Andy Coolquitt adds live-in art work to East Austin

Andy Coolquitt's East Austin house and studio complex blurs the boundaries between outsider folk art and the insider world of "high concept".

"I don't understand the popularity of this house, it threw me from the beginning," said Artist Andy Coolquitt. "It was doubly strange because I was getting a lot of resistance form the industitutional art world."

Coolquitt wanted to develop something that was outside of the traditional places where art hangs or where art is created. Most of the people in the art world that he approached about creating a living studio didn't think it would work.

However, Coolquitt says, that he went ahead with it any way. The result has been that much of the rest of the world has embraced his view of art.

"I've always been interested in art that allowed me a place to come in," said Coolquitt. "The unfinished quality of this environment is where people can insert themselves into it."

Coolquitt actually seems to embody his art. He has made his studio and home a gathering place for artists.

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Produced by Tom Spencer .