THUS WATER FLOWS OVER WEEDS

CURATED BY BETHANY JOHNSON

October 5 – october 30, 2026

opening reception: Monday, OCTOBER 5 | 5 – 6 PM

PANEL DISCUSSION: Wednesday, OCTOBER 21 | 3 – 4 PM

With exhibiting artists and christopher brown, author of A natural history of empty lots

Moderated by Bethany Johnson

Thus Water Flows Over Weeds brings together the work of seven artists affiliated with the School of Art & Design at Texas State University: Bethany Johnson, Ariana Gomez, Briar Leonard, Ben Roan, Alex Trippe, Holly Veselka, and Michael Villarreal. Working across photography, video, painting, drawing, and sculpture, the exhibition explores the complex and often contradictory relationships between humans and the natural world.

Rather than presenting a single perspective, the exhibition embraces uncertainty. The works consider nature as a site of sustenance, wonder, estrangement, and destruction, exploring the tensions and contradictions inherent in the human relationship with the environment. Together, the works offer an open-ended meditation on what it means to inhabit a rapidly changing planet and invite viewers to reflect on humanity’s place within it.

Across the exhibition, the artists engage these questions through distinct yet intersecting visual languages. Holly Veselka’s uncanny digital landscapes and Michael Villarreal’s textural paintings both examine interactions of natural and anthropogenic elements, while arriving at different emotional registers. Ben Roan and Ariana Gomez’s images of embodied encounters with nature reveal, perhaps, the devotions underlying the superficially scientific distance of Bethany Johnson’s artifacts. Finally, Briar Leonard’s works invoke additional animal/human entanglements, while Alex Trippe invites the viewer to reflect on nature’s time scales. Throughout the exhibition, moments of convergence and divergence encourage viewers to hold multiple ways of relating to nature.

The exhibition’s title is sourced from the Wallace Stevens poem “Six Significant Landscapes” (1916), which explores these themes of transience and subjectivity. By bringing together faculty, staff, and recent alumni, Thus Water Flows Over Weeds also reflects the creative community of Texas State University. The exhibition invites viewers to linger with complexity, embracing curiosity over certainty and conversation over conclusion.

Bethany Johnson [ @bethany._.johnson ] is an artist based in Austin, Texas, working in a cross-disciplinary practice that centers image-making and sculpture. Johnson received an MFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Her work is represented by Moody Gallery in Houston, where her sixth solo exhibition with the gallery is currently on view. 

Johnson’s artwork has been featured in New American Paintings, Hyperallergic, and HuffPost, among others, and she has held residencies at Denkmalschmiede Höfgen in Grimma, Germany, Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, and Joshua Tree National Park Artist in Residence. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and she is a recipient of a 2023 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant.

Holly Veselka (b. Houston, Texas) [ @hollyveselka ] is a new media artist, and her work has been presented at numerous venues such as Torrance Art Museum, Fotofest, Currents New Media, Artpace, Wave Hill, NARS Foundation, AURORA, and Lage Egal. Recent projects include Lost Thicket, a site-specific installation at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, and commissions for Aurora in Dallas and Frisco. Her films have screened at film festivals such as the Video Art and Experimental Film Festival in New York, and she has received numerous residencies and fellowships, including the British Council-supported X-Change program in Shetland, ACRE, Lawndale Art Center, and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża. Her work has been supported by the Puffin Foundation and the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation and has been featured in publications including Hyperallergic, Gulf Coast Journal, and Glasstire.

Briar Leonard [ @briarmaeart ] is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Antonio, Texas. Her practice uses material and memory to examine the aftermath of trauma, following fragments of experience and decay as they shape identity over time. Leonard works across sculpture, fiber, drawing, and painting, exploring the ways physical materials can hold and transform memory. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Texas State University, where she was awarded support through the Herman Casey Memorial Fund in Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited throughout Central Texas, including ICOSA Gallery, the FL3X Space at Texas State University, and Hive Mind Studios in conjunction with Bolm Arts.

Ariana Gomez [ @_arianagomez ] is a visual artist living in Austin, Texas. Centering photography and installation, her practice explores mythmaking in relation to place, reflecting on her parent’s relationship to land and home. Her interest lies within the intersections of photography, video, and sound, and how they work together to create an experiential memory-scape of place.

Gomez has exhibited both in the US and internationally most recently with her solo show at Flats Gallery in Houston, and group shows with Trespasser Books in Austin, Vermont Center of Photography, Clamp Art Gallery, and with LensCulture at Photo London. Awards include the 2024 Lenscratch Student Award, the Hopper Prize Grant and the MASS MoCa University Fellowship. Her works have been represented in the permanent collection of the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin.

Gomez holds a BFA from The Rochester Institute of Technology and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Diversify Photo Up Next, and ICOSA member.

Ben Roan [ @roan._photo ] is an Austin, Texas based transgender photographer and mixed media artist who received a BFA in Photography from Texas State University in 2025. Born in Tomball, Texas, Ben spent his childhood and early years of his transition in the Texas heat, riding horses and four-wheelers and cooling off in the pond behind his house. His work is heavily influenced by his environment and experience as a young gay trans man in a small Texas town, and captures themes around the trans experience, queer community, and the relationship between oneself and nature. His work has been shown in several locations in central Texas, such as the Sabinal Photo Gallery, TXST Galleries, The Museum of Human Achievement, and two DIY U-Haul pop-up shows.

Michael Villarreal [ @lilgoopy ] is an oil painter whose practice explores the overlooked geometry of the backyard, focusing on the patterns, structures, and arrangements that emerge where nature and human intervention meet. Through his use of impasto, Villarreal emphasizes the tactile qualities of bricks and natural elements such as overgrown grass, drawing attention to ordinary materials and the quiet labor embedded within them.

Villarreal received a BFA from Texas State University and an MFA from the University of Nebraska. He has presented solo exhibitions at Spellerberg Projects, Doane University, ACA Gallery at Angelina College, Art Palace Contemporary Art Gallery, and Project Project. His work has also been included in exhibitions at the International Quilt Museum, Undercurrent, DATELINE, Barbara Davis Gallery, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Northern-Southern, and LA Artcore.

His work has been featured in Huffington Post, New American Paintings, and Art Maze Magazine. In 2019, he received the Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. He lives in San Marcos, Texas, where he is an Associate Professor of Instruction at Texas State University.

Alex Trippe [ @alextrippe ] is an artist working in glass, ceramics, sculpture, and video. Her practice centers on visualizing the impact of external forces–gravitational, geological, bodily–on objects both found and made. She received her BFA in Photography, Imaging and Emerging Media from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Ceramics from The Ohio State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally at Urban Arts Space (Columbus, OH), ROY G BIV Gallery (Columbus, OH), and Jane Hartsook Gallery (New York, NY), among others. She has been in residence at Belden Brick Factory (Sugarcreek, OH) and Estudiosix (Austin, TX). Based in San Marcos, Texas, Trippe currently teaches as a Lecturer in the Studio Art Department at Texas State University, as well as at community ceramic studios around Austin.

ABOUT THE TXST FL3X PROGRAM

The Texas State Galleries’ FLEX space invites Texas State Art and Design students, faculty, staff, and alumni to envision and assemble well-considered, visually engaging, and conceptually stimulating exhibitions and events. Through these programs, FLEX highlights the unique creative vision of our community and its relevance within the larger art world. 

For details regarding the application process, including application deadlines, see Opportunities.