Some of the world's greatest artistic masterpieces were born out of cramped spaces. Look to Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” famously painted behind a barred window at a French asylum, for proof.

But doesn’t creative genius deserve the space it needs to take flight?

Elgin Street Studios, home of the Master of Fine Arts and sculpture programs at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts, is gifting students with just that. In keeping with the University’s commitment to providing students with the gold standard in education, Elgin is a state-of-the-art facility designed to inspire creativity and innovation and cultivate future generations of artists to steward Houston’s robust art scene.

“If you have a leading arts institution like we do, and if you provide the kind of excellence in pedagogy and faculty we do, you should have a facility that matches,” says Beth Merfish, associate professor of art history and the director of the School of Art at UH. “Elgin matches the rigor of the program and the stature of the faculty.”

Opened in summer 2020 and located on the northeast corner of Houston’s Arts District, at 43,000 square feet, Elgin is the first purpose-built building on the UH campus and also features a parking garage, administrative offices and retail space. More than just a place to create, Elgin Street Studios itself is a work of art. Every inch of the expansive, dual-floor structure is dedicated to teaching and creating art.

With sky-high ceilings and walls of windows, natural light floods the facilities and creates an expansive environment for working and learning. Students enjoy their own spacious studios or graphic design areas for the duration of their MFA tenures, and exhibition galleries offer space for critiques.

“Facilities and materials should not be barriers to creativity, so our facility offers students every opportunity to pursue their creative path,” Merfish says.

MFA candidate Maddie Casagranda says she’s been “very fortunate” to spend the last three years at Elgin Street Studios. “As my practice has become more interdisciplinary, I’ve been able to take advantage of the physical space, resources and support around me. I’m grateful for the space and time this program has given me.”

Elgin is filled with a range of traditional and modern technology and equipment. In the sculpture wing, there’s a fully equipped metal shop, sculpture gardens and an impressive commercial-grade woodshop.

“Francis Giampietro, who runs that space, would say that you could chop down a tree in your yard, bring it into the woodshop and mill it into anything you want,” Merfish says.

Giampietro, who earned his MFA from UH in 2012, now leads the popular wood and metal fabrication class, where students learn to create with oxygen/acetylene torches. “We went to great lengths to acquire and maintain a wide variety of equipment to meet the needs of a diverse group of artists and makers,” he says.

As designers dreamed up custom facilities for each program discipline — from photography and graphic design to digital media and painting — they kept safety and accessibility top of mind. This is evident in the fully ADA-compliant supply room and the spray booth equipped with a vacuum system that enables safe aerosol use.

One of Merfish’s favorite building features is the donated library, for which Giampietro custom-built the shelving. Commissioned by the estate of Dana Padgett, a former UH faculty member, the shelving unit now harbors her book collection. Giampietro, who studied under Padgett, says she and her books played a major role in his thesis.

“It was a profound experience to build shelves to house her personal books,” he says, adding that a meeting with Padgett’s husband led to his choice of technique. “He told me they did a lot of edge-banding of plywood at their home. I was able to use this method in the construction of the shelves. I enlisted the help of several students, turning the project into a carpentry workshop for them.”

Maximizing impact is a common theme within Elgin’s walls. Though the space offers artists privacy behind closed doors, Elgin also fosters community with shared spaces that “almost feel like a college dorm,” Merfish says.

Even the building’s construction encourages collaboration; students can interact easily with classmates in other areas, so they are “literally talking through the building,” Merfish says.

“Art thrives in a diverse and changing environment, so it’s really exciting to see all these students interact with one another. And because Elgin was built for exactly this purpose, they are free to create in exactly the ways they want to. And we can see that in the variety of work they make.”

That range was on display March 22–April 20 during the 47th annual MFA Thesis Exhibition, which takes place every spring. If you missed this year’s, you can still get your creative juices flowing during First Friday Studio Sessions, which invite curators, gallerists and professionals to tour the building and interact with the students during the fall and spring semesters.

“We’re providing students with so much opportunity, experience and institutional knowledge that they leave us ready to be particularly impactful in the art world and beyond,” Merfish says. “When they do that, they elevate the stature of the city of Houston.”

As Houston’s art scene continues to hum and emerging UH artists leave their marks, history will look back on Elgin Street Studios and see it as not just a vessel for creators, but an active participant in the magic we call art.