Walking into an empty contemporary art gallery can feel like stepping into a virtual tabula rasa ("blank slate"). Inevitably, you encounter the "white cube" --bare floors and whitewashed walls designed to focus attention on the art by removing it from the context of real life. This Spartan approach to art presentation took root in the early 20th century and has persisted in the gallery world ever since. But in Austin two art advocates are opening up their own homes as art venues to show contemporary works in an unexpected domestic setting--amid the trappings of everyday life.

Liz Joblin--whose cozy dwelling in the Brazos Loft building doubles as Studio 107--insists that showing cutting-edge art in a residential environment helps "blur the line between the white cube and the home." Joblin's loft is a tidy, modern space with and open floor plan anchored by a large black leather sofa and a red circular rug. A corner kitchenette opens up to the living area, and a folding screen is all that separate her private bedroom quarters from the rest of the loft. For potential buyers seeing the art in someone else's living space demonstrates "how it could fit in their home, and how they could live with contemporary art," Joblin said.

This past summer, Joblin displayed the work of Max Kazemzadeh, whose art draws from both his Middle Eastern heritage and Texas upbringing. A large plywood sculpture of the Arabic word for "home" partially blocked off access to her bedroom, and a machine gun mounted with a video camera occupied the dining room table. Self-portraits of the artist in traditional Middle Easter guises greeted visitors at the entryway and digitally altered photographs of young athletes with gaping flesh wounds were propped up above the kitchen cabinets. "It's shocking what you can get use to," she remarked, nodding in the direction of the grisly photos.

While you'd never guess it from her soft-spoken manner, Joblin is not one to shy away from challenging subject matter. With a tendency to show edgy art that might not otherwise find a local venue, she brings in new shows approximately every other month. When she first opened Studio 107 in 1999, Joblin's husband balked at the idea of having strangers traipse through their home on a regular basis. But, Joblin said, with a hint of a smile, "he's learned to live with that." Her next show, "Rising Stars," opens October 16 and features emerging artists Robert Pruitt, Young-Min Kang, and Leona Scull Hons. (Update to article: Robert Pruitt was featured at the Whitney Biennial 2006 and in his own show at the Comtemporary Art Museum, Houston and tapped for the ArtPace in San Antonio 2007, Young-Min Kang has also had great success with his career and is doing a public art installation at the Austin Bergstrom airport and his work was purchased for the permanent collection of the Austin Museum of Arts, Leona Scull-Hons is working hard at curating and doing art installations.

As an artist and painter herself, Joblin explained that she had a number of reasons for wanting to start a home-based gallery. "I wanted to grow a community of artists and show things that would interest me and stimulate me to make art. It's very stimulating having access to this caliber of art." While she benefits personally from the constant exposure to new artistic ideas, Joblin see the main purpose of the space as raising local awareness of contemporary art. "Promoting contemporary art is the goal," she said. "But I think that people can become more familiar with it because it's in a home setting. They just feel a certain comfort."

Laurence Miller, a long-time arts advocate who formerly served as director at ArtPace in San Antonio as well as at the Austin Museum of Art - Laguna Gloria, agrees with Joblin that a domestic setting can make all the difference when it comes to experiencing contemporary art. Since the summer of 2003, Miller has been organizing avant-garde art installations in his home on 33rd Street, just north of the University of Texas campus. "It's important for the work to be in a domestic setting and on a domestic scale," he said. "It allows the visitor to experience something in a space they can relate to--not a museum or gallery."

One of the founders of Fluent~Collaborative--a non-profit organization committed to further the cause of contemporary art in Austin--Miller initiated his home art venue (called "Testsite") as a kind of experimental space: part exhibition gallery, open studio, temporary residency program, and part private home. When he was first developing the concept, he asked himself: "What are the descriptors used to describe Austin? Film, music,young people, high tech, university town." Then, "What would it take to put contemporary art into these descriptors? Evidently, his living room is one answer.

At first glance, Miler's home looks like an unlike space for contemporary art shows. The inconspicuous, two-story brick house is set back from the street behind an impeccably manicured lawn and a quaint picket fence. But once inside, visitors never know what they might encounter. Testsite encourages artists to create site-specific work that interacts with the architecture of Miller's home, alternately filling the entryway, the living room, and the dining room. An installation by Luke Savisky in 2003 involved several projectors running at the same time, illuminating the windows, walls and niches of Miller's home with flickering images of swimmers acrobats, and speeding sports cars. Testsite also pairs artists with local writers, who compose text to accompany each installation. This month, Denton-base artist Annette Lawrence is paired with Annette Carlozzi, curator of American and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum of Art.

Miller plays a large role in determining which artists and writers are invited to participate in Testsite. But after the selection is made, the artist are frequently given free reign to transform the space according to their vision. Miller's only requirement is that his home continue to operate as a domestic space.

"We get pushed on that a lot," he admitted. Occasionally, the installations render the living environment practically uninhabitable--like the installation by Tom Harris and Ian Pedigo, in which the home was transformed in an imaginary mining town called" New Dursley." Stones representing a mine filled the fireplace, and white fabric emblazoned with the names of different suburbs, residential communities, and commercial districts draped over Miller's stylish modern furniture. "You couldn't sit down?" Miller protested.

MIller is evangelical in his commitment to contemporary art, but he's also something of a hell-raiser.

"Part of my job is to piss artist off. I want to show work which causes them to question their own work. The worst response a viewer can have is no response," he said. " It's equally valuable to me that art upsets[viewers] as it gives them pleasure. That's what art can do, and that's how change happens." Miller may have started Testsite to shake up the arts community and piss off artists, but the last thing he wanted to do was anger his neighbors. At first, he resisted placing show announcements in the local papers for fear that throngs of curious onlookers might overrun his quiet neighborhood. Fortunately, the rowdy crowds have failed to materialize. Nevertheless, Testsite does continue to draw a respectable and growing number of visitors when it is open to the public on Sunday afternoons. As for the neighbors, they haven't minded a bit. "That's what I love about Austin," Miller said. "It's just another weird thing." HB