MASS Ambient is a communal night of deep listening and relaxation—an immersive tapestry of sound, color and light created by local artists. Presented in collaboration with Pease Park Conservancy, this edition of MASS Ambient featured instrumental ambient sets by Hannah Spector, Poem Zero (Justo Cisneros & Shea McGilvray) and Veneer in Austin, Texas on May 23, 2025.
About MASS Gallery
MASS Gallery is a volunteer-run collective of artists, educators and arts workers dedicated to creative and social action. They host bi-monthly exhibitions and events centering LGBTQIA+ artists, offer affordable studio space and residencies, and support BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ organizations with space for gatherings.
About Pease Park Conservancy
The Tree House at Pease Park, designed by Mell Lawrence and Clare van Montfrans as part of the Kingsbury Commons redesign by Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, offers an immersive canopy experience. Open to the elements, it welcomes people of all ages and abilities to engage in both playful exploration and quiet reflection. As the forest grows, the structure becomes part of its surroundings—shaped by sun, wind and shadow.
About Poem Zero
Poem Zero is the collaborative project of San Antonio-based artists Justo Cisneros and Shea McGilvray. Merging Cisneros’ interdisciplinary approach to sound, movement and material with McGilvray’s freeform saxophone and electronic work, the duo shapes compositions that dwell between mysticism and dystopia. Poem Zero draws from sacred music, industrial textures and performance ritual.
Photography by Nellie Clark
Land sculpture for the group exhibition, Collective Tales in a Concrete Garden (2024) in Austin, Texas curated by guadalajara90210 x Co-Lab Projects.
Languages of sculpture and upholstery are communicated by materializing salvaged industrial materials in order to illuminate the interconnection between liberation and fantasy. The work serves as a vehicle to unearth the subconscious by reimagining archaic objects of industry, technology and transportation to channel realms of the eternal and the unknown.
Materials: aircraft panel, analog tracker, bricks, electrical cords, latex, leather, pilot seat, polymer clay, resin, steel pole, white thread.
In a scenario where nature and the urban landscape intertwine, Collective Tales in a Concrete Garden explores the dialogue between organic elements and industrial forms. Set within a sculptural garden, the exhibition presents stories told through a variety of materials—stone, metal, wood, ceramics, mixed media, and living flora. Each sculpture embodies a fragment of a larger narrative, blending personal and collective histories that reflect on the relationship between nature, space, and memory.
Surreal figures, abstract forms, and unexpected textures emerge from gravel pedestals, which serve as grounding elements in this evolving narrative. The gravel, with its industrial origins and earthy presence, not only supports the sculptures but also frames them as key elements in the broader exploration of the balance between the organic and the constructed. Through the interplay of material and form, the exhibition unfolds as a meditation on transformation, coexistence, and the merging of natural and built environments.
Bodybuilder is a study on identity, escapism, and the repressed conformist experience translated through performance and experimental sound. Located on Co-Lab Projects' Sean Gaulager’s Ranch Apocalypse in Austin Texas, Bodybuilder seeks to channel an isolated landscape as a gateway to explore states of spiritual deterioration and transcendence.
Director | Choreographer | Set & Sound Design: Justo Cisneros
Performers: Jairus Carr, Anna Bauer, Shea McGilvray, Justo Cisneros
Saxophone | Tech & Sound Design: Shea McGilvray
Photography | Wardrobe | Hair: Cleo Diwata
Preliminary sketch of my land sculpture, “Fantasy Bond” for the residency and pop-up sculpture park Wild Ruins, Wild Orientations (2023) in Adkins, Texas.
Land sculpture for the group residency and exhibition Wild Ruins, Wild Orientations (2023) in Adkins, Texas curated by Megan Solis. Fantasy Bond explores metaphysical states of ascension by illuminating the cyclical nature of time through recontextualized materials and objects.
Materials: discarded mattress, bricks, cement, chains, soil, artificial fruit, artificial flowers, pins, styrofoam, plywood, recycled tarp, steel poles, super glue, nails.
This privately owned land hosted an independent residency and exhibition space started by San Antonio artist Megan Solis. Its inaugural exhibition, Wild Ruins, Wild Orientations, questioned how art is made and experienced when free from a traditional exhibition space, in a land strange and energetically charged.
The artists all made work that challenged institutional norms in modes of making and display. They ranged from performance that blured gendered pathways, to a composition of uncanny sculpture and sound; effectively opening up portals of blanketed history. Traveling to and from this forgotten soil created a potential transfiguration for its artists and visitors.
Performance for Wild Ruins, Wild Orientations (2023) in Adkins, Texas curated by Megan Solis.
Director | Choreographer | Wardrobe | Sculpture | Sound: Justo Cisneros
Performers: Jairus Carr, Oddalys Salcido, Anna Bauer, Justo Cisneros
Hair & Makeup: Cleopatra Diwata
Photography: Cleopatra Diwata, Death to Content
Sculpture and sound installation for the group exhibition, Show Me A Dawn (2023) at Co-Lab Projects in Austin, Texas.
Materials: poly foam, styrofoam, resin, clay, trash bags, ribbon, sewing thread, super glue, nails, screws, pins, face mask, toy unicorn, toy snake, whips, glass stand, amp, eight minute loop of processed sounds and noise.
Show me a dawn like a rising star that becomes visible before sunrise.
Gift me a star after the earth orbits the sun, one heralded by dawn and granted by Sirius. Take me to the genesis of the pattern, before the fall, before the emergence of recursive time.
Show me a dawn before technological accomplishment defined our ecological collapse.
Gift me a moment devoid of natural disasters, madness, and the dog days of summer heat steeped in Luciferian ritual. Take me to that moment of dawn like a rising star.
Show me a dawn before the fall when the garden still existed within us, before the rising star, before the serpent and the apple, before the patterns and the quantified human soul. Show me the dawn of now, a dawn for every morning of seven days and seven stars, a dawn we carry and that carries us.
Collaborative text by Leslie Moody Castro and Sean Gaulager of Co-Lab Projects
Assemblage for the group exhibition, Essentials: Mask Show (2020) exhibited at the San Antonio Public Library in San Antonio, Texas curated by Misa Yamamoto and Fabian Leon Villa from Essentials Creative.
Materials: papier-mâché, paint, styrofoam, bird cage, nails, artificial flowers, ribbon, pins.
Essentials Creative is a multimedia collective where Indigenous American, Latin American, and Asian artists converge to create visual narratives that resonate across cultural boundaries. Based in Austin, Texas, their team of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ creatives transforms conceptual visions into tangible experiences that honor ancestral knowledge while boldly reimagining artistic possibilities.
Their practice intentionally dissolves boundaries between photography, fashion, graphic design, video production, projection art, animation, and installation work. This interdisciplinary approach allows them to craft multidimensional experiences that connect with audiences on intellectual, emotional, and sensory levels—creating art that lives between and beyond traditional categories.
Essentials Creative presented an exhibition of artists and designers to celebrate the myths and sacred powers of masks. Inspired by surrealism and fashion, masks are often used in the work of Essentials, manifesting in images of hidden faces, masks as makeup, fabric masks, beads, masks in paintings, photography, and social media. Essentials invited local and national artists from different disciplines to interpret the theme of masks.