Exhibitions & events

HVFA presents a new exhibition in our main viewing room every six weeks, showcasing our 12 represented Texas artists. We have two smaller viewing rooms dedicated to consigned and secondary market.

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present FIVE ELEMENTS: HOLDING THE WORLD TOGETHER, an exhibition of paintings, mixed-media paper collages, and sculptures created using colors, shapes, and materials that symbolize the five essential Chinese elements, Wu Xing, found in nature: water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. The exhibition will be installed before Labor Day weekend and officially opens with a reception with the artist on Saturday, September 12, 2026, at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in the Upper Kirby Galleries in Houston's Oldest Gallery Row. Doors open at 11 am on September 12. The reception with Lee will take place that evening from 5 to 8. An artist conversation moderated by Bao-Long Chu, Program Director, Arts & Culture, Greenspaces at Houston Endowment, will take place at 1 on Saturday, September 19. A special workshop on the Chinese Five Elements will take place at 1 on Saturday, October 10. All events are free and open to the public.

The fragile ecosystem of our planet is in a delicate state. Everything happening in the world now sets an imprint on our future. Our relationship with the elements is complex. A perfect balance sustains life and is a source of beauty and wonder. Each element interrelates with the other, providing a complimentary, interrelated, and interdependent relationship in the universe. Lee's goal in Five Elements: Holding the World Together is to transform these symbolic elements using shapes, colors, and textures, painted, layered, and folded, to create compositions that express this ideal in nature and life.

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present OBJECTS FROM GARY T MERCER & OTHER IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, an exhibition of secondary market works of art primarily from the personal collection of the late Gary T Mercer, co-founder of City Kitchen, among the largest and most influential catering companies in Houston. The show, curated by Heidi Vaughan and art collector David Brown (formerly of David Brown Flowers), opens on Friday, June 26, 2026, at 11 am at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in the Upper Kirby Galleries in Houston's Oldest Gallery Row. A reception will take place that evening from 5 to 8. The final day of the show is August 29, 2026. Of note: All the works are priced below fair market value.

Said Alison de Lima Greene, Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, "Gary Mercer was a terrific colleague and dear friend, whose legacy lives on in many gifts to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and his thoughtfully assembled personal collection. A rigorously trained musician, he brought discipline and a discerning eye - as well as an open curiosity - to every acquisition."

The exhibition and sale includes secondary market works of art by Latin American artists Guillermo Kuitca, Lucas Arruda, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Paulo Monteiro, Adriano Costa, Humberto Márquez, Hugo Lugo, Aldo Chaparro, and Ary Brizzi, as well as objects by Kishio Suga, Larry Bell, and other blue chip artists.

Heidi Vaughan Fine Art has featured a secondary market summer art sale for years starting in 2019. Art collectors who have consigned art through the gallery in the past have included Lester Marks, Jereann Chaney, Don Sanders, David Brown, Leigh and Reggie Smith, Ron Logan, Andy Moran, Dr. William and Virginia Camfield, Bryn Larsen, Alton and Emily Steiner, Nancy and Bryant Hanley, and many others.

Art collectors are interested in the secondary market for many reasons, including because it offers opportunities to acquire important works validated by notable private collections and estates. While the secondary market is often the only option for collecting works by deceased artists, even for living artists, the best examples of their work may have been sold years earlier. Some collectors feel more comfortable purchasing a work whose significance has already been recognized by highly respected collectors, the art market, and museums, and a collector may find a museum-quality work on the secondary market that is superior to anything currently available from an artist's gallery. The secondary market also allows collectors to fill gaps and acquire works from periods that are no longer available through primary market galleries. Importantly, collectors can often find a good deal on the secondary market.

Collectors frequently enjoy owning works that were once part of celebrated collections because they become custodians of a continuing narrative. At the high end of the market, provenance can confer prestige, and collectors often appreciate owning a work from a celebrated patron of the arts. More than social status, it signals participation in a lineage of stewardship and connoisseurship. Notable provenance can create a premium that has a positive impact on future value. The provenance provides context, credibility, and continuity, linking the object to the people who recognized its importance before it arrived in the current collection.

 GOLD

MCKAY OTTO

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present GOLD, an exhibition of peaceful lightwork paintings and sculptures by McKay Otto. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 11 am at 3510 Lake St., in the Upper Kirby Galleries in Houston's Oldest Gallery Row. A reception with the artist will take place that evening from 5 to 8. An artist talk will take place at 1 on the final day of the show, May 9, 2026.

With the paintings in GOLD, Otto builds a meditative field of soft atmospheres with layers that hover between opacity and translucence, revealing subtle shifts of light, color, and depth that touch human emotions. The compositions evoke a meditative quietness where elements converge into moments of stillness. Otto's practice draws from American minimalism and reductive abstraction while creating a contemporary language of balance, geometry, and luminous calm.

Otto's works are influenced by his mentor, the artist Agnes Martin, who challenged him to find materials that would allow him to go beyond the picture plane and define him as an artist. Among those materials are a proprietary fabric that is stretched across the stretcher bars. Below the surface lie the pigments, including a phosphorescent paint that glows faintly in the dark, giving the works a special presence that has been described as portal-like.

For GOLD, Otto also is making use of gold paint in ways that frame colors. Gold amplifies ambient light and creates a warm halo effect around the work while making the colors richer. The gold creates a visual threshold that acts as a transition from the real world into the pictorial space. The symbolic use of gold in art has been carried across cultures for centuries to represent divine presence and eternal light. Its value is material, spiritual, and signals something beyond the ordinary world. Gold reflects light rather than absorbing it, creating a shimmering, immaterial effect that suggests unseen realms. It marks the threshold between the human and the divine.

Otto is a native Texan artist known for paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations that explore light, energy, and spiritual perception. Born in Wharton, he grew up in Fort Bend County near Houston. From an early age he showed a strong inclination toward drawing. Following a professional career in real estate, he became a full-time artist in 1985, studying at the Art School at Laguna Gloria in Austin and the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He also explored creative and perceptual concepts at the School of Perceptionism in Sedona, Arizona. His work reflects his interest in meditation, universal consciousness, and spiritual exploration, He has exhibited widely across the United States and internationally in museums and art fairs. He has received numerous awards and honors, including finalist for the Hunting Art Prize. He lives and works in Wimberley, Texas.

AVISHEH MOHSENIN

Weight on / weight off

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Weight On / Weight Off, a solo exhibition featuring photocollages by Avisheh Mohsenin as a participating gallery in Global Visions – FotoFest at 40, which celebrates four decades of groundbreaking photographic arts and education programming in Houston, Texas. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 28, 2026 at 11 am at 3510 Lake St., in the Upper Kirby Galleries in Houston's Oldest Gallery Row. A reception with the artist will take place that evening from 5 to 8. An artist talk will take place on Saturday, March 28 at 1 pm. The final day of the show is April 4, 2026.

In this exhibit, Mohsenin will be presenting photocollages that draw on her day-to-day life with her two young children reflecting on her experience of motherhood, where the physical and psychological weights are entwined and continuously change in a cyclical manner.

This is Mohsenin’s third solo show presented at HVFA. Her HVFA debut, Resurface, was highly acclaimed and celebrated in a documentary that aired around the world. She says that she created this body of work “during the time when I had limited space both mentally and physically to be creative,” and that the floating backgrounds “evoke the bliss and purity of childhood, where dreams are reality and evil is a far distant.” By laying the heavier forms against the lightness of the blue backdrop, Mohsenin reminds us to take the Weight Off the present moment by looking at it from a ten-thousands-feet-above that empowers one to push through before the Weight is back On again.

BLUE CHIP HOUSTON

SECONDARY MARKET TREASURES BENEFITTING THE HOUSTON ARTS FOUNDATION

January 20 to February 17, 2024

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Blue Chip Houston, an art exhibition and sale of secondary market treasures benefitting the Houston Arts Foundation. The show opens at 11 am on Saturday, January 20, 2024, at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in Houston's oldest Gallery Row. A reception will take place in the evening from 5 pm to 8 pm. Blue Chip Houston runs through February 17, 2024. HVFA events are always open to all and offered free to the public. 

The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, mixed media works, drawings, prints, and photographs. Most artworks in the sale are by artists with connections to Houston, including Kermit Oliver, James Surls, Dorothy Hood, Jesús Moroles, Mel Chin, Charles Schorre, Virgil Grotfeldt, Andy Warhol, Charles Pebworth, Jun Kaneko, Donald Roller Wilson, Terrell James, Mel Chin, Aaron Parazette, James Drake, Richard Fluhr, McKay Otto, Lester Marks, George Krause, Patsy Cravens, David Brown, Manual (Hill/Bloom), David Aylsworth, Basilios Poulos, Floyd Newsum, Earl Staley, Joe Mancuso, John Biggers, Edsel Cramer, Chuck Dugan, Robin Utterback, Leslie Field, Paul Kittelson, Joseph Havel, Robert Ruello, Kyle Young, Ibsen Espada, Richard Stout, Marianne Papanek-Miller, Giles Lyon, Al Souza, Kathleen Packlick, Wendy Watriss, Michael Kennough, Ron Hoover, John Atlas, Michael Meazell, Sandy Seltzer-Bryant, Daniel Kayne, Daryl Lauster, Paul Fleming, Emily Joyce, Charles Dorman David, Elena Cusi-Wortham, Edward Lee Hendricks, and more.

dreams, visions & desires

susan budge

October 19, 2023 - December 31, 2023

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Dreams, Visions & Desires, an exhibition of new sculptural works of art by Susan Budge. The show features a collection of objects rendered in ceramic. It opens on Saturday, October 21, 2023, at 11 am. A special reception will take place on opening day from 5 pm to 8 pm at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt, along with all the galleries in Houston’s oldest Gallery Row. An artist talk is scheduled for Saturday, November 11, at 1 pm. The exhibition runs through December, 2023. HVFA events are always open to all and offered free to the public.

Multitudes are revealed in Dreams, Visions & Desires, Budge’s first solo exhibition following a series of significant life events. As always, she prefers to work spontaneously in the studio in order to allow her subconscious thoughts to surface. Much like the Surrealists, Budge celebrates the unexpected, the element of surprise, and paradox in all she creates. She envisions each of her sculptures as having a secret soul which is silent more often than it speaks.

echome

mary margaret hansen

IMMERSED

TIFFANY HENG-HUI LEE

april 1 - may 6, 2023

The works of art in Immersed reflect Heng-Hui Lee's understanding of the relationship between the earth's elements and the balance of nature within the universe. Most artworks in the exhibition are mixed media collages that reference specific locations around the world which can be recognized by their colors. Heng-Hui Lee evokes moods through works that especially express feelings of peace and happiness. She translates a sense of balance into other objects, including delicate jewelry, which is also part of the exhibition.

OBECTS FROM DAVID BROWN AND OTHER PRIVATE COLLECTIONS BENEFITING THE HOUSTON ARTS FOUNDATION

fEBRUARY 25-MARCH 25,2023

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Objects from David Brown and Other Private Collections Benefiting the Houston Arts Foundation, an exhibition and sale of important secondary market works of art. The show opens on Saturday, February 25, 2023, and runs through Saturday, March 25, 2023, at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in Gallery Row in the Upper Kirby district. Hours on opening day are 11 to 5, with a reception from 5 to 8.

The exhibition and sale includes significant works by Kermit Oliver, James Surls, Dario Robleto, Jesús Rafael Soto, Lucia Koch, Tomas Diaz Cedeno, Jesús Bautista Moroles, James Drake, Dorothy Hood, Michael Tracy, Hilary Wilder, Sofi Zezmer, and others.

PETALS AND SPIKES

THEDRA CULLAR-LEDFORD

JANUARY 14 - FEBRUARY 18, 2023

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Petals and Spikes, an exhibition of new paintings by Texas-artist and feminist activist Thedra Cullar-Ledford. The show opens on Saturday, January 14, 2023, and runs through Saturday, February 18, 2023.

Petals and Spikes continues the long, historic tradition of artists who find inspiration in flowers. Examples date to ancient cave paintings and Egyptian tombs, Medieval millefleur tapestries, works by Italian Renaissance artists, including masterpieces like Botticelli’s bountiful Primavera, to the still life paintings of Old Dutch Masters; from Monet’s 250 Water Lilies paintings to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers series, Klimt’s lush and exuberant flower garden paintings, to Matisse’s bouquets of flowers, the Pop flowers repeated by Warhol, and Murakami’s joyously smiling flowers, all the way to Koons’ gigantic balloon flowers of today.

Petals and Spikes presents figurative and abstract floral works and is the third solo show for the artist at HVFA. These latest works build on Thedra’s lively New York show at Prince Street Gallery in 2021, Smells Like Good Times, where colorful figurative paintings depicted post-quarantine happiness. Prior shows, including HVFA’s Dollies and Villains, which took place in September 2020 during the height of the masked times, presented political characters, themes, and the revulsions of then-current events. The important Lady Part Follies at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, exhibited in 2016, confronted the horrors of cancer, including the artist’s own battle with breast cancer. With Petals and Spikes, the artist has returned to calmness and the effervescent palette of Accoutrements, exhibited at HVFA in 2018, shifting from beautiful clothes and accessories then to the joys of flowers now.

ONCE UPON A TIME

a gallery group show

December 3, 2022 - January 7, 2023

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to announce Once Upon A Time, a group exhibition featuring works by its 12 gallery artists.

Once Upon A Time tells the story of the Houston artists that make up the HVFA roster and form the heart of the gallery. Artists exhibiting in the show are Roberta Harris, Patrick McGrath Muñiz, Susan Budge, Thedra Cullar-Ledford, Mary Margaret Hansen, Linda Hickerson Hofheinz, Avisheh Mohsenin, Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Viveka Barnett, Tiffany Heng-Hui Lee, Claude Charlier, and John Dyer. Some of the artists have been with the gallery since it opened almost five years ago, and others are new to HVFA in 2022. All share the talent and heart and spirit that makes the gallery so special.

transcending

curated by susan budge & heidi vaughan

October 22, 2022 - November 26, 2022

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to announce Transcending, an exhibition featuring the work of 11 Texas artists curated by Susan Budge and Heidi Vaughan. The exhibition, which coincides with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, has at its core the notion of transcending cancer and other personal challenges through art. Transcending opened Saturday, October 22, 2022, at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in the Upper Kirby Galleries and ran through November 26, 2022.

Artists in the Transcending exhibition are Susan Budge, Thedra Cullar-Ledford, Richard Fluhr, Linda Hofheinz, Sharon Kopriva, Charmaine Locke, Michelle O’Michael, McKay Otto, Susan Plum, James Surls, and George Tobolowsky.

Susan Budge had a solo exhibition scheduled to open now at HVFA, but she was unable to create the works needed for it. Said the artist, “Following recent surgery for breast cancer, I realized that I could not produce enough work to fill my scheduled solo show. Rather than cancel, I asked if we might co-curate a show by artists whose works lift us out of our grounded realm. We all face challenges, and how we choose to regard them has a ripple effect on those around us. It is my hope that this exhibit will help viewers overcome the negative aspects of their individual challenges, creating a transcending effect.”

ELECTRICALLY

HILLERBRAND+MAGSAMEN

September 15, 2022 - october 15, 2022

Inspired by “Live Better Electrically,” a mid-century corporate advertising slogan, Electrically is an exhibition of photographs and sculptures by Hillerbrand+Magsamen.A bronze medallion, embedded in the brick next to the front door of Hillerbrand+Magsamen’s 1960s house, is emblazoned with the charge to “Live Better Electrically.” The medallion was part of one of the most successful post-war mass marketing home advertising campaigns in US history by General Electric and Westinghouse. The corporate “certification" on how to live is current and foreboding. Hillerbrand+Magsamen have harnessed and repurposed its power as inspiration for their exhibition Electrically.

After a tumultuous couple of years, Hillerbrand+Magsamen want to live better too, and reconnect. Through a dynamic and dangerous process of destruction and renewal, the artists translate electricity into a system of abstract visual language as they draw with electricity in an unpredictable method that creates one of a kind works as the electricity fuses with the image.

By using Lichtenberg burning (fractal burning) to discharge electricity through their artwork, Hillerbrand+Magsamen give a nod to the Surrealist’s process of “automatic drawing.” Fractal burning was discovered by a German Experimental Physicist, George Lichtenberg (1742 –1799) who also authored The Waste Books. The performative burning technique requires a unique collaboration between the two artists and two points of electricity. As each artist holds an electric node, with nostalgia-tinged images between them, the high-voltage current seeks out its connection across the distance, marking time in the form of charred fractal patterns.

objects from sanders, camfield, and other

private collections

BENEFITING THE HOUSTON ARTS FOUNDATION

JUNE 25,2022 - AUGUST 20,2022

OBJECTS FROM SANDERS, CAMFIELD, AND OTHER PRIVATE COLLECTIONS is a secondary market art exhibition. Works presented are from some of the most noteworthy private collections in Houston.

Among artworks in the exhibition will be objects by George Rodrigue, Jesus Rafael Soto, Davis Cone, Jene Highstein, Joseph Havel, Dorothy Hood, Jesus Moroles, Bert Long, Edward Lee Hendricks, William Cannings, Gael Stack, Man Ray, George Krause, Manual, Wendy Watris, Michael Tracy, Karin Broker, Aaron Parazette, Earl Staley, Richard Stout, Ibsen Espada, Joe Mancuso, Maria Antonietta Mameli, Mehdi Moutashar, Aldo Chaparro, Walter Rosenblum, Vittorio Matino, Helmut Barnett, Wulf Barsch, Jim Dine, Charles Pebworth, Troy Woods, David Alysworth, Paul Kittelson, Nick Gentry, Benjamin Senior, John Clement, James McNabb, Masaru Takiguchi, Ron Hoover, John Biggers, Larry Bell, Kermit Oliver, and more.

Fabulous

A GALLERY GROUP SHOW

may 7,2022 -june 18,2022

FABULOUS is a show intended to emphasize all that is positive, exciting, and wonderful about Houston art.

HVFA artists participating in the show are Emilie Duval, Susan Budge, Hillerbrand + Magsamen, Thedra Cullar-Ledford, Viveka Barnett, Roberta Harris, Linda Hofheinz, Patrick McGrath Muñiz, Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee, Avisheh Mohsenin, and Mary Margaret Hansen.