days of the search, the idea was to remain a tenant of sorts as the HOPE team met with Austin’s Parks & Recreation Department about one of the dozens of underutilized parks within city limits. However, none of those spaces were going to work for what the gallery needed within the parameters that the city required. Scull recalled finally telling the city, “If you put it in that box, it will die.”

So, in 2016, the team changed tack and started to look for a property to purchase. By 2017 they’d found what seemed to be the ideal location – out by the airport, within the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, close to the highway, with plenty of parking space. The original plan was to move and reopen in 2018, but like most construction timelines in Austin, that date slipped, and slipped, and slipped. Financing, permitting, arguments with the neighbors, COVID, permitting again.

Yet that delay became a boon as it allowed the team to refine what they wanted from the new site. It was a plan born of years of observation and note-taking at Baylor Street, plus the opportunity to fulfill some ideas that they just couldn’t pull off at the old location. For example, when Baylor opened, the intention was to carve out a curated section that wouldn’t be open to all artists, and allow visiting or guest sprayers to have their work on display for a little longer. That soon turned out to be impossibly idealistic in the old free-for-all setting, but now the courtyard of the “H” gives them exactly that kind of protected space.

A sneak peek of the new HOPE Outdoor Gallery off US-183 Credit: Photos by John Anderson © 2025 // Aerial photo courtesy of HOPE

The new site also allows for the kind of infrastructure that the Foundations never allowed: proper parking, proper lighting, proper bathrooms, catering, events spaces, a media room, even an arts supply store and, essential for any real art gallery, a gift shop. They’re also taking steps toward energy self-sufficiency, with a plan to install solar panels on the “H” building. Meanwhile, the plan is to help more artists to become self-sufficient and go professional. One of the shipping container offices is being reserved for what Scull called “an entrepreneur in residence,” which is like an artist in residence but with more emphasis on career development. If they get successful enough, they’ll just load their office onto a truck and take it away, and the management will just bring in another container for the next entrepreneur.

Of course, the gallery itself has to be financially viable as well, a state that will be achieved through grants, donations, merch sales, and events. One revenue source not on that list? Entrance fees. Scull noted that the whole point is to make sure that the site remains open to the whole community, while Chin said that decision resonates with the concept of “conscious capitalism, this notion of built-in community involvement and built-in community benefit.”

The real key to this financial stability is that HOPE Gallery owns the land through HOG Carson Creek Property LLC. Ferraro said, “That helps to create stability. A lot of what happened to other studio complexes is a byproduct of the growth and the affluence that Austin and East Austin experienced. So the fact that HOPE owns this dirt is really important.”

The extra space and cost may seem risky, but Scull said she’s confident they’re in a good place financially. Moreover, Chin suggested that the demand for the gallery has only increased over the last six years, as younger people look to create something real. He said, “We’re fighting device addiction, but they’re voluntarily setting timers for themselves. We’re talking about middle school, high school kids, and they’re adhering to screentime rules. They’re the ones going, ‘This isn’t healthy.’”

The new site means that two destinies are finally being fulfilled. After four decades, the Baylor location has finally fulfilled its planned purpose, becoming the Colorfield Condos, while HOPE is within weeks of finally opening, hopefully before the Austin Studio Tour kicks off in November. Each still carries a little of the history of the first gallery: The Colorfield has an external mural wall still visible from Lamar, while the rubble from the old Foundations was carried out to the new gallery and used to mark out the greenspace. If you look out of your plane window, that’s the rock you’ll see spell out the giant “P” in HOPE.

What has conveyed between the old and new locations is the artistic philosophy of HOPE. Scull described Baylor as a place for artists to find new ways to utilize their talents and hone their craft, and the new location will do the same thing, just on a broader canvas, and with more potential for growth. For her, regardless of location, HOPE was, is, and will remain less a gallery and more “a visual open mic.”

“Things aren’t always meant to be recorded,” Scull said. “The purpose of an open mic is that you can practice, you can fail, you can try new things.”

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