Chihuly
Unveiling of permanent Chandelier in Downtown Round Rock
New Chihuly sculpture installed in Round Rock City Arts Center
Unveiling of permanent Chandelier in Downtown Round Rock
A new sculpture created by world-renowned artist Dale Chihuly will be on view starting July 15 at the City Arts Center in Downtown Round Rock.
The work, titled Ruby Sunstone Pineapple Chandelier (2026), was designed specifically for the City Arts Center following approval by Round Rock City Council in December 2025. The 9-foot-tall Chandelier will hang from the gallery’s two-story ceiling as a permanent feature of the facility and will be paid for by hotel occupancy tax funds generated by visitors to Round Rock’s hotels. Admission to the City Arts Center is free for all visitors.
Composed of more than 200 individually hand-blown glass elements and weighing approximately 460 pounds, the sculpture was installed piece by piece over the course of four days by a specialized team from Chihuly Studio.
Chihuly is an American artist known for his exhibitions and large-scale architectural installations. While he has commissioned pieces on display in museums and public buildings in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, this is the first Chihuly installation available for public view in the Austin metropolitan area.
“I am thrilled to share the Ruby Sunstone Pineapple Chandelier, a new installation, with Round Rock, a city that deeply values making art publicly accessible,” Chihuly said. “The vibrant colors and pineapple-inspired forms in the sculpture are a nod to the city’s identity and welcoming hospitality. My hope is that this piece brings joy and a sense of community for everyone who visits the new City Arts Center.”
The completed installation will be accompanied by a special three-month exhibit that will feature additional artworks by Chihuly, alongside an exhibit by Round Rock-based artist Ziesook You.
“This work will transform our City Arts Center, strengthen Downtown Round Rock as a cultural destination and add something extraordinary to the artistic landscape of Central Texas,” said Scot Wilkinson, Round Rock’s Director of Arts and Culture. “But perhaps its greatest achievement will be the moments we cannot yet imagine—the child who looks up and is inspired, the family who makes a memory beneath it, or the visitor who sees Round Rock in an entirely new way.”
The City Arts Center, located in the Griffith Building at 216 E. Main Street, opened in January 2026 and serves as Round Rock’s primary public venue for visual arts exhibitions, featuring two-story-high ceilings as part of the renovation from its previous civic uses. Over the decades, the property has housed a fire station, an auto shop, City Hall offices, and most notably the Round Rock Public Library. Regular operating hours will resume for the City Arts Center starting July 15, Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and extended hours on Wednesday nights until 8 p.m. Admission is free.
The public is also invited to save the date from Aug. 7-9 for the Round Rock Summer Arts Fest, a new signature arts festival planned in the heart of Downtown Round Rock. For more information, visit roundrocktexas.gov/summerartsfest.
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American artist who transforms spaces with experiments in color, light, transparency, and form. He is known for his exhibitions and large-scale architectural installations around the world and for revolutionizing the studio glass movement. Chihuly works with a variety of media including glass, paint, charcoal, neon, ice and Polyvitro, and his work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide, including Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Major exhibitions include Chihuly Over Venice (1995–96); Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem (1999); de Young Museum in San Francisco (2008); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2012); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2013); Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2016); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2017); Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands (2018); Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London (2019); Gardens by the Bay, Singapore (2021); and Adelaide Botanic Garden, Australia (2024–25). Chihuly Garden and Glass, a long-term exhibition located at the Seattle Center, opened in 2012.
Ziesook You
"Scents of Austin" on view July 15-October 10, 2026
Ziesook You’s large photographic portraits are the beautiful collaboration between human and nature. Collected wildflowers become elaborate adornment in a self portrait series of the artist, among other works. From arrival into the gallery, you will see portraits across all four seasons in Texas, noticing Indian paintbrushes, fluffy cottonwood and poinsettias. This artist lives in Round Rock.
All works in this exhibit are available for purchase. Please speak with our City Arts Center staff to make arrangements.
Artist Bio
Ziesook You is a visual artist working across photography and video. Through a bold yet unembellished visual language, she portrays her surroundings, daily life, and lived experience while exploring the intersections of time, space, nature, and human life.
Her practice often unfolds through long-term, continuous series in which conceptual layers accumulate over time. Her works include intimate video diaries of her family using durational time-flow methods, documentary films made across international travel sites that investigate spatial memory, and 10 Years Self-Portrait, a project employing time-compression techniques to reflect on identity and transformation.
Since 2016, she has developed the ongoing project Scent of Broq-pa, which explores happiness through the coexistence of humans and nature. The series portrays individuals from diverse walks of life and has been exhibited in Korea, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
She has exhibited internationally in Korea, Australia, Iceland, Taiwan, Hungary, Japan, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She earned a Master’s degree in Fine Art and taught contemporary art, video art, and production techniques at universities and graduate schools from 2006 to 2014. From 1999 to 2018, she participated in various studio programs and artist residencies. She has held 16 solo exhibitions in Korea and the United States and continues to exhibit widely.
She is currently based in Austin, Texas, where she maintains her studio and participates in exhibitions across Texas, South Carolina, California, and New York.
Artist Statement
Scent of Austin
Scent of Austin is an extension of my ongoing project Scent of Broq-pa, which began with a distant village at the end of the Silk Road. I first learned about Broq-pa, a community in Nepal where flowers are woven into daily life as symbols of love, gratitude, devotion, joy, and faith. This philosophy became the foundation of my work: flowers are not merely decorative, but carriers of emotion, memory, and presence.
In Scent of Austin, I bring this sensibility into the landscape and atmosphere of Austin, Texas. This exhibition reflects my response to the region through floral portraiture, seasonal imagery, and works that combine botanical materials with objects rooted in local identity. Rather than depicting Austin literally, I seek to evoke its spirit through flowers, color, texture, and the rhythms of the natural world.
The exhibition includes floral portraits inspired by the four seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter—each expressing a distinct emotional tone through color, atmosphere, and form. Alongside these works are images that combine cowboy boots with wildflowers, bringing together an iconic symbol of Texas with the fragile beauty of the native landscape. I also present mixed media works that incorporate floral portrait imagery with wildflower seeds, expanding the work beyond photography into material forms that suggest growth, transformation, and renewal.
Flowers are central to my visual language. They may conceal, reveal, protect, or transform what they touch. In these works, flowers are not passive embellishments; they function as emotional and symbolic forms that connect human feeling with the natural environment. Wildflowers and seeds in particular carry a sense of place, season, and continuity, linking the ephemeral moment of bloom with the possibility of future life.
I combine photographic image-making with staged arrangements, fresh and dried flowers, and painterly lighting to create works that exist between photography and painting. Through mixed media processes, I further explore the relationship between image and material, surface and memory, fragility and endurance.
Scent of Austin is an offering to the city and landscape I now call home. It is a meditation on seasonal change, local ecology, and the poetic presence of flowers in everyday life. Each work becomes a trace of Austin’s scent—its wildness, softness, resilience, and bloom.
On View in Griffith Hall
Solo exhibit featuring Virginia Headley Maserang
Exhibit Dates: May 19-July 25, 2026
Explore even more art in the Griffith Building in Griffith Hall! This exhibit space is adjacent to the City Arts Center, accessible from the Griffith Building’s main lobby.
On view now is a solo exhibit by contemporary painter Virginia Headley Maserang, who presents works created using mixed media and encaustic art techniques. Encaustic art is an ancient technique using hot beeswax.
Looking to collect local art? All art in this exhibit is available for purchase. Please just ask our City Arts Center staff to help guide you through your purchase.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Virginia Headley Maserang is a contemporary painter based in Georgetown, Texas. Her primary medium is encaustic – a combination of beeswax, damar tree resin, and pigment – but she often includes a variety of other media and collage to create layered surfaces rich with texture, emotive marks, and luminous color. Within the context of this rich visual language, her works explore themes of self-reflection, nostalgia, and divine connection, often through an intuitive conversation between abstract and representational elements. Her body of work includes 2-dimensional pieces on panel or paper, as well as 3-dimensional assemblage.
www.vheadleymaserang.com
Email vhm@vheadleymaserang.com
Instagram @vhmartstudio
Facebook @vheadleymaserang
Pinterest @vhmart
We Welcome You!
Free admission to enjoy art
We are so excited to welcome you to the City Arts Center, a new creative space in Downtown Round Rock in the Griffith Building at 216 East Main Street in Downtown Round Rock. With two-story-high cathedral ceilings, and views to the Downtown Paseo, we invite you to experience the arts with free admission for all! Additional art can be enjoyed in Griffith Hall, the lobby area next to our gallery.
Past Exhibits
The African Art Collection: April 10-June 25, 2026
Enjoy a beautiful exhibit featuring works by an assortment of African artists. These works are on loan from the Kalahari Resorts collection. This exhibit will be on view from April 10-June 25, 2026.
There’s so much art in this exhibit to enjoy!
See jazz themed silk string “paintings” by Emmanuel Yeboah from Ghana that are luminescent like stained glass. Marvel at delicately glassed beaded ostrich eggs by Ndebele artisans. Witness the detail of lively paintings by Tinga Tinga artisans. Take in large-scale masks carved from wood and adored with copper beads by Ashanti artisans. Appreciate the beauty of Boet Nyariri’s towering and textured mother and child sculpture. And learn more about art that is attached to an important cause. There are also selections representing the “Mandela Poster Project.”
ARTISTS FROM AFRICA
With disparate countries and cultures across Africa, this exhibit reveals the talents of artists and artisans — and articulates personal stories — from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique. Some of the cultures include Ashanti (Ghana), Boba Nuna (Burkina Faso), Mbombi and Nato (Mozambique) Ndebele and Zulu (S. Africa), and Tinga Tinga and Tonga (Zimbabwe).
STYLES/MEDIUMS/TECHNIQUES
Works in this exhibit by African artists include wooden, bronze, and stone sculptures; beadwork in masks, sculptures, and jewelry; silk string art; photography; acrylic painting; resist-dye textile technique; and more.
STORYTELLING
This exhibit also casts the spotlight on Kalahari Resorts’ mission to provide clean water to one million people in Africa, which you can learn about through storytelling and art displays, including “Sculpting the Future” (a celebration of sculptural talent by African artists, which is also a fundraising mechanism), Sarah’s Story,” “Jerry Can,” and “Stories of Change.” The Kalahari Resorts also channels a portion of visitors’ stays towards philanthropy.
YOUR ART PURCHASES HELP
Want to buy a beautiful piece of art and have the extra feel-good of helping a good cause? Your purchases will aid the Nelson Family Life Foundation water effort to help over one million Africans.
THANK YOU
We thank the Kalahari Resorts for loaning this art for the duration of this exhibit. To learn more about Kalahari Resorts Round Rock, please click here.
Samara Barks: January 29-April 3, 2026
Opening just before Black History Month, we were excited to present a selection of 3D works by artist Samara Barks in the City Arts Center. This captivating exhibit featured 3D art phone booths, wooden records and light-up shadow boxes, all created from the artist’s original designs.
Artist Bio and Statement
Samara Barks, also known as Mixed Hues, is a talented freelance illustrator, muralist, 3D artist, and mentor. She has worked in various cities throughout her career but has called Austin home for the past decade. Her artwork is a unique blend of exaggerated realism and a graphic/comic book style, often featuring people of color, especially black people, in unconventional settings.
Samara created Mixed Hues initially to address the lack of representation of black people in both the art and roller derby communities she was a part of. Over time, Mixed Hues has grown and now encompasses all of her creative passions. Samara’s artwork can be seen throughout Austin and beyond, as she strives to create a world that reflects the diversity and inclusivity she values.
Connect with the artist:
Website: https://www.mixedhues.com/
Instagram: @Mixed_Hues
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MixedHues
Linda Murray: January 13-April 4, 2026
Murray grew up in the small West Texas town of Rotan. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a long-time member of The Artists League of Texas, which became The Center for Contemporary Arts when she lived in Abilene and then Buffalo Gap. She now resides in Round Rock.
I paint in series. This show includes representative pieces of many different series. I think of each series as a book and each painting within that book as a chapter.
When I was a younger artist, I wanted to confine the issues I addressed in my paintings to universal themes, not personal ones. Now that I am no longer a young artist, I have come to realize that those universal themes and my personal themes are one and the same. We all face mortality. We all are affected by the constant balancing act of nature vs. technology. And we all face the consequences of the politics of the day. We live in a multi-layered culture filled with contradictions and dichotomies. My work reflects this.
LIVE at the City Arts Center
Join us for free events
Free events: Stay tuned for announcements about future events in our gallery! Past events have included the Griffith Building ribbon cutting, Mainly Art season kick-off, combined with Round Rock ISD’s Rrock the Block, conversational Q&A with artist Linda Murray, moderated by a Round Rock ISD Fine Arts student; live music nights with The Violet Crown Affair, Buenos Diaz, and Acoustic Grooves/Raphina Austin, as well as rain dates for some of our outdoor Hometown Parklet Shows.
Explore Your Creativity
Workshops at STUDIO at the City Arts Center
Are you ready to teach workshops?
In addition to exhibits at the City Arts Center, we also have The Studio! This is our versatile educational space, here in the newly renovated Griffith Building, in Downtown Round Rock. We are now taking proposals for all forms of art-inspired workshops.
Click here for all of the details and our online application!
All the information you will need is in this application. And, it’s your chance to tell us more about you!
Get hands-on with a class at Studio at the City Arts Center.
We’ll be sharing more soon about ways you can get involved in hands-on creativity, guided by local artists.
Artist Opportunities
We are not currently accepting proposals for exhibits in the City Arts Center, but we do have other opportunities for visual artists! As we have more opportunities, they will be shared here, on our social media and through our email newsletter (please contact us if you wish to be added to our email list).
Calling All Artist Exhibitors! We are currently accepting applications for the Round Rock Summer Arts Fest. Click here for details.
Round Rock Summer Arts Fest is our signature downtown arts event. Round Rock Summer Arts Fest features hundreds of artists, exhibitors, sponsors, local and regional musicians, theatrical performances plus a variety of foods and drinks. Round Rock Summer Arts Fest is hosted by City of Round Rock Arts and Culture and is a showcase for a large variety of fine art, fine crafts, and other exhibitors and provides patrons with the opportunity to meet and talk with the artists who create the work. It also includes artist demos and interactive arts experiences for all ages! Click here for our festival website.
Admission is free for this all ages, family fun event.
Celebrating Our New Space
Thank you for celebrating with us: We were so excited to celebrate with everyone at the Griffith Building ribbon cutting and our exhibit reception on January 29, 2026.
Griffith Building contains the City Arts Center, the Round Rock Chamber, and the Visitors Center. Our party celebrated art by Linda Murray and Samara Barks, live jazz by Keith Fiala, catering and refreshments by Alfred’s Catering and So Good Brazilian Treats, TapSnap photo booth, and conversation and energy abounded!
This event was free and open to the public. Stay tuned for more events to come!
Scroll through Griffith Building ribbon cutting event photos
Pick With Austin
The City Arts Center serves as a welcoming pickup/drop off point for the local mental health awareness nonprofit Pick With Austin (http://pickwithaustin.com).
Connect directly with Pick With Austin to inquire about its no-fee instrument program, or stop by the gallery to see if we have an instrument on display that might be of use to you. A goal of this nonprofit is to help youth through the gift of music, by way of no-fee instruments and musical equipment. Have an instrument to donate? Bring it to the the City Arts Center, and we’ll pass it along to the nonprofit organization for you.
Building History
A new year and a new creative space. The City Arts Center opened its new doors on January 14, 2026 in the newly renovated Griffith Building.
The location has played a variety of roles in downtown, including a fire house, auto shop, City Hall, and the library! This revitalized building is host to the City Arts Center, the Round Rock Visitors Center, and the Round Rock Chamber.
Outside the doors of our City Arts Center, you will find the Paseo. This walkable corridor connects Main Street to Liberty Ave and the Round Rock Library, allowing you to easily visit Main Street businesses, Prete Plaza, and City of Round Rock facilities like the City Arts Center!
The Griffith Building is named after Robert and Helen Griffith, who made their mark in the community in numerous ways, including being ardent library supporters.
Click here to read more about the Griffith Building renovation project.
We Welcome You!
Who are we? The City Arts Center is staffed and managed by the City of Round Rock Arts and Culture.
- The City Arts Center is currently closed for installation and will re-open July 15th with dazzling art.
The City Arts Center is dedicated to enriching the community by providing dynamic and accessible artistic experiences that foster creativity, cultural appreciation, and personal expression. It is a venue for you to be inspired, connect, and celebrate the arts.
Follow Us
Contact Us / Location / Hours
The City Arts Center
Main number: 512-341-3113
Fred Cooley
Arts and Culture Associate
fcooley@roundrocktexas.gov
737-775-4870 (Cell)
512-671-2884 (Office)
Christina Rudofsky
Arts and Culture Manager
crudofsky@roundrocktexas.gov
512-801-0698 (Cell)
512-218-3298 (Office)
The City Arts Center
216 East Main Street
Round Rock, TX 78664
(Please use the front door of the Griffith Building to find our gallery door in the lobby.)
Admission is free.
HOURS OF OPERATION:
- The City Arts Center is currently closed for installation and will re-open July 15th with dazzling art.
- Starting July 15th, we will resume our regular hours:Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and extended hours on Wednesday nights until 8 p.m.
Parking
Free parking is available throughout Downtown Round Rock, including City Hall Parking Garage, Round Rock Public Library Garage, and street parking on Main Street and side streets.
