New Daniel Johnston exhibit celebrates Austin artist’s enduring impact

Nearly one in five Americans live in rural areas where there are often fewer licensed therapists and longer travel distances to mental health care. But hotlines like 9-8-8 give people access to the help they need. Find out why the support for that lifeline is stronger in some states than others. Plus Daniel Johnson was known for his art and music.

When he died in 2019, he left behind a trove of his work, and some of that work is on public display as part of a new exhibit at Texas State University. More on that coming up. The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Miles Bloxen. This month marks 100 years of celebrating Black History Month, and one local organization is creating space to celebrate Black Austinites. Find out what they have planned this weekend. That's up next on Austin Signal.

Hello, hope your day is going well. You're listening to the Austin Signal. Thank you for spending part of your Tuesday right here with us. I'm your host, Myles Bloxson. Well, we're more than a week away from the primary election day in

Texas. That means there are just four more days left for you to cast an early ballot. And we've got everything you need to know before heading to the polls right at KUT.org. Mental health hotlines can be particularly valuable in rural areas where there may not be therapists or social workers close by. That includes 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It launched less than four years ago and has already responded to nearly 20 million contacts.

But support for that lifeline is stronger in some states than others. For Harvest Public Media, Texas Standards, Michael Marks has that story. The 988 system was designed to give people in crisis an easy to remember number that's available 24 hours a day. Every state has its own set of call centers with trained operators. And since the hotline started taking calls in 2022, demand has increased nationwide. We have been seeing a month over month increase in utilization of 9-8-8.

And so we are also working pretty hard to keep up. That's Monica Kerr's Chief Administrative Officer for HealthSource Integrated Solutions in Kansas, one of the state's 988 call centers. She says the service is a necessity for rural Kansans. We know that in our rural and frontier counties in Kansas, folks might be traveling hours to get to their nearest mental health clinic. And this is a way to access services right away without that kind of distance barrier. Responding quickly is essential.

A caller frustrated with a long wait time might hang up. Plus, if they spend two minutes on hold, the call is rerouted from a local facility to a national backup center. A backup operator may not be able to connect someone with local resources, says Lauren Moyer, chair of Missouri's 9-8-8 task force. If someone is really struggling with substance use and needs connected to a residential substance use bed in the moment, somebody from another state is not gonna have access to that information.

When the 988 hotline launched, the federal government paid for it, but states were expected to pick up the tab eventually. That has not happened in Texas yet. Jennifer Battle is vice president of the Harris Center in Houston, which fields 988 calls. During a legislative hearing last year, she said the state's call centers get around 200,000 calls annually, and the state needs to step up and help fund the program.

As impressive as these numbers are, that we're able to serve with the current federal funds, these funds only allow for us to be able to answer on average 84% of the 988 calls that originate in Texas. The federal 9-8-8 bill recommended that states pay for the program through fees on telecommunication products. That's how 9-1-1 is largely funded. Only it doesn't have done so, including Minnesota and Illinois.

But in Missouri, they're doing things a little differently, dedicating money from the state's general fund each year. Lauren Moyer, the Missouri State Task Force Chair, worries about sustainability. You know, general revenue support, it's its own line item, and that's not guaranteed long-term. Oklahoma doesn't have a recurring fee to support 9-8-8 either.

According to State Representative Kevin Norwood, a Republican from the Tulsa area, there's little appetite in the state legislature for a new tax. Before I became a legislator, that idea was introduced and it gained no traction. Norwood is now sponsoring a bill that would create a trust fund for 9-8-8, which would ensure the money is only used for the hotline. When I jumped into it, I was like, OK, we need to make it where it's not just a short-term fix, that it would be long-term.

Term and sustainable. Texas has followed a similar path. Lawmakers there have been unable to pass the telecommunications fee through the legislature. In 2025, Texas established a trust fund, but the balance is currently zero. Jonathan Pertle studies 988 funding at the New York University School of Global Public Health. Those trust funds are a strategy, but if there's not funds in the trust fund, it's not going to have that much of an impact. But it's something that some states are trying.

It's a signal of effort, I suppose. Pirtle is near the end of a five-year study. He's analyzing the funding of 988 systems in all 50 states. So far, he's found that those with long-term, dedicated funding for staff are generally more efficient. The big thing is people, right? The staffing, the people who work in these call centers is the main thing. He may have a new data point in the near future. Missouri's legislature is set to consider a 988 funding fee later this year.

That was Texas Standard's Michael Marks reporting for Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains, including Texas Standard. There were lots of touchstones that raised the profile of Austin as a hub for the counterculture in Texas in the eighties and nineties.

But certainly one of the most enduring is the art and music of Daniel Johnston, the musician and artist known for his bare bones, a lo-fi recording, as well as his striking visual art, his famous high, how are you frog that's down

the street from us here at KUT. But when he died in 2019, Johnston left behind many, many more recordings, drawings and other creations. Much of which were collected by his close friend and manager, Jeff Tartikoff. Now, some of that work will be on display for the public as part of a new exhibit at the Whitliff Collection at Texas State University in San Marcos. Tartickoff spoke about the collection with Texas Standards' David Brown and Whitliffe curator, Hector Saldana.

Let's begin with you, Hector. The name of this exhibit, True Love, will find you in the end, which is obviously a reference to a wonderful song that Daniel Johnston wrote. But it goes on, the title of the exhibition, The Revealing Art of Daniel Johnstone. And I understand the idea for this has been in the works for what, a couple of years? Yes, ever since we acquired the Jeff Tartikoff collection, which was amazing from the get-go.

I mean, meeting Jeff, who's an expert and was a friend of Daniel's, but also because the materials allow a peek inside the mind of this artist that we love but don't always understand. I mean I think these materials let us understand more about the person, the human being. As well as the artist, which fascinated me.

And so to put this exhibit together, Jeff and I had talked about curating it, but then came the opportunity for myself to work with a young student, a photographer named Lucas Kraft, who was a fan. We curated these original drawings, writings, and photographs. Jeff, you knew Daniel Johnston, and certainly given how much of these materials you've preserved over the years, y'all must have been pretty close. Can you tell us more about how you came to know and work with Daniel?

Sure. I first met Daniel Johnstone when I was in high school. Daniel in 1985, a month or two after his appearance on MTV's Cutting Edge program. That was a big deal for Austin back then. Yeah, I mean, I watched it, but I had never met him before. When I was out in San Marcos, a year ago today, they probably would have put me in a home. But I threw all my belonging into a garbage bag, and out into the world that I've been grown.

I was living with a musician named Bill Anderson who played in the band Poison 13 and Daniel was a big fan of theirs and he became good friends with Bill and he began coming over to the house that fall. So I got to know him that way. He'd come over and start flipping through my album collection, see my Beatles records and that was where we kind of first bonded. We should talk a little bit about

something. A lot of people know these stories that are associated with Daniel Johnston but for the benefit of people who don't. There are these stories that go around maybe some of them apocryphal maybe you know if they're true. One of the stories was he was working at a nearby McDonald's not too far from where we are right now and he would tuck away cassette tapes of some of his recordings that he had made and uh... People would would find these uh... These albums uh...

Effectively in their happy meals especially happy meals He did a little bit of that, mainly if it was an attractive young lady or anybody who looked like a musician. Hector, you were telling me something about how important it was that you didn't want in this exhibit for this to be a kind of psychoanalysis of Daniel Johnston. You wanted this to sort of reflect the integrity of the person.

I think you said something to me that was really striking, that you hoped this would be the kind of exhibit that if Daniel Johnstone were around today, he'd be proud Well, yes, because I didn't want to play psychoanalyst. If you come at it from loving the music, misunderstanding the mystique, maybe feeling a certain thing about him because of his mental health issues, I thought the materials could help you, give you some insight if you walked into that space.

When someone goes to see this exhibit, how do you lay it out? What do they see? What do the experience? You're gonna see, first of all, a very bold for a museum setting, at least for the Whitleth collection. We use this passionate purple for the walls. We have a beautiful Niles Fuller image, larger than life, huge. I wanted to present it the way we would do almost anybody and also try to show this artist in a sense at his peak, but maybe at his most vulnerable.

Those who have been exposed, I'm always, Jeff, I am always struck by this, that people who are exposed to his music, they never stop there. They always want to dig more into it, and I'm curious, what do you think that's about? Well, first of all, there's just so much of it to be discovered. He was very, very active as far as his songwriting goes. He never stopped writing. No, and it's actually kind of unfortunate that in his last few years, the recording didn't keep pace with the songwriting.

What do you think he made of his place in pop culture? Did he have a strong sense of that and how did he feel about it? I think he did. I think he was aware that he had reached most of his goals, probably all of his goals, except for ending up with the woman who married the undertaker. But professionally, he probably felt like he reached the top. I think he had given up on being as big as the Beatles and was happy just to be as big as The Butthole Surfers.

Hahahaha I think, you know, again, going to whether he felt, I mean, obviously he felt he'd made it, but I think there was a cost to it. And some of the drawings even show that, you know, where this, this happy frog, you know, that we love so much and sort of captured by the media. Yeah, yeah. But you know one of them shows it all shackled. So you wonder, did it become an albatross around him?

You know, did he wonder, you I mean this is the stuff I guess for researchers, you know, did it become something that he wanted to escape or embrace? I mean, I think the material showed that at times he was embracing that sort of image, and there were other times when there is a question of how much it might have caused him some pain. There's some lingering sadness because we don't really know if true love found him in the

end. It did not in a conventional sense, but I think he felt the love from his fans. True love will find you in the end. That was Jeff Tartacoff and Hector Saldana speaking with Texas Standard's David Brown about a new collection of recordings, drawings, and other creations from Austin icon Daniel Johnson on display at the Whitliff Collections in San Marcos. We'll have an extended version of that conversation in today's podcast, Show Notes. More Austin Signal after this break.

This is Austin Signal, welcome back. This February, we are celebrating 100 years of Black History Month, and one local organization is creating space to celebrate black history right here in Austin. Third Spaces is hosting Celebrate Black ATX this Saturday, February 28th, shining a spotlight on the culture and contributions of black Austinites. In the studio with me are the co-founders of Third Spaced and Celebrate black ATX, Brian Edwards and Jane Obey. Great to have you here.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for having us. Of course. Can you all tell us what Third Spaces is and how y'all got started? Absolutely. So Third Spaces is a

community organization and we focus on curating and creating Third Spaced, which a Third Space is not home, not work, a third place that you can join, commune fellowship with your neighbors and your community around you. And we really like to center the Black lived experience here in Austin. And so we host community events.

And festivals where people can come sing dance live and just be right here in the community in Austin And your website says the goal is to create spaces where people can feel heard, seen, and celebrated, especially in a time where people feel disconnected. Why are organizations like Third Space is critical to sustaining culture and community? Yeah, I think culture is the backbone of every city. It's the backbone of every community at the end of the day. And it also helps us flourish, helps

us grow. It helps us kind of touch the next generation. So culture is so important to how we actually just commune with one another. And I think there's a lot of organizations who are doing great work, like Where You At, though, or Art is Cool, or Water Your Plants. There's just a few of the amazing organizations here in Austin who are are doing that work. It's a labor of love as well, so. It's definitely something that a lot of organizations are doing out of the passion for the community.

I love that and y'all are clearly making a real impact in the community when it comes to community and connections. And this is like your fifth year of hosting Celebrate Black ATX and it's become a powerful community tradition. So what was the early vision behind it and did y'al anticipate that this thing would grow into what it is today? Absolutely. The early vision was just me being a wife who likes to give her husband honey-to-do's.

And I was like, honey, could you do this quick history tour since Javier Wallace of Black Austin Tours was not available at that time because he was getting his Ph.D. Shout out Black Austin Towers. And my husband Brian, he loves history. He's great at retaining loads of information. And at that we were with our church and we were like, we would love to do this little history tour for the church. And I was like, Brian, you

can do it. And so it was just like 30 people from our church that showed up and then year after year after year we just kept growing and adding more community impact and output. And now here we are, we got grants from the city of Austin, we've befriended people in the neighborhood and people keep telling us we need this, we wanna see it and we appreciate what y'all are doing. So of course it fuels us to keep doing more. Absolutely, I think she hit it right

in the head. This was never something that we thought it would become. It's just kind of blossomed and grown out of something out of passion for the community. Oh wow, I've been speaking to co-founders of Third Spaces, Brian Edwards and Jane Obey, about their event, Celebrate Black ATX, coming up this Saturday, February 28th. Okay, so y'all have been doing it for five years. You have to tell me what your favorite memory is from this particular event.

I would say my favorite memory is from the last year. Last year, it felt like a mini Coachella in the heart of East Austin. And we had a line dance class hosted by We Outside ATX, which is the local black run club here in Austin. And it was just beautiful to see hundreds of people stepping in rhythm, stepping and singing, turning around at the same time, whipping their bandanas in the air. And it just felt like home.

Yeah, for me, it was also last year, but I think being able just to sit back and see four, at that time, four years of just work and connections with the community really come to fruition. I think, being able to see the joy that we put on people's faces, that's really why we do it. It's not really out there to make money or do anything else. It's really just to get people a space, right? So they can feel at home and they can call home, right.

And so. Just being able to see that firsthand last year especially when it was probably our biggest iteration yet to that point. So it was just a blessing to see. And what can people expect this year from attending Celebrate Black ATS? Yeah, similar to last year, we used to have a walking tour, historic walking tour of East Austin early in the morning that starts at 11 a.m. And our black party starts at 1 p.m., we'll have the HT Jazz Collective there again.

Oh wow legendary led and taught by Professor William Oliver, H.T. Shout out to him and his team and his collective there. We'll have DJs, jazzy, and also male vibes there, performing from two to six as well. And we'll have also that line dance class again coming back at three o'clock. That'll be led by Step It Up Austin this year. And most importantly, we're gonna have great food provided by the historic Victory East. They're doing a cookout menu for us and a crawfish boil this

year. And so I don't know about you, but for me, what gets me showing up to events is the menu and the food, so we're really excited. And Radio Rosewood across the street, they're doing special coffee menu for use and 10% of proceeds will be going to the East Austin Creative Coalition, which is what Kenny Durham's backyard is under.

Also, I would name also that we do have some awesome artists who are doing exhibits there, Jacob Guzman, The Prophet, Asia Lana Vegas, just those three amazing artists that are going to show up and exhibit their art. We're really excited just to give them that space to just pour what they've actually created into the community and let it come to fruition in light. And a marketplace. We're going to have black owned businesses selling their products and services.

And that was also one of my favorite parts last year and everyone almost sold out. And so to be able to put money back into the pockets of local black Austinites is incredible. Come support and shop. That's what it's all about. Sounds like an amazing event. And you guys have planned for this Saturday. For those who are listening, who wants to get involved, how can they support Third Spaces and celebrate Black ATX? And where's the best place to learn more?

Ooh, you can support, we're always looking for volunteers. If you wanna sign up, we have it on our website or our GivePulse, but also just come out and show up, all right, and just enjoy the space. It's gonna be a family-friendly event. All ages are welcome, all ages will have fun. There'll be a kids activation there for your little ones, so bring them too. You can follow us on Instagram at spaces underscore wecreate. You can find us online at celebratespaces.com and.

Keep on the lookout for any other the the the cool collaborations of partners we will announce this week too. So I've been speaking with Brian Edwards and Jane Obey about their upcoming event, Celebrate Black ATX, a Celebration of Black Culture here in Austin. To find out more information about the event or ways to support the organization Third Spaces, visit celebratespaces.com. Thanks so much for joining me today, Jane and Brian. Thank you for having us, bro. Happy to be here.

And have a good history month. I cannot believe it's been 100 years. Happy Black History Month. We only have a few days left in the month for that. And that's it for today on Austin Signal. I hope you enjoyed the show. We'll have more about the stories we shared with you today in the podcast show notes page. And you can find more from us at kut.org slash signal. Casey Cheek is our technical director today and Jerry Kehano is wearing a different hat and he is the show's producer.

I'm your host, Myles Bloxson And I'll be back with you tomorrow on the Austin Signal, so I hope you have a good rest of your day. Talk to you then.