Homecoming

Fresh off a stint in New York City, the local wife-and-husband team of Cole and Raef Payne are launching Arrt Dept., a collective of visual artists, other creatives, and strategists working together as a newly launched design studio. As part of Spring Gallery Night, the Paynes are hosting a homecoming show of sorts for their inaugural event. From 2pm to 10pm on Sat, Mar 29, the free, all-ages, multisensory Spring: An Exhibition in Sight & Sound is happening at The Pool, the 2,400-square-foot community artspace on the first floor of Everly Plaza (1801 8th Av, Fort Worth, 817-924-0377) on the Near Southside.

The event will feature five female artists from North Texas — Erika Duque Scully, Mariell Guzman, Katayoun Hosseinrad, Taraka Larson, and Jessica Vollrath — with works across multiple mediums.

“This show is all about breaking the traditional gallery mold,” Cole said. “We’re blending visual art, music, and immersive design to create something refreshing and electric for Fort Worth’s creative community. This is a passion project for both Raef and me.”

Erika Duque Scully is a landscape and nature painter with a degree from TCU who lives and works in Fort Worth. She is currently represented by Fort Works Art Gallery. Duque is also an educator who leads workshops at museums like The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and The Sid Richardson Museum and frequently teaches at Oil and Cotton.

Mariell Guzman is a Texas-based mixed-media painter/muralist who also does illustrations and installations and has an art degree from the University of Texas. Born in Mexico, she feels her heritage deeply influences her art. Guzman’s murals can be found throughout the country and Mexico.

Katayoun Hosseinrad also hails from TCU. She is a second-year master’s student and visual artist whose work is influenced by the cultural and natural landscapes of her hometown of Tabriz, Iran. Hosseinrad draws inspiration from surrealism and Persian painting traditions.

Texas native Taraka Larson will be showing a film installation. Arrt Dept. describes her work as an alchemical fusion of myth, media, and the metaphysical, an “unflinching excavation of the feminine in flux.” As a musician, performer, and sonic architect, Larson dismantles boundaries between the intimate and the infinite, channeling a raw, ecstatic vision of transformation.

Jessica Vollrath started as a self-taught painter and went on to earn a degree from Howard University. She is currently working on her master’s from TWU. Arrt Dept. says her paintings are luminous meditations on femininity, transformation, and connection. “Her work invites us into an intimate dialogue about identity and growth, expressed through masterful oil paintings that feel both ethereal and deeply rooted in lived experience.”

Molly Chapin, a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter from Houston, will perform. If you’d like to check her out sooner than Gallery Night, she is doing an acoustic set of jazzy and R&B originals and covers at Troy’s at Texas Live! (1650 E Randol Mill Rd, Arlington, 817-769-1749) at 6pm Thu.