MODERN ARTIST Texas
San Antonio Missions National Historic Parks - Artist in Residence
MYTH: Catching Light in the Legends and Stories of Texas, the San Antonio Missions, and the Spanish Trail with the Windows of St. Denis & Abbot Suger (1144 AD)
By Rex Hausmann
Family & Friends, Cowboys, Apaches, Scholars, and The Spanish Mission Trail: Notes on an adventure that keeps going on.
When a government shutdown temporarily closed my studio at Mission San Juan Capistrano, I didnt stop creating. Instead, I took my studio on the road. I traveled with my "light catchers"—mobile sculptures made of five open-top Plexiglas tubes—and checked in with Mission Heritage Partners twice a week as the work evolved. Lacking a traditional building, a scheduled series of luncheons and dinners with friends, mentors, and colleagues became my new creative sanctuary. With an iPhone for documentation and sketchbooks for journaling, my studio shifted into the open road and the digital space. I updated Instagram and Facebook as I traveled, engaging with the metaverse in real-time. As the great master David Alfaro Siqueiros wisely noted, "You must use tools of today to make art for today."
With these tubes, I am tracing the genesis and history of my home across San Antonio, Boerne, and greater Texas—navigating through the San Antonio Spanish Missions, the Old Spanish Trail, and the Camino Real de San Sabá. This adventure frequently finds me under the shade of ancient trees, inside old Spanish forts, or resting in sacred church spaces. Pausing to read historical plaques, I consistently find three universal gifts: water, peace, and shade. In this process, I realized that humanity has sought out these exact same spaces for thousands of years.
Carrying the sculptures in my pickup truck, I drove literally hours across Texas, sometimes walking through open fields, public parks, and historic sites to find ancestral mile markers. Along the way, I collaborated closely: obtaining permission from landowners, speaking with scholars who uncovered these historic footprints, visiting public spaces, and consulting with museum curatorial staffs to share information. Our conversations centered on history and the countless stories woven into the land—both "tall tales" and documented facts—giving birth to the project's title: “MYTH: Catching Light in the Legends and Stories of Texas, the San Antonio Missions, and the Spanish Trail with the Windows of St. Denis & Abbot Suger (1144 AD).”
These adventures were shared with extraordinary people. In Mason, Texas, I joined my friend Kyle Martin—an architect, Rice University alumnus, and father—for dinner at his wife Rachel’s family home. Under a 500-year-old spring oak in the backyard, I laughed over cigars and bourbon with Rachel's stepfather, Mell, whom we affectionately call "The Great Melvis." Together, we shared a charcuterie board in a historic home dating back to the era of Robert E. Lee, where a small plaque in the back details the deep history of the Polk house.
My journey continued to Menard, Texas, tracing "The Ditch"—an 1870s structure that follows parts of a 1761 Spanish-era acequia. Originally built to provide irrigation and power gristmill wheels, it sits nestled under towering live oaks. In a metaphysical way, we were linking communities across centuries, transporting ourselves back 300 to 400 years. For Native Americans, however, the concept of time is vastly different from the linear timeline of start and finish used by modern Americans. As Apache architect Rick Reyes explains, time is a wheel or a cycle; some things simply are, have always been, and will continue to be.
In Doss, Texas, I spent time on the historic Heard Ranch with Audrey Billups and her family, whose lineage on the land traces back to the 1850s. On this beautifully preserved working cowboy ranch, we painted, visited her horse Firefly, and celebrated with her family. Later, we helped support the Mason Arts and Wine Festival, an annual tradition active for 18 years, which Kyle and Rachel Martin helped found. Audrey and I painted at Old Fort Mason, a historic site that has housed notable generals since before the Civil War.
The journey then brought me to San Pedro Springs Park alongside Tony—a fellow artist, father, and studio neighbor at Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community. Together with his son, Joaquin, we drew water from a natural basin that humans have relied on for millennia. Reaching back in time under trees so old, tall, sacred, and reverent felt deeply profound. There is a plaque that says “the friends of Geroge Washington” under an old live oak that hast to be at least 500 years old.
Later, I shared time with Lipan Apache descendant Rick "Rickey" Reyes, who stood in full traditional buckskins at Mission San José. We also visited the Blue Hole, a sacred spring behind the University of the Incarnate Word on Broadway. Rick, a San Antonio architect, had the sacred honor of being invited to pray with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2019. Together, we sat on a bench inscribed with the words "Be Still and Know," looking out over the quiet, contemplative source of the San Antonio River. We shared cigars gifted to me by Murphy, a board member of San Antonio Missions Heritage Partners, from a dinner at Van's Restaurant alongside fellow board members Karla, Adam, and Elena. With Rick, the smoke of Murphy’s cigar accompanied deep conversations about origin stories, spirit animals, trees, and the philosophy of prayer—continuing an ancient tradition thousands of years old.
Back in the city (San Antonio, TX), I shared lunches at Bill Miller Bar-B-Q with scholar Dr. Ricardo Romo, tracing the original site of the San Antonio de Valero mission (the Alamo) somewhere between modern-day City Hall, the Spanish Governor’s Palace, the Courthouse, and San Fernando Cathedral. We discussed his family lineage and his deep roots supporting Texas artists and artisans. We even detoured to Penner's to look at "El Presidente" guayabera shirts, chatting with clerks who still remember fitting Dr. Romo for suits. We both walked out wearing an El Presidente. This shop history carried a double honor for me: Dr. Romo was the President of UTSA when I was a student, and he was an early champion of my career, collecting several of my large-scale works and granting me one of my very first museum exhibitions, curated by Arturo Almeida at the Institute of Texan Cultures “The Texas Contemporary Artist Series”.
To contextualize the art history of this project, I consulted with scholar Dr. Marcus Burke to "catch" the light of Saint Denis within Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin (2015) at the Blanton, Museum of Art ut Austin Campus. This contemporary masterpiece shares its spiritual and artistic roots with the Abbey of Saint Denis outside Paris, where I first observed these radiant light rays in 2017. To honor Dr. Burke. I will dive briefly into art history vernacular: my method of capturing light mirrors what Ellsworth Kelly experienced in France after World War II—the luminous, transforming yellow light of the South of France. My light catchers capture the passing of the day just as tangibly as the masterworks of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, or Claude Monet’s shifting visions of Notre-Dame. It channels the scale of Olafur Eliasson’s massive The Weather Project sun at the Tate Modern, creating temporary, in situ installations akin to French artist Daniel Buren, or Christo and Jeanne-Claude. It remains as ephemeral as an Andy Goldsworthy environment, capturing time, place, and community over shared meals, echoing the Relational Aesthetics movement of the early 2000s.
Throughout this project, I have hung out with a community of incredible charity—leaders dedicated to helping others through cultural and social stewardship. They give ground to hope and embody Theodore Roosevelt’s great charge: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." As one of the true trailblazers of the National Parks System and the Department of the Interior, Roosevelt's legacy aligns directly with this residency. I wear my official National Park Service name badge with immense pride; it looks very official and quite classy.
Most recently, we organized a photoshoot in front of the Bexar County Courthouse with County Judge Peter Sakai and his wife Mrs. Rachel Sakai. We stood on the historic grounds of the original wooden Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar. Judge Sakai has been a close mentor and friend for 22 years. In the early days of my career, we would regularly eat lunch together; he likely had no idea how deeply meaningful and influential those casual meals were to my development.
Finally, I joined Amir Samandi, Director of SOS (Succeed in Style), to visit the Lourdes Grotto and Tepeyac de San Antonio, gathering holy water from the Oblate School of Theology on San Pedro Avenue. Afterward, we ate at The Original Taco House, a local treasure frozen beautifully in time, where servers still use a nostalgic zipline and tennis ball to send orders to the kitchen. Some things don't need to change, and shouldn't. It brought back fond memories of grabbing breakfast tacos through the drive-thru with my brother back when we worked together at "The Shop" (Hausmann & Hausmann Design Co.), or walking over from the old seminary together when school let out.
It was a true honor to finish the project at the altar at Mission conception during the double illumination with my family. Now you see them here in this museum, ending my residency at the national parks as The Artist in residence for 2025.
Rex Hausmann
Artist | Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community