The Tin District is Dallas’ Next Art Destination

With his white mustache and soft Texas drawl, Butch McGregor looks and sounds more like a working cowboy than the successful West Dallas developer he is. He’s an even more unlikely patron of the arts. When questioned, he’ll deny—with a wink—owning art. And he’ll absolutely deny—no wink—being a knowledgeable art aficionado. But it doesn’t take long for him to expose his true nature.

From the parking lot of the Network Bar in Trinity Groves, he takes me in his mud-splattered pickup truck on the short drive across Singleton Boulevard to the Tin District, where he serves as the landlord for a thriving community of young artists. This microneighborhood is made up of occupied single-family bungalows, vacant lots, and mural-covered, corrugated steel-clad structures that once housed a variety of industries. A few still contain car and metal works shops, but most have been converted to artists’ studios. 

Our first stop is the Ro2 Art Gallery, which isn’t open at the moment. Mother-and-son owners Susan Roth Romans and Jordan Roth moved it from The Cedars to the larger space in 2022. As McGregor unlocks the gate, he notes that the Alamo-like façade was designed by architect Corky Cunningham, his friend. 

We walk inside the vaulted space, and McGregor stops. “Do you see that?” he says, nodding at the far wall, which is filled with dozens of portraits by Lillian Young of enslaved runaways. “Isn’t it incredible?” I walk over to take a closer look. “Those numbers at the bottom aren’t prices,” he says. “They are the bounties that were offered when they escaped. And the words on their faces are the descriptions from the newspapers.” We stand in silence for a few minutes as the morning light streams across the faces of men, women, and children. “It’s just incredible,” he repeats.

What McGregor can’t deny: that he’s an astute businessman who appreciates art. 

He says this whole West Dallas endeavor started because his kids went to school with the kids of restaurateur Phil Romano and businessman Stuart Fitts. One day, Fitts and Romano said they wanted to invest in West Dallas, where prices were low, foreclosed properties were plentiful, and downtown was just an imagined bridge away. In 2005, the three started buying old industrial buildings in the area, razing some to make room for new development and fixing up others. 

“When Phil, Stuart, and I first started up here, we said, ‘How are you going to get people to come to West Dallas?’ People will drive for two things: art and food,” McGregor says. “Phil said, ‘I’ll take care of the food part. You find some art.’ And that’s when I ran into Justin Ginsberg.”

Reuben Ginsberg was McGregor’s attorney; his grandson, Justin, is a glass blower. He asked McGregor if he happened to have a big open space that he could use for an art installation. McGregor said he sure did. Things grew from there.

“I’ve been a part of Tin since the first Art Walk West back in the day, so nine years at this point,” says mural artist and Tin District studio resident Will Heron. “I started the mural festival with Butch as part of Art Walk in 2018, so that’s been going on six years. It’s cool to see the graffiti art stay put while these art studios have continued to move in and grow. We went from 15, 20 artists and now we’re closer to 75, 80, 90 artists depending on who you talk to, so just letting it become more of a dense population of creatives is really cool to see.”

The artists I spoke with are fans of McGregor as a landlord. But some are worried about the “G word” (gentrification) and the deal struck in April between McGregor’s West Dallas Investments and Omaha-based Goldenrod, which, as the developing partner, now owns a 50 percent stake in a number of the properties. 

“My biggest fear is art space becoming scarce,” Heron says. “Now it is this beautiful zone that we can, in this one-block radius, feel safe and protected in this hypercreative environment together. Now that there are so many studios, I’m really hoping we can do a nonprofit status, and the Tin District can function as a nonprofit. We are also looking at cultural districting; if we can make it a cultural district, we get certain protections through state legislation. In my eyes, whatever we can do to keep it a safe, creative space and not let it turn into—not to name names, but other neighborhoods that have turned from really cool art spaces into overcommercialized restaurant zones. I want it to stay safe.”

Jeremy Biggers, who shares a Tin District studio with his wife, textile artist Sam Lao, says that one of the reasons the community is so important is because Dallas’ art scene needs the supportive boost it provides. “The art scene has changed significantly,” Biggers says. “It is on its way to being a world-class city in terms of the art scene. But I think it still has a long way to go. It is moving slower than I think that it probably should be, considering how much world-class talent we have here.”

To help foster community, McGregor routinely hosts an artists’ happy hour for studio tenants. He supports events such as the annual Art Walk and the inaugural She Unit paint jam that was held in May; female artists traveled from New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Germany to participate. And he continues to convert warehouses, clearing them of debris and adding insulation, skylights, windows, and air conditioning. A recent building cost him $10,000 to clean out; it will cost him more than 10 times that to outfit it. And he’s not just housing artists. There’s a new floral design studio, and he says he’s looking to add a sandwich place and maybe an ice-cream shop in one of the buildings.

He sees the investment as worthwhile because he thinks it will be a minute before Goldenrod gets around to developing the block. “So from that standpoint,” he says, “I envision the Tin District being here in 10, 15, 20 years.” But he’s also pragmatic. “Who knows? Now if Amazon or somebody comes along and says, ‘We want everything you’ve got,’ we’re going to sell. But we don’t envision that. We’re spending lots of money fixing these buildings up. So we don’t anticipate that. If we did, we wouldn’t spend the money.”

I ask him if there’s any scenario where the existence of an artists’ community could add enough value to a development to make it worth protecting. “That’s a good question,” he says. “Have you ever been to Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood? A guy named Tony Goldman from New York came down and bought some old single-story warehouse buildings. He started putting murals on the walls. And now that’s world famous. He gets artists from all over the world. The first time my wife and I went down, we just walked around. The next time, they charged you $12.50 just to walk in and look at the art. It’s crazy. So can it fit in? Maybe.”

But he has another thought. “I just haven’t got it to the right person yet,” he says. “I have an idea to just create some really nice art studios and put them in an art trust. We have a site that it could go on. It would be awesome. It would take the philanthropic community to come in. It wouldn’t be that expensive. Artists pay rent, so it could be self-sustaining. And I think it would be self-sustaining. Do you like that?” he asks.

I do. I hope all those able to fund it like it, too.     

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Ben Muñoz

“I started doing some paintings this year. We just did a solo show at Artspace111, and the show went really well. It’s going to travel to Stephen F. Austin State University, and they’re going to have the show there from October to November. The cube [on the floor] is one of my sculptures. I was doing some for Arts Fort Worth. They actually rented a sculpture from me for a year for their new sculpture garden. [In the print on the wall] there’s a reference to the scripture ‘Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.’ That idea of the passage of time—in the morning you devour, so in the evening you divide, so in your old age you have something to give to the next generation. It’s like an assignment. Everything means something. I just sold four other pieces, from my “Familia” series, to the Amon Carter Museum of Art. And I’ve got some work in the Blanton Museum down in Austin.”

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JM Rizzi

“The black-and-white drawings—that’s kind of the seeds of all of the artwork that I make. I start with these drawings, and then I’ll find compositions within them. The steel sculptures here on the floor basically derived from drawings, so they’re ink drawings that are then vectorized and cut from powder-coated steel. On the left, there’s the vessels, and those are just me continuing this process of drawing onto a different surface. For the skateboard decks, I worked with a company called 1xRUN. I used to be a skater, so it was a little bit of a feather in my cap to get my art on a skateboard. I do a lot of large-scale murals here in Dallas. I’ve got work at the Toyota headquarters. I’ve got one over here in Trinity Groves. I’m actually going to do another one at University Trail as soon as the weather cools down.”

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Dan Lam

“Every year I do one of these drops where I just make miniature versions of my pieces, and then I sell them directly to my followers without a gallery so they’re more affordable but you’re still getting an original piece of art. I make most of my work here, especially if it’s real big. I had a piece at the Nasher; it was 8 feet tall. I started working with foam acrylic resin in late undergrad, early grad school, and figuring out what it could do. I realized it has this potential for catching this drippy, suspended-in-motion look. There’s something about it that speaks to a lot of people, so I feel like I’ve tapped into something that’s pretty universally appealing. I have a show in New York in December, on the Lower East Side, in Hashimoto Contemporary. And for Art Basel, I have a piece that was at the Nasher that will be going there, to Wynwood Walls in Miami. My biggest piece is at Meow Wolf.”

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The Tin District

Events

Art Walk West & Wild West Mural Fest

October 21, 11 am–5 pm

Plan to make a day of it. Studios will be open for you to meet the artists, and galleries will showcase their latest exhibitions. Peruse authorized graffiti murals in the Fabrication Yard, listen to live music on the ArtsBridge Stage, and then hop across Singleton to Trinity Groves for a beer at ArtPark and a slider at Nitro Burger. Go to tindistrict.com for a map and more details. 

Galleries

Cluley Projects

2123 Sylvan Ave.
Open noon–5 pm, Wed–Sat

Daisha Board Gallery | West

2111 Sylvan Ave.
Open 1–5 pm, Thu–Sun

500X Gallery

516 Fabrication St.
Open noon–5 pm, Sat–Sun

Ro2 Art Gallery

2606 Bataan St.
Open noon–5 pm, Tue–Sat

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This story originally appeared in the October issue of D Magazine with the headline, “Dallas’ Next Art Destination.” Write to [email protected].