The Hausmann Family History
“At Hausmann Millworks, founded by San Antonio locals, our goal is to provide a constructive, professional setting in which San Antonio artists and small businesses can thrive and succeed. ‘The Millworks’ (as we call it) is a group of creative people – painters, digital artists, sculptors, fibers and craft artists, photographers, performing artist groups, woodworkers and metal fabricators – who have created a community and sense of place in the heart of San Antonio, Texas.
Our history: in 1976 after graduating from Trinity University, Gene Hausmann opened a furniture design shop studio at The Southwest Craft Center (now South West School of Art). Subsequently, Gene and his wife Renee, worked together in manufacturing for over 30 years, growing the family business to a city block. In 2006, the Hausmann family, Gene, Renee, and Rex along with a few friends started re-purposing their buildings with 3 studios, Rex, Dave & Louie. Now “The Millworks” has grown into a complex of over 65 studios, schools and design/ craft shops encompassing a whole city block in Alta Vista.”
EST. 1976
RE-EST. 2008
The Gardener
Sometimes I’m gardening.
Sometimes in a board meeting.
Sometimes on a plane.
All the time on the phone.
Sometimes teaching (as a guest artist).
Sometimes painting.
Sometimes in a suit, and some times in pants … most of the time in shorts with sandals.
Sometimes fixing a light bulb.
Sometimes having coffee with a studio or friends.
Sometimes writing.
WORKING all the time.
Artist Statement
For me, painting is the purest form of problem solving. I communicate through drawing and painting and sometimes words which I like to have fun with. Art and life become one in my images, and I have two overriding interests: painting and people. My goal is to relate with people, their daily lives, their actions and their stories as they are.
I am most inspired by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Akira Kurosawa, George Melies, Antoni Gaudi, Tom Sachs, and Daniel Buren. These literary, cinematic and visual artists are all storytellers. This is what interests me. In my world, they would be eating donuts and sipping coffee on a New York fire escape or at Dollar-Hot-Dog night at a San Antonio Missions baseball game.
The subjects of discussion would be their favorite books, films, and museum pieces. These conversations are the basis of my art—the synthesis of art and life. My art is colorful, accessible and autobiographical. I try to speak not only the language of the art world but to everyday people as well. Many artists may ask themselves, “What is my take on the world?” For me, the better question is, “What is my place in the world, and how does my work make this world a better place?”
I believe that art is as simple or complex as the living of life itself. Like life, art should not be and is not perfect. The paint must at times lose control, drip and spill. A line can trail off here or there, like a good conversation at a baseball game or on a fire escape, coffee in hand while drawing life’s every day mysteries.
Welcome to The Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community
I’m the guy that cooks for people, paints, reads, gardens and occasionally enjoys a good cigar (usually working on old cars or in the garden).
– Rex Hausmann
Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community
