Welcome to MixHaus Gallery in Comfort, Texas. My name is Cara Hines. I'm the sole proprietor and an artist.

MixHaus Gallery is our new name and identity, but the gallery has been here since January 2019, when Jeannette MacDougall and I partnered to create Studio Comfort Texas. After three good years, our lives and goals diverged. She moved on to focus on teaching and splitting her time between Texas and Europe. I stayed on to evolve the gallery, and MixHaus is that evolution. I also partnered with my husband Ernie Slatinsky, my mother, and two other couples to purchase Hotel Giles in 2022—a stunning 15-room historic boutique hotel across the street from the gallery.

Interior design was my degree and my career for 15 years. I'm now an artist and entrepreneur. I work in mixed media, with encaustic being a primary medium in most of my art. It's this love of mixed media, crossing into other disciplines, and the minds of artists who work in these ways—asking questions and pushing the rules and boundaries of what's possible or generally accepted practice for any given media—that birthed MixHaus.

MixHaus focuses on contemporary artists who work in mixed media and mixed disciplines. We feature mostly Texas artists, but we also reach beyond state borders to others who align with our vision and values of innovation, collaboration, authentic expression and freethinking. We value our artists and do everything we can to promote and support them. We work with interior designers, realtors and collectors. We welcome kids and dogs.

Our gallery—inside a 1907 brick building with plenty of charm and character—is also available to rent for small meetings, retreats and events whose purpose is authentic connection, creative transformation or collaboration. Pair this with rooms at Hotel Giles, and you have an artful conference or retreat.

So, why Comfort? Because it's a charming town with a lovely community of people and a rich history. Because it's in the beautiful Texas Hill Country situated at the confluence of Cypress Creek and the Guadalupe River. But also because Comfort was founded in the mid-1800's by German Freethinkers who valued freedom of expression, intellectual pursuits, irony and beer. They spoke German and Latin, many were anti-secessionists, and some were abolitionists—at a time when those were not prevailing attitudes. We don't speak Latin or German, but we agree with their sentiments.

We value community, quality of life, nature, quieter places and a slower pace. We also value innovation, self-awareness and imagination. We appreciate artists, musicians, poets, writers, travelers, storytellers, explorers, entrepreneurs, question askers, kind folk, and other freethinkers who explore the human experience, transform and express it through art. These are most of the reasons why we're in this place doing what we do. 

And we hope you will visit soon and often. Welcome to the mix!