25 Texas Sculptors Take Over East 16th Street All August Long

A Quiet Room That Earns a Second Look

Walk into the ArtCentre of Plano on any weekday this month and you will find the kind of stillness that makes you slow down. Pieces made from metal, ceramic, wood, cast glass, and materials harder to name occupy the space in ways that flat work simply cannot — you move around them, reconsider them from three feet away, then six. That experience is the point of Texas Sculpts V, the juried sculpture exhibition now in full swing at 902 E. 16th Street.

The show runs through August 29, and the heart of its calendar — artist talks, panel discussions, and drop-in programs — continues through August 25. If you have not made the drive to the ArtCentre yet, you still have most of the month.

Five Years and Twenty-Five Artists

Texas Sculpts V marks the fifth anniversary of what has become one of the more distinctive recurring exhibitions on the Plano arts calendar. This edition brings together 25 Texas artists working across a wide variety of mediums, which means the show resists easy categorization. A viewer drawn in by a welded steel form will turn a corner and encounter something carved, cast, or assembled from materials that read more like found objects than raw stock.

The juried format matters here. These works were selected, not simply submitted, and that process gives the exhibition a coherent seriousness even as the individual pieces pull in different aesthetic directions. The ArtCentre has built its programming around that kind of curatorial intention, and Texas Sculpts V reflects it.

Lunch and Learn: The Low-Commitment Entry Point

For anyone who finds formal gallery openings a little stiff, the Lunch and Learn Artist Talks offer a different way in. These midday sessions happen on an ongoing basis through August 25 and are free and open to the public. A $10 donation to the ArtCentre in support of the exhibition is always appreciated, but it is not required.

The format is casual by design. You can stop in during a lunch break, hear an artist talk about a specific piece or a broader idea, and leave with something to think about on the drive back to wherever you came from. No prior knowledge of sculpture is assumed or needed.

For Plano residents who work or live near the 16th Street corridor, this kind of accessible midday programming is worth knowing about. The ArtCentre is not trying to be intimidating. It is trying to be a room where people actually show up.

Friday Evenings with the Artists Themselves

The Friday evening panels are a different register entirely. Each week, participating sculptors discuss their work directly with visitors — the materials they chose, the ideas behind specific pieces, the process of getting from concept to finished object. Attendees can ask questions.

This is rarer than it sounds. Most people who look at art in a gallery setting never get to hear the person who made it explain what they were thinking. The Friday panels collapse that distance. If a particular piece has been sitting in your head since your first visit, a Friday evening gives you a place to put that curiosity.

The panels continue through August 29, one week past the primary programming window, so there are several more opportunities between now and the close of the show.

Why This Show Fits Plano Specifically

The ArtCentre sits in the older residential grid southeast of downtown Plano, in a part of the city that predates the Legacy corridor and the broader suburban expansion that defined the last few decades of growth here. The building and its block carry a different scale than most of what Plano has built since, and the ArtCentre has consistently used that setting to host work that requires physical presence and real space.

Sculpture in particular benefits from that environment. It needs room, and it needs viewers who are willing to walk around it. The ArtCentre provides both.

For a city that tends to get categorized primarily around its office parks and retail corridors, exhibitions like Texas Sculpts V are a reminder that Plano has been building a sustained arts infrastructure for some time. The fifth anniversary of this particular show is evidence of that continuity.

Getting There

The ArtCentre of Plano is located at 902 E. 16th Street. The Lunch and Learn Artist Talks run through August 25 at midday; Friday evening panels continue through August 29. Both programs are open to the public. The full exhibition runs through August 29.

Current hours and any updates to the panel schedule are available directly through the ArtCentre. It is worth checking before you go, as specific session times can shift.