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Austin 360 In a mere photograph, it's not easy to capture the liquid beauty of Amy Scofield's suspended sculpture, "Topo Chihu." Seen at the still-new Lydia Street Gallery, it bristles with light. Scofield has manipulated greenish plastic bottles into explosive patterns and attached them to a horizontal metal carriage.  The mind wanders to deep undersea creatures caught in a trap; their transparency makes them all the more vulnerable. It does not take long, however, to see the actual material nature as potentially destructive. If washed out to the sea, these tangles of plastic and metal cou...

Austin 360 There was a time, believe it or not, when Austin's walls were not plastered with amazing murals. Back then, it made one wonder: There are so many artists in town and certainly no shortage of walls. Why not more art for all to see? True, some Austin murals date back decades. And periodically, they need preserving or refreshing. Exterior murals are hard to maintain in the natural elements, and they tend to be targets for miscreants, or sometimes worse, thoughtless new owners. Some, sadly, go away forever. Yet there are hundreds if not thousands more. And every one comes with a story.

The enormous shell rests silently in an oak-studded plaza. You can’t miss it. In fact, Marc Quinn’s “Spiral of the Galaxy” is likely the most easily spotted work of art on the verges of the University of Texas campus, second only to Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin,” the building-as-art at the Blanton Museum of Art. That’s because most of the school’s legacy art, as well as newer works planted by UT’s nationally acclaimed Landmarks public art program, are found deeper inside the urban campus. In part because the bronze surfaces of the shell readily catch the light during the day ...