Three addresses on East 11th Street hold six of the 14 stops on the Houston Heights Association's Art Crawl. At 305 E. 11th St., John Carroll Runnels's sculpture, Sharon Kopriva's studio and a mural based on Daniel Johnston's "Don't Be Scared" share an address. Kelly Moran's studio is next door at 303. At 301, according to the crawl route, Redbud Arts Center sits with a Daniel Anguilu mural on its wall. Most of the year, people pass this block on the way somewhere else. On Saturday, November 7, from 1 to 5 p.m., the studio doors open.
The HHA Art Crawl is a self-guided tour of working studios, run by the Houston Heights Association with Redbud Arts Center. The HHA's listing says visitors can meet the artists, see works in progress and have light refreshments. The tour is about the production side of the neighborhood's art: where the sculpture, painting and printmaking get made, a few blocks from where they end up on display. The HHA frames the tour with a bit of history, noting that "decades ago, the Heights was home to 20% of the working artists in Texas."
Fourteen Stops, Two Ways to Cover Them
The route comes in two clusters, and you can visit them in any order. The HHA suggests driving between the five north studios, then parking once and walking the rest.
| Stop | Name | Address | What's there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Karin Broker Studio | 506 Delz St. | Taught drawing and printmaking at Rice University from 1980 to 2021; Susan Budge's sculptures also on display |
| 2 | Balinskas Preservation of Art | 410 Martin St. | Art conservator Ray Balinskas and art historian Lourdes Balinskas |
| 3 | Paul Kittelson & Carter Ernst Studios | 415 Martin St. | Kittelson teaches at the UH School of Art; Ernst holds a UH MFA in sculpture |
| 4 | Ed Wilson & Magda Boltz-Wilson Studios | 405 Martin St. | Sculpture, printmaking and photography |
| 5 | Tim Glover Studio | 404 Thornton Rd. | Based in the artist community known as "Itchy Acres" |
| 6 | Joe Barrington's Bulldog | Heights High School, Oxford St. and E. 13th St. | Welded-metal sculpture |
| 7–9 | Runnels, Johnston mural, Kopriva Studio | 305 E. 11th St. | Sculpture, mural, studio |
| 10 | Kelly Moran Studio | 303 E. 11th St. | Painting, ceramics, printmaking, collage |
| 11–12 | Redbud Arts Center, Anguilu mural | 301 E. 11th St. | Tour partner and mural |
| 13 | The Heights Petite Shoppe | 223 E. 11th St. | Women-owned co-op with art prints and workshops |
| 14 | True North sculpture walk | 400 to 1800 blocks of Heights Blvd. | Eight outdoor sculptures |
The north cluster sits along Delz Street, which the HHA places half a block east of North Shepherd Drive, and on Martin Street and Thornton Road. Three of those five stops are within a few house numbers of each other on Martin Street, so the driving leg is shorter than the map suggests. The walking cluster runs from the Heights High School Bulldog south along East 11th, then west to the boulevard.
Several of the north studios belong to artists with long teaching ties to the city. Broker taught at Rice for four decades, Kittelson is on the UH art faculty, and Glover is a high school art teacher whose work, according to the HHA, is held in public, corporate and private collections. Along East 11th, Runnels co-founded MotherDogStudios in 1984, which the HHA calls the oldest surviving artists' warehouse in downtown Houston. Kopriva has exhibited continuously since the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Fresh Paint exhibition launched her career in the mid-1980s, and she has had a solo show at the Menil Collection.
The Pass Has Rules That Shape the Afternoon
Tickets are $50 per person, and net proceeds go to the Houston Heights Association. One online order can cover a whole group. Before the event, the HHA emails a digital pass showing the buyer's name and the number of guests it admits. At each stop, a volunteer checks in the live pass on your phone. Plan around these points:
- Screenshots of the pass are not accepted. Bring a charged phone with the live pass ready.
- No children under 12. The HHA says this twice on its listing.
- No rain checks. The tour runs on its single afternoon.
- Expect to walk on grass. The HHA recommends comfortable shoes.
- You visit at your own risk. These are private working studios.
- Getting around. The HHA suggests rideshare or street parking, and asks visitors to watch for traffic.
- Don't touch the art.
The age limit and the live-pass check-in suit a tour of rooms where people work. Visitors step into private working studios where works in progress are on view. That makes the crawl a smaller, slower afternoon than a street festival, and four hours to cover 14 stops leaves time to talk at each one.
The Same Hands Behind the Sidewalk Art
The crawl ties into the art the neighborhood already sees every day. Redbud Arts Center, the tour partner, describes itself as a nonprofit founded by Gustav and Sharon Kopriva. It focuses mainly on Texas art and offers exhibition, education and advisory services. Kopriva's studio, stop 9, sits next to Redbud's own space, so a stop at East 11th also puts you inside the organization behind several of the area's public-art trails. Glasstire reported in December 2025 on Redbud's record of public-art trails. That record includes the Heights Boulevard Sculpture Project in 2016, Richmond Avenue trails starting in 2021, and a Wiess Park trail with the Houston Parks Board that was on view through August 2026.
Stop 14 sets the deadline. The True North 2026 exhibition is the project's 13th installation, with eight sculptures by Texas artists along Heights Boulevard, and its organizer lists it as on view from March to December 2026. This year's artists are Robbie Barber, Roger Colombik, Keith Crane and Damon Thomas, Hans Molzberger, Suzette Mouchaty, Mark Nelson, James D. Phillips and Jim Robertson. The Leader reported that the True North team plans the next exhibition while the current one is still up, and each year brings a new group of works. The pieces lining the 400 to 1800 blocks this fall are in their last weeks. Ending the crawl on the boulevard lets you see them in daylight, after spending the afternoon in the kinds of rooms where outdoor sculpture gets made.
After November 7, the Calendar Keeps Running on Neighbors
The crawl opens a holiday stretch whose main events are organized by civic associations and supported by tickets, sponsors and volunteers. Here is the order:
- HHA Holiday Home Tour, December 4 and 5. The Houston Heights Association calendar lists Friday, December 4, from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday, December 5, from 3 to 9 p.m. HHA's October 2026 newsletter was still asking Heights homeowners to offer their homes for the tour, and its listings give dates and times but not the homes, streets or ticket price.
- Home decorating contest judging, Thursday, December 10. Woodland Heights Civic Association judges will review homes on the Lights in the Heights route along Highland and Omar, plus homes nominated from elsewhere in Woodland Heights. Winners are notified early Saturday morning and get a sign to display that evening. Categories include Most Wattage, Most Historical, Best Block and Best Single Color.
- Lights in the Heights, Saturday, December 12, 6 to 9 p.m. The 39th annual event runs on a route approved by the City of Houston's Special Events office. People walk the streets while volunteer musicians play from porches that neighbors on Highland and Omar volunteer.
Lights in the Heights shows the same volunteer model as the crawl on a larger scale. According to the WHCA, the tradition began in 1987, when Woodland Heights neighbors lined their curbs, driveways and porches with luminaries and held holiday entertainment on the Norhill Esplanade. The association's 1989 newsletter credited that first event with drawing 20,000 people. Today the WHCA raises money to cover city permits, officer security, portable restrooms and street closures. Proceeds from the Boots & Bow Ties Bash help cover those costs. The Bash was held on October 15 at the Historic Heights Fire Station, 107 W. 12th St. Gabby's BBQ, Eureka Heights and Kagan Cellars provided the food and drinks. Memorial Hermann Greater Heights is this year's gold sponsor.
The WHCA calls out two displays. Humbug Holiday Lighting is sponsoring the lights on the Watson Street Esplanade this year. On the Norhill Esplanade, the electric dinosaurs created by Ward Pennebaker have been part of the holidays for more than a decade. The WHCA says the display has grown enough to need a professional lighting company to stage, strike, store and repair it. A small group of neighbors has paid for that in recent years, and the association is now asking the wider neighborhood to help through its "Save the Dinosaurs From Extinction" fundraiser in the WHCA online store. The same store sells this year's Lights in the Heights ornaments, with artwork by Woodland Heights neighborhood youth chosen by WHCA members in July.
The studio doors on Martin Street, the porch concerts on Highland and the dinosaurs on Norhill all depend on people nearby agreeing to host them. For the Art Crawl, tickets are sold online ahead of time, and the pass arrives by email before the event.
At Urban Access Properties, Sharlene Abghary and our team follow the Heights calendar closely, from studio tours on East 11th to the holiday events that follow. If you're thinking about a Heights home within walking distance of the places where these events happen, we'd be glad to help. Schedule a free consultation.
