Heights Boulevard's Sculptures Leave in December, and the Nov. 7 Art Crawl Is the Best Afternoon to See Them

How many of the eight sculptures on the Heights Boulevard esplanade could you name by title? Most of us jog or walk the dog past them for months. Then one week in December the esplanade is bare again, and a new set arrives the next spring.

This year the Heights' art scene has an unusually clear calendar. True North's 2026 sculptures are on view "March to December," and the Houston Heights Association's Art Crawl on Saturday, Nov. 7, is the only afternoon this season that puts those sculptures on the same route as the private studios where Heights artists actually work. As December arrives, the neighborhood's calendar moves to markets, home tours and porches.

The esplanade's 2026 season is almost over

True North is in its 13th year. Its organizers count more than 100 sculptures shown on the boulevard since it began, and this year there are eight, all by Texas artists. Each year's works are permitted for nine months, March to December. Volunteers run the program in partnership with the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department, and the Houston Heights Association is its nonprofit sponsor. Glasstire lists this year's run as March 1 through Dec. 1, 2026.

That leaves about four weeks after this post goes up. Here is what stands on the esplanade now:

• "Mantis with Saddle" by Hans Molzberger
• "Folly in the Park" by Suzette Mouchaty
• "beyond reach" by James D. Phillips
• "Bloom" by Roger Colombik
• "MARBLEOUS GfG BUCKET CORRAL" by Mark Nelson
• "Goddard Nomad V" by Robbie Barber
• "Sanctuary" by Jim Robertson
• "Migrations" by Keith Crane and Damon Thomas

The sculptures stand along the 400 to 1800 blocks of Heights Boulevard. That's the same stretch the Art Crawl uses as its final stop.

Nov. 7 opens the studios to go with them

You can see the boulevard sculptures any day while they're up. The working studios behind the neighborhood's art scene are usually closed to the public. The Houston Heights Association says that decades ago the Heights was home to 20% of the working artists in Texas. This year's crawl, presented with Redbud Arts Center, covers 14 stops across the neighborhood.

The basics: Saturday, Nov. 7, 1 to 5 p.m., $50 per person, no children under 12. Net proceeds go to the Houston Heights Association. The tour is self-guided. Artists are in their studios with works in progress, and light refreshments are served along the way.

The route splits into two clusters, and how you handle each one shapes the afternoon.

Stops 1 to 5: the north studios, by car

These five sit on Delz Street, Martin Street and Thornton Road. The association suggests driving between them.

1. Karin Broker Studio, 506 Delz St., half a block east of N. Shepherd Dr. Broker taught drawing and printmaking at Rice University from 1980 to 2021. Susan Budge's sculptures are also on display here.
2. Balinskas Preservation of Art, 410 Martin St., run by art conservator Ray Balinskas and art historian Lourdes Balinskas, whose focus is colonial Spanish artwork and iconography.
3. Paul Kittelson & Carter Ernst Studios, 415 Martin St. Kittelson teaches at the UH School of Art and makes large-scale public art. Ernst's work deals with the natural world and the mark people are leaving on it.
4. Ed Wilson & Magda Boltz-Wilson Studios, 405 Martin St. Wilson is a sculptor, and Boltz-Wilson is a printmaker and photographer.
5. Tim Glover Studio, 404 Thornton Rd. Glover is a high school art teacher whose work is in public, corporate and private collections.

Three of these five are within a few house numbers of each other on Martin Street, so most of the driving is at either end.

Stops 6 to 14: park once and walk

The second cluster starts at Heights High School, where Joe Barrington's welded-metal Bulldog stands at Oxford and E. 13th Street. From there the route goes to a short run of East 11th Street that holds more stops than any other block on the tour.

At 305 E. 11th are sculptor John Carroll Runnels, who co-founded MotherDogStudios downtown in 1984, and Sharon Kopriva, whose career began with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Fresh Paint exhibition in the mid-1980s. The same address has a mural Carlos Carazan painted after Daniel Johnston's "Don't Be Scared." Next door at 303 E. 11th is Kelly Moran's studio, where she works in painting, ceramics, printmaking and collage. At 301 E. 11th, the crawl lists Redbud Arts Center and a mural by Daniel Anguilu, whose work draws on pre-Columbian imagery and graffiti. A little farther west, The Heights Petite Shoppe at 223 E. 11th is a women-owned co-op that sells art prints, vintage pieces and textile home decor.

Stop 14 is True North itself, which brings the walking cluster back to the boulevard and to sculptures that are about to leave.

Planning the afternoon, and the evening after

You can visit the stops in any order. One sensible plan is to drive the north studios first while you're fresh, then park near 11th Street and finish on foot. That way you end at the boulevard in late-afternoon light.

The pass works differently from most event tickets. One order can cover your whole group. Your pass arrives by email before the event with your name and the number of guests it admits. A volunteer checks you in at each stop from the live pass on your phone, and screenshots aren't accepted. Charge your phone before you leave the house.

The crawl ends at 5 p.m., but East 11th Street stays busy. Redbud Arts Center opens Ellis Barber's "Strange Days" that same Saturday with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m., and the show runs through Jan. 2, 2027. That leaves an hour for dinner between the two. Some recent openings are close by. Spice in Heights, a Mediterranean restaurant at 1111 Studewood, opened in September, according to the Houston Chronicle. On 19th Street, Atlas Cocktail Bar was set to open its first Houston location at 729 W. 19th on July 16, as DiningOut reported. If you want coffee before the 1 p.m. start, Pour Decisions Craft opened Aug. 8 at 555 W. 19th St., Suite 100-A. Terry Black's Barbecue opened in August at 1329 N. Shepherd, on the same road as the north studios, according to the Chronicle's August roundup.

From studios to markets and porches

From mid-November on, the season's events shift toward shopping, historic homes and holiday lights. Art still opens the stretch, with a second art-focused Saturday a week after the crawl.

Sawyer Yards' market on Nov. 14 features affordable work and handmade gifts from local artists, plus music, food and family activities. If one of the studios on Nov. 7 sticks with you, this is the next chance to buy art from local artists.

Friday, Dec. 4, is the busiest night of the stretch. Holiday on 19th Street and the first evening of the Holiday Home Tour fall on the same date, so if you want both, the Home Tour's longer Saturday hours, 3 to 9 p.m., free up Friday for 19th Street.

Lights in the Heights is organized by the neighboring Woodland Heights Civic Association. The format hasn't changed. Neighbors on Highland and Omar lend their porches to volunteer musicians, and visitors walk the route. Contest judges tour the decorated homes two nights before, on Thursday, Dec. 10, and winners get a sign to put out for the Saturday event. Ward Pennebaker's electric dinosaurs have lit up the Norhill Esplanade during the holidays for more than a decade, and the association is raising money to keep them going.

The Mistletoe Market on Dec. 13 closes out the stretch at the old City Hall & Fire Station on W. 12th Street. That's just over five weeks after the Art Crawl, and by then the esplanade will be waiting for next year's sculptures.

I love the Heights most in seasons like this one, when the art and history people walk past every day are open to see up close. If you're out on Nov. 7 and a studio or a sculpture makes you think differently about the house or the street you live on, I'd love to hear about it. Ashley Eoff is always glad to talk about this neighborhood's character, whether or not a move is on your calendar. Let's Connect.