WHY WE WORK
Modern life pulls people in more directions than they can track. Schedules crowd out attention, and most folks spend less time noticing their places and the people and creatures they share them with. The Hill Country is under its own pressure—rapid growth, drought, overuse, and decisions made too quickly to account for long-term impacts on land, water, and community life. When people lose track of their surroundings, judgment slips and problems stay hidden until they’re too large to ignore. La Cuna exists to counter that drift. Through creative collaboration and interdisciplinary work, we help surface clearer ways of living—approaches that strengthen ecological resilience while making daily life more thoughtful, connected, and workable.
WHAT WE DO
RESEARCH + LEARNING
At La Cuna Center, we study how people live with land, water, work, and one another by staying close to real conditions — on the land, in community, and across disciplines. Through hands-on observation, ecological fieldwork, land partnerships, and long-term relationships with ranchers, scientists, and residents, we gather practical, place-based knowledge about human and non-human life in the Hill Country. This work values lived experience and careful attention over abstraction.
This is where our understanding begins — through listening, presence, experimentation, and documentation.
CREATIVE WORKS
We work with artists, architects, designers, and other creative practitioners to translate research into forms that help people see and understand what we’re learning. Through visual art, spatial work, built projects, exhibitions, and material investigations, creative practice becomes a way of testing ideas and making them clearer. These works are not illustrations of research, but part of the research itself — turning insight into things that can be experienced directly.
This is where ideas take form and become tangible and memorable.
DISTRIBUTION + EDUCATION
Our work extends beyond research and making. La Cuna Center shares its work through public programs, talks, exhibitions, and writing that place ideas into wider circulation. We focus on clear communication and open conversation, creating opportunities for people to engage with the work and connect it to their own lives and places.
This is where insight moves outward and enters broader dialogue.
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HOW WE WORK
We use creative practice to help people see their places more clearly, re-engage with real conditions, and make decisions with a sharper sense of context.
Creative professionals are central to La Cuna’s work. They notice what others miss, think strategically, and communicate through image, form, and space. When connected with ecology partners and ranching neighbors, they gain the field knowledge needed to aim their work with precision.
Shared work becomes shared language. Skilled creatives can persuade without confrontation by making patterns visible and processes understandable. People remember what they can see, walk through, or experience. Small prototypes—drawings, structures, installations—offer practical ways to test how better living might look here. Together, we build clear tools that reveal what’s happening in the Hill Country and open new ways forward.
If you want to change a culture, you have to tell a better story.
Our work creates stories people carry, repeat, and use—stories strong enough to shift how people see their place and how they choose to live in it.
La Cuna Center takes what emerges from this creative practice and turns it into practical educational programming. We partner with university faculty, scientists, business and technology leaders, and multi-generational ranching families to share these insights with the public and put them to work.
Case Study: LA LUNA EN LA CUNA BY DIEGO MIRÓ-RIVERA
Objective: Promote prescribed fire for prairie health. Reduce fear. Clarify risk.
Solution: This project is a multi-acre land drawing created through a prescribed burn. It distills fire behavior into a format that can be understood at a glance. The drawing makes the control of the burn clear and works as a risk-communication tool, easing fear—a major barrier to good land management. It's also a story moving through the region and social media, building public literacy.
PEOPLE
Rachel Farrington
Executive Director and Vice Chair
Rachel is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and designer with additional experience in interiors, landscape design, and construction management. She holds an MFA from Azusa Pacific University.
Riley Triggs
Board Chair
Riley is an architect, urbanist, and design educator currently serving as the lead project manager for the City of Austin's Convention Center Redevelopment project. He holds architecture degrees from the University of Texas and Rice University.
Kelly Purkey
Board Secretary
Kelly is a wildlife biologist and the Refuge Manager at Balcones National Wildlife Refuge in the Texas Hill Country.
PLACE
La Cuna is located in Art, Texas, approximately 90 minutes west of both Austin and San Antonio. The Llano Uplift, a distinct region within the Texas Hill Country, spans about 90 miles in diameter and is shaped by an ancient Precambrian granite dome. The area's sub-tropical climate is marked by cyclical droughts and floods. Prior to the 1600s, the Uplift was predominantly woodlands (60-70%) interspersed with rolling plains. However, 19th- and 20th-century ranching practices, including clearcutting, overstocking, and overgrazing, eroded soil and altered the region's plant, wildlife, and water systems. At our founder's property, we are collaborating with our ecology partners to research best practices for mitigating these impacts. Our findings, along with insights from local ranchers, landowners, and experts, will inform our educational efforts and guide sustainable practices in the region.
MISSION
La Cuna Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit exploring balance in modern living through the arts and ecology.
PURPOSE
We provide education and encourage dialogue on sustainability, landscape ecology, bioculture, art, architecture, philosophy, and related aspects of contemporary life. By supporting professionals in these fields, we promote research that addresses the challenges of our time.
VISION
Through creative collaboration and interdisciplinary inquiry, we seek to foster approaches to living that support ecological resilience and enrich human experience.