A Texas Gallery Embraces the Surreal With a Show Devoted to David Lynch

It's hard to quantify David Lynch's influence. When the late director died on Jan. 16, everyone's social media feed seemed filled with remembrances of watching Twin Peaks or recollections of how Eraserhead affected their imagination.

Indeed, for a creative who stuck so firmly to his bizarre worldview, Lynch was almost universally beloved — a big reason that Taylor, Texas, gallerist Steven Piper has staged an entire exhibition devoted to his work.

"[What Lynch you're drawn to] really depends on what Lynch you grew up on," he says. "A lot of people from the '70s were introduced to Eraserhead, which is Lynch as a crazy dark artist. If your introduction is Twin Peaks, it has a warm, friendly feeling about it, even though it's about murder. Then you have people introduced via Lost Highway, which is almost nightmare fuel."

Piper's gateway drug to the director's oeuvre was Season 1 of Twin Peaks, but he admits The Straight Story ("just a nice, loving film") is his favorite movie of the bunch. The director's inadvertent something-for-everyone approach made his films the perfect subject for the gallerist's third show at Outpost 512, a space 20 minutes north of Austin in Taylor. Gathering a coterie of pop surrealist artists from across the U.S. and beyond, Piper is opening a show of 75 prints, paintings and sculptures devoted to the director.

With an array that includes a Scott C. painting portraying Lynch's most iconic characters to Archie comic-style prints by London-based poster artist Sarah Sumeray, Together in Dreams: A David Lynch Tribute Gallery Show has a little something for every fan at every price point. Piper even has a piece from Greg Ruth, a longtime collaborator of the director who worked with Lynch until his death.

The gallerist comes by his Lynch obsession organically. Working in a family friend's video store in his native Tennessee since age 5, Piper was paid with free rentals until he was old enough for legal tender.

"My parents were really good friends with the owners, so they would babysit me as well," he recalls. "When I got of the age to walk and talk, I could clean the shelves, and they'd pay me in store credit until I was of legal age to make money."
When Piper wasn't at the video store, his dad dropped him off at a movie theater, where he would pay for a single screening and stay all day to theater hop. As an adult, he met his dream girl at a midnight showing of Evil Dead in Nashville and eventually followed her to Texas, where the couple has lived for 15 years. Catching the last gasp of weird Austin, Piper spent his spare time hanging out on the sidewalk of the city's Mondo Gallery for limited edition print drops. This led to his commissioning original prints, and Piper ultimately launched a poster business, accepting private orders from the likes of Alamo Drafthouse.

"I learned about all the different artists that worked with Mondo, and I just kept getting into it and learning more about it and started hiring the artists I liked," he says. "It's taken off. I've probably commissioned 300 posters. I'll have many actors and directors who have seen a poster and been wowed by them. One of the coolest ones was when I did one for Ready Player One, and the producer of the movie contacted me and sent me a bunch of stuff from [the set]."

Having attended trade shows like Dallas' Texas Frightmare Weekend for years, Piper felt it was time to open his own brick-and-mortar, and a 1,500-square-foot space in Taylor next to (what else?) the town's movie theater was the ideal space. Open just over a year, Outpost 512 has staged shows based on VHS tapes and cult cinema, but this is the gallery's first show devoted to a single director, and was in the works well before Lynch died.

"After the VHS show, I was trying to figure out what no one has done, and I said, 'You know, what, people in Austin love David Lynch; I think that would do well,’" Piper says. "I'd done a Twin Peaks poster many years ago, and the producer had found me and loved it so much he ordered a stack of them to give to the cast. I'm a huge Lynch fan, so I thought, let's make it a big thing. We were getting it all together when the news came out about his health, which has changed things in a way. Instead of a tribute, it's more about celebrating his life. Once the announcement came out, the artists asked to do something else since he passed away. I have one artist sending in 14 pieces of artwork."

Surprisingly, the most consistently portrayed film in Together in Dreams is Lost Highway, with zero Nicholas Cage from Wild at Heart. There is, however, a particularly creepy painting of that film's villain, Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), plus an illustration of Blue Velvet's heavy Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) with the logo of his least-favorite beer, Heineken.

Piper is kicking off the exhibition with a party on March 7, with plenty of cherry pie, donuts, and coffee, but art lovers from all over Texas can check out the show on a spring road trip through the end of April or shop the art online after the opening. The enduring affection for Lynch is sure to make Together a sellout.

"In the past week, so many people have reached out asking about the show," Piper says. "We've had people from all over the world ask me how they can purchase these items after he's passed away. Timing is everything, and it's a huge Lynch moment in the air right now."