ARKANSAS MADE | VOL. IV

VOL. IV

ART TOWNS ARTISTS’ SPACES CURATORS’ LOCAL FAVORITES

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VOL. IV

26

ART TOWNS

Discover local art scenes in Arkansas, and meet the creative minds making them happen.

8 HOT SPRINGS 12 LITTLE ROCK 15 NORTH LITTLE ROCK 16 FORT SMITH 18 EUREKA SPRINGS 20 NORTHWEST ARKANSAS 22 EL DORADO 23 CONWAY

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ARTISTS’ SPACES

Take a peek where makers work.

26 ESSA GOES BIG

CURATED COLLECTIONS Local makers' Natural State favorites.

In its 20th year, the Eureka Springs School of the Arts makes a strong case that it’s the best craft school in the region.

44 CRAFT AND 'GRAM

32 MAKING THE ABSTRACT COME ALIVE

Mike Abb

Hannah Carpenter

46 THE NWA CREATIVE DIRECTOR

UA instructor and ceramicist Linda Lopez didn’t visit an art museum until college. Now she’s in demand across the country.

48 TOP HATMAKER

38 MAKING A MINT

Bryan Moats

Markia Herron

50 THE INCLUSIVE ILLUSTRATOR

Springdale’s Shire Post specializes in fantasy coins.

ON THE COVER: ESSA co-founder Doug Stowe on page 26. Photography by Matthew Martin.

4 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

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SH OP A R K A N SAS A RT I SA N C RA F TS AT L I T T L E R OC K’S B I G G E ST V E N U E

Make plans to see the state’s most accomplished artisans at the Arkansas Made–Arkansas Proud event at War Memorial Stadium on May 18, 2019.

For more details or to see a list of participating vendors, please go to WMStadium.com or the Arkansas Made–Arkansas Proud Facebook page.

We look forward to seeing you in May!

Unique Memorabilia. Exceptional Gifts.

Clinton Museum Store

ARKANSAS-MADE.COM

KATHERINE DANIELS Publisher katherine@arktimes.com LINDSEY MILLAR Editor lindsey@arktimes.com MANDY KEENER Creative Director mandy@arktimes.com LESA THOMAS Senior State Representative JENNIFER CORBITT Central Arkansas Representative

Shop the beautiful collections of acclaimed Arkansas artisans and find unique gifts and memorabilia at the Clinton Museum Store inside the Clinton Presidential Center.

HEATHER SHOEMAKE Northwest Arkansas Representative WELDON WILSON Production Manager/Controller ROLAND R. GLADDEN Advertising Traffic Manager LARISSA GUDINO Advertising Coordinator

Monday - Saturday • 9 am - 5 pm Sunday • 1 pm - 5 pm

KATIE HASSELL Graphic Designer/Social Media

www.clintonmuseumstore.org • (501) 748-0400

MIKE SPAIN Advertising Art Director

1200 President Clinton Ave, Little Rock, AR

HEY MAKERS...

Let us know what you got!

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Tag Us at @arkansasmademag Find More Arkansas Artist:

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BRIAN CHILSON Photographer ROBERT CURFMAN IT Director LINDA PHILLIPS Administration ANITRA HICKMAN Circulation Director

Arkansas Times Limited Partnership 201 E. MARKHAM ST., SUITE 200 LITTLE ROCK, AR 72201 501-375-2985 All Contents © 2018-19 Arkansas Made

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ART TOWNS

HOT SPRINGS

THE SPA CITY HAS BEEN ONE OF THE PRIME TOURIST DESTINATIONS IN ARKANSAS FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY. BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN FOR A VISIT RECENTLY, YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED BY HOW PRESERVATION AND RENOVATION ARE BURNISHING THE ICONIC DOWNTOWN. THERE ARE NEW HOTELS, RESTAURANTS, PUBLIC ART AND THINGS TO DO.

(From left clockwise): A Central Avenue mural, the Mid-America skywalk, Emergent Arts and Quapaw Baths and Spa.

SEE & DO A tour of Bathhouse Row, the eight buildings along Hot Springs’ Grand Promenade, is essential. Each has plaques describing the distinctive architecture and history of the buildings. Check out Bathhouse Row Emporium inside the Lamar Bathhouse for spa supplies and items for purchase about Hot Springs history. Admission is free to the Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center inside the Ozark Bathhouse; its gallery space features regular exhibitions. The Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center is inside the Fordyce Bathhouse. You can still take a dip in the thermal spring-fed waters at the Buckstaff and Quapaw bathhouses. Superior Bathhouse and Brewery is the only brewery in a National Park and the only brewery in the world to use thermal water in its process.

As they have every year for more than two decades, 100 international musicians travel to Hot Springs the first

8 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

two weeks of June to play alongside world-class mentor musicians at the Hot Springs Music Festival. The performances take place at venues across the city, and individual and festival tickets are available (hotmusic. com).

Low Key Arts (118 Arbor St.) is a public art nonprofit that produces many of the city’s most essential events. Its first event, in 2005, was The Valley of the Vapors independent music festival, which every March brings in international musicians who are traveling to or from Austin, Texas, for the SXSW festival. Also under its umbrella is the Hot Water Hills music festival, which is held the first week of every October in downtown Hot Springs and features national and local acts; Inception to Projection is a six-week intensive film class open to all ages that culminates with screenings at Arkansas Shorts, a mini-short film festival; and KUHS-LP, 97.9, is a lowpowered, all-volunteer radio station powered entirely by solar energy.

The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival celebrated its 27th anniversary in October. The longest running doc fest in North America draws film luminaries and celebrities from around the world and has activities and films for all ages.

Another can’t-miss event is Hot Springs JazzFest, the premier sponsored event of the Hot Springs Jazz Society. The three-day jazz event, held in late summer, welcomes local and nationally recognized performers.

Garvan Woodland Gardens (550 Arkridge Road), part of the University of Arkansas System, proves that there is artistry in gardening. Throughout the year, the gardens host a variety of events such as photography exhibits and workshops for a variety of artisans.

Take the kids to Mid-America Science Museum (500 Mid America Blvd.), which recently revamped its exhibits and added new features, including a skywalk in the trees, a digital dome theater and an outdoor dinosaur display.

SHOP Stay downtown for shopping. All Things Arkansas (610-C Central Ave.) sells items made in Arkansas or related to Arkansas. That includes pottery, blown glass, handmade knives, Arkansas travel books, sauces and jellies and soaps. Owner Lisa Coleman Carey’s family owns Ron Coleman Mining in nearby Jessieville, so, naturally, there are plenty of quartz crystals for sale, too. Savory Pantry (214 Central Ave.) is the place to get local and regional gourmet jams, jellies, sauces, mixes and more. Pick up a trendy souvenir at State & Pride Provisions Co. (518 Central Ave.), where you’ll find Arkansas-themed and some locally made T-shirts, art, jewelry and more. Buy soap and other spa supplies at Bathhouse Soapery & Caldarium (366 Central Ave.), The Bath Factory (238 Central Ave.) and the aforementioned Bathhouse Row Emporium (515 Central Ave.). There’s no storefront, but Baggo, the outdoor bean bag toss game, is based in Hot Springs; go to baggo.com to order your customized board.

(From bottom left clockwise): the Playing Cards mural, Riley Art Glass, a class at Emergent Arts, State & Pride Provisions and Savory Pantry.

GALLERIES More than two-dozen art galleries line the streets of downtown Hot Springs and stay open after hours the first Friday evening of every month for Hot Springs Gallery Walk. Charles and Michael Riley of Riley Art Glass Studio (710 W. Grand Ave.) host regular glass-blowing demonstrations and have wares for purchase.

Dryden Pottery (341 Whittington Ave.), in business since 1946 and now operated by the third generation of the Dryden family, also offers customers a chance to see art being produced and purchase it. The Dryden studio shares a building with Emergent Arts, which regularly offers classes and includes a community gallery.

Other galleries to check out: American Art Gallery (724 Central Ave.), Artists’ Workshop Gallery (610A Central Ave.), Gallery Central Fine Art (800 Central Avenue), Justus Fine Art Gallery (827 A Central Ave.), Legacy Fine Art (804 Central Ave.) and Forest Path Gallery (107 Stillmeadow Lane).

Make sure you go see the new downtown murals, too. The “Playing Cards” mural on the south wall of the Craighead Laundry Building on the corner of Convention Boulevard and Malvern Avenue honors Hot Springs’ spring-training legacy with paintings of Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and more. On Central Avenue across from Bathhouse Row, see the stunning mural of a Quapaw, inspired by a painting by Charles Banks Wilson.

Worth the trip three miles north of downtown off state Highway 7 is Fox Pass Pottery, the studio and shop of Arkansas Living Treasure Jim Larkin and his wife, Barbara. Stop by between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday or by appointment. Visit foxpasspottery.com for directions.

Bathhouse Soapery

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 9

SQZBX Red Light Roastery

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EAT & DRINK Hot Springs is fast becoming a pizza destination. DeLuca’s Pizzeria Napoletana (831 Central Ave.), helmed by Brooklyn transplant Anthony Valinoti, definitely belongs in the discussion about the best pizza in the state.

SQZBX (236 Ouachita Ave.) is the city’s No. 1 new hangout. Spouses Cheryl Roorda and Zac Smith, known widely as the polka duo Itinerant Locals, co-own the pizzeria and microbrewery (Smith handles all the brewing) and share space with KUHS-LP, 97.9, the solar-powered radio station they helped found. The building used to house a piano repair shop; Roorda and Smith won a preservation award for their work restoring the beautiful building, which they’ve creatively decorated with retired accordions and old piano parts. The couple also just bought Starlite Club (232 Ouachita Ave.), the dive bar next door and, naturally, it’s become the place to be after dark, too. Other favorites: Superior Bathhouse Brewery (329 Central Ave.) is the ideal place to get a beer and some appetizers downtown and watch the crowds. The Avenue does fine dining with a Southern flair right in the lobby of The Waters Hotel (340 Central Ave.), the historic boutique hotel that opened in 2017 and has raised the bar in downtown accommodations. Red Light Roastery (1003 Park Ave.) offers small batch craft coffee roasted in-house. Rolando’s (210 Central Ave.) specializes in Latin American cuisine. Local brewery Bubba Brew’s, headquartered just outside of Hot Springs in Bonnerdale, has an offshoot on Lake Hamilton (1252 Airport Road) that’s worth a visit.

10 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

Anthony Tidwell, a barber at Tim’s Barber Shop in Hot Springs, started the nonprofit Cutwell 4 Kids in 2014 to get area kids “to think out of the box instead of following along with their peers.” Tidwell wants to foster the abilities of burgeoning artists, but he also knows art can be invaluable for dealing with the stresses of childhood.

He has firsthand experience with the latter. He was born in Hot Springs, but spent much of his childhood in Atlanta during the late 1970s and early ’80s, when at least 28 people — mostly children — were killed in the city. After classmates were reported missing, Tidwell quit speaking for nearly a year.

His salvation ultimately came thanks to a teacher who suggested he draw what he was feeling. He’s leaned on painting and drawing ever since “as a coping” mechanism. These days he favors pop art, “bright and colorful.”

For the last five years, Tidwell has offered free summer art classes to schoolchildren at the Cutwell 4 Kids studio at 247 Silver St. He gets community support to purchase art supplies.

The show regularly goes on the road to parties and events, where Tidwell and volunteers bring 4-by-8foot double-sided walls of canvas on which kids can paint. Recent festival visits include World Fest in Little Rock, Dunbar Community Festival in Little Rock, Art Springs in Hot Springs and an Upward Bound gathering at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Visit cutwell4kids.org to learn more. — Lindsey Millar

Matt McLeod Fine Art Gallery

It’s in Little Rock’s Creative Corridor, along the SoMa neighborhood and all around the city – the creative sprit that also defines The Heights and Hillcrest and Riverdale. Local artists and craftsmen make their mark on contemporary Southern culture, digging back into the past and looking to the future. It’s easy to look around Little Rock and find art that’s unique and essential, bringing vibrance and expression into everyday life. Find a gallery or shop locally and bring home something that speaks to the soul and inspires – right here in Little Rock.

LittleRock.com

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 11

ART TOWNS

LITTLE ROCK

NOT A WEEK GOES BY IN THE CAPITAL CITY WITHOUT AN ARTS AND CRAFTS TODO. ONE DOESN’T HAVE TO SEARCH FAR TO FIND ART WALKS, GALLERY OPENINGS, MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS, FESTIVALS, LIVE MUSIC AND THEATER. PLUS, THERE’S PRIMO SHOPPING FOR LOCALLY MADE GOODS, FOOD AND DRINK. Clinton Presidential Center

Historic Arkansas Museum

SEE & DO Don’t delay in visiting the Arkansas Arts Center (Ninth and Commerce streets). The city’s premier art institution is scheduled to close in November 2019 for a $98 million renovation conceived by Studio Gang, an internationally renowned architecture and design firm based in Chicago. The construction will shutter the Arts Center until early 2022. “Independent Vision,” a showcase of modern and contemporary work from San Francisco-based collector Martin Muller, is on display through Dec. 30, 2018. Learn how to build a table, throw a pot or draw figuratively at the AAC’s Museum School, or take the kids to a production of the Children’s Theatre, which finishes out its season in May 2019.

The Historic Arkansas Museum (200 E. Third St.) is both a place to learn about Arkansas’s craft history and get a window into the past with a stroll about the grounds’ restored antebellum homes, tavern, print shop and blacksmith shop. The museum’s permanent galleries highlight Arkansas knives and the objects and experiences of the Caddo, Osage and Quapaw in Arkansas; the museum’s years-in-the-making research on the state’s arts and artisans

12 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

is featured on a rotating basis in the Arkansas Made gallery; and works by contemporary artists are regularly displayed in upstairs galleries.

Take a longer trip through Arkansas history at the Old State House Museum (300 W. Markham St.), where you’ll find changing and permanent exhibits (of the latter, the inaugural gowns of the state’s first ladies are a favorite); and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center (501 W. Ninth St.), which is dedicated to African-American history, culture, community and entrepreneurship in Arkansas from 1870 to the present. Stroll through Riverfront Park and enjoy the whimsical sculptures in the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden.

Learn about the nation’s 42nd president at the Clinton Presidential Center and Park (1200 President Clinton Ave.), where thousands of artifacts, photographs and interactive exhibits tell the story of the Clinton presidency. A temporary exhibit, “White House Collection of American Crafts,” celebrates works commissioned during the Clinton administration for exhibition in the White House. It remains on display through March 31, 2019.

For a truly unique experience, explore decades of changing purse design and special exhibitions at the Esse Purse Museum & Store (1510 Main. St.), one of

a handful of galleries in the world dedicated to the art of women’s handbags and fashions.

At night there’s a range of options, including the Arkansas Repertory Theatre (601 Main St.), which, after suspending operations in 2018, has righted the ship and is launching a 2019 season; the renovated Robinson Center Performance Hall (426 W. Markham St.), which hosts performances by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Celebrity Attractions’ Broadway productions, traveling big-name musicians and more.

Catch a film, a reading or a special event at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Ron Robinson Theater. Enjoy the city’s top community theaters, Studio Theater (320 W. Seventh St.) and The Weekend Theater (1001 W. Seventh St.).

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! Save the date for Central Arkansas's largest sales showcase of arts and crafts at Arkansas Made-Arkansas Proud at War Memorial Stadium May 18, 2019. Find out more at WMStadium.com or at Arkansas Made-Arkansas Proud's Facebook page.

Jennifer Perren, 27, doesn’t look like the kind of young woman who brings devils to life — she’s so shy she only reluctantly provided the portrait, an image of ginger-locked innocence, that runs with this story — but that’s what she does, in clay. Perren, who holds a B.F.A. in printmaking from UA Little Rock, began doing pottery in a class with Celia Storey at the Arkansas Arts Center, where she learned to push the clay around to make a face pot and added a lid. She added horns to the lids so they could be lifted, and the fat-cheeked-andchinned faces that her pots embodied turned into devils.

“I just like to think of it as a Southern thing to keep putting faces on functional pottery,” Perren said, referring to the bucktoothed and scary face jugs of the Carolinas. Perren’s people aren’t grotesque; in fact, her jars’ fat faces have a certain kind of wicked charm. These are facetious devils.

Perren also creates bowls circled with her trademark plump faces. Some of her works have touches of gold enamel where she’s had to knock fired clay off the surface, a la the Japanese practice of kintsugi. Some of her face bowls are rubbed with spare applications of a rufous tint. All are as fetching as they are unusual.

Along with pots and bowls, Perren has been making doll parts — hands, feet and faces out of clay — to be added to soft sewn bodies.

She also paints and draws, and is hoping for a two-year work-study residency at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. If she succeeds, that will take her away from Arkansas for a while, but if we’re lucky, she’ll keep doing the devil’s work and sending it back to Arkansas.

Find Perren’s work at the Bookstore at Library Square in the Arkansas Studies Institute., South Main Creative, the Historic Arkansas Museum and the Arkansas Arts Center. She’s also on Instagram (og_ojenn) and has a website, jenniferperren.com. — Leslie Newell Peacock

ART WALKS & GALLERIES Get out and stroll through the River Market district and other points downtown for the monthly 2nd Friday Art Night downtown. Look for art openings, live music and complimentary snacks and drinks at many venues. Among the regular highlights: The Galleries at Library Square (401 President Clinton Ave.), Bella Vita Jewelry (523 S. Louisiana St., Suite 175), the Bookstore at Library Square (120 River Market Ave.), Gallery 221 (221 W. Second St.), Matt McLeod Fine Art (108 W. Sixth St.), Nexus Coffee & Creative (301 President Clinton Ave.) and the aforementioned Historic Arkansas Museum and Old State House Museum.

Hillcrest Shop N Sip lands the first Thursday of the month along lower Kavanaugh Boulevard. Essential stops include Gallery 26 (2601 Kavanaugh), a longtime supporter of local artists; Box Turtle (2616 Kavanaugh), a clothing and jewelry store that celebrates upscale bohemian style and locally made items; women’s clothing boutique E. Leigh’s (2911 Kavanaugh); and Hillcrest Designer Jewelry (3000 Kavanaugh).

On the third Thursday of each month, The Heights hosts its night out, with special events at galleries, restaurants and shops. A few essential galleries to check out: Boswell Mourot Fine Art (5815 Kavanaugh), Chroma Gallery (5707 Kavanaugh), L&L Beck Art Gallery (5705 Kavanaugh), Local Colour (5811 Kavanaugh) and Stephano’s Fine Art Gallery (1813 N. Grant St.). Old Heights Corner Store (5919 Kavanaugh) is the place to get “LR” branded hats and apparel and Pinnacle Mountain “Arkansocks.”

Elsewhere in the city, Hearne Fine Art (1001 Wright Ave.) is a destination for African-American fine art, and Cantrell Gallery (8206 Cantrell Road) specializes in work by Arkansas artists.

Perren's pots have wicked charm!

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 13

SHOP

EAT & DRINK

The Green Corner Store & Soda Fountain (1423 S. Main St.) carries all-natural foods and locally made bath products, jewelry and more. South Main Creative (1600 Main) is a modern spin on an antique mall with vendors showcasing antiques, vintage treasures, locally designed and stitched women’s clothes and art. Argenta Bead Co. (1608 Main) carries all the goods you’ll need for jewelry making; work with other beaders and jewelry makers at the store’s Bead Bar. Electric Ghost (1218 Main) is a screen-printing shop and boutique that sells succulents, artisan jewelry, T-shirts and more. Shop records, vintage treasures, locally made T-shirts, tea towels, offbeat decor and more at Moxy Modern Mercantile (1419 Main).

Reinvented Vintage (1222 S. Main) sells repurposed and renovated furniture and locally handmade products.

Sweet Home Furnishings and Clement (1324 S. Main) are two excellent antique stores in one locale, and fun Inretrospec (1201 Center St.) has an eclectic offering of antiques and vintage clothing at all price ranges.

The options are growing when it comes to locally sourced and crafted specialty foods in Little Rock. Loblolly Creamery (1423 S. Main St.) partners often with local farms and brewers to make delicious from-scratch ice cream.

In the Heights, LePops (5501 Kavanaugh Blvd.) sells crave-worthy gourmet ice lollies made from locally grown produce and herbs. In Hillcrest, nosh on small-batch, artisan chocolates, truffles and caramels from Izard Chocolate (623 Beechwood St.) Find delicious fresh-baked goods at a host of beloved bakeries, including Boulevard Bread Co. (1417 Main St., 1912 N. Grant St. and other satellites), Hillcrest’s Rosalia’s Family Bakery (2701 Kavanaugh Blvd.), downtown’s Community Bakery (1200 Main St., also 270 S. Shackleford Road in West Little Rock), Old Mill Bread Bakery & Cafe (12111 W. Markham St. in West Little Rock) or downtown’s Dempsey Bakery (323 S. Cross St.), where everything is gluten-free.

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In 2010, there were only four breweries in the whole of Arkansas. Today, there are nine in Little Rock alone. Taste them all! Head to the taprooms at Blue Canoe Brewing Co. (425 E. Third St.), Buffalo Brewing Co. (inside The Water Buffalo, a supply store for brewing your own beer, making your own cheese and more at 106 S. Rodney Parham Road), Rebel Kettle Brewing (822 E. Sixth St.), Lost Forty Brewing (501 Byrd St.), Stone’s Throw Brewing (402 E. Ninth St. and a new location coming on Markham in Stifft Station in 2019), Vino’s Brew Pub (923 W. Seventh St.) or Damgoode Pies Pizzeria & Taproom (500 President Clinton Ave.). If you’re looking for something stronger, take a tasting tour at Rock Town Distillery’s new location (1201 Main St.), where you’ll find the finest Arkansas vodka, gin, rum, whiskey and more.

NORTH LITTLE ROCK

FIND GALLERIES, BREWERIES AND MORE PACKED IN ARGENTA, HISTORIC DOWNTOWN NORTH LITTLE ROCK’S CULTURAL HUB.

Thea Foundation

SEE & DO The big news in North Little Rock is the coming Argenta Plaza (502 Main St.), a $4.6 million development scheduled for completion sometime in the latter part of 2019. The plaza promises to be a world-class urban gathering place where art of all stripes will be showcased. A wall of water will serve as a visual and sound backdrop. A 35-foot-by-35-foot screen above a stage will allow the projection of film, sports and cultural events. The plaza will integrate the water features with lighting designed by the Renfro Design Group of New York, which worked on the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Center.

But there’s plenty to do in the here and now: The Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub (201 E. Broadway) is a nonprofit maker space where members can use 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC routers, screen-printing machines, a full woodshop and more to create their own products. Regular classes are offered, too, and the Hub does outreach to schoolchildren. Get your literary fix, for free, at the monthly Argenta Reading Series at the Argenta United Methodist Church (317 Main St.), where local and regional authors appear. The Joint (301 Main) is a coffeehouse and theater that regularly hosts comedy and improv shows and is the home of The Main Thing, a professional comedy troupe that does satirical two-act comedy shows every Friday and Saturday. The

Mavis Staples at CHARTS Joint also hosts the popular Argenta Acoustic Series. Catch a play or film at the Argenta Community Theater (405 Main), a nonprofit that attracts top-notch local and regional talent to perform in the intimate 300-seat theater. The biggest concerts and events in Arkansas happen at Verizon Arena, just east of Main Street, and on the banks of the Arkansas River, take a tour of the USS Razorback submarine at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum.

Beyond downtown, CHARTS, as UA Pulaski Technical College’s Center for Humanities and Arts (3000 W. Scenic Drive) is known, has become an essential Central Arkansas destination since its opening in 2016. The 90,000-squarefoot building includes a 450-seat theater, which has hosted performances from the likes of Mavis Staples and Pharoah Sanders, as well as productions

by Ballet Arkansas and Opera in the Rock. CHARTS’ Windgate Gallery shows local and national art exhibits.

ART WALKS & GALLERIES North Little Rock is home to the Thea Foundation (401 Main), Arkansas’s most vibrant arts education enterprise.

Paul and Linda Leopoulos founded the nonprofit in memory of their late daughter, Thea, whose achievements in high school art classes gave her the confidence to excel in other academic areas. Thea offers gallery space for adult

and student artists, provides funds for art supplies for schools across the state and awards annual competitive visual and performing arts scholarships to graduating high school students.

The Argenta Art Walk, held every third Friday of the month from 5-8 p.m., includes a host of top-notch galleries and venues, including the Thea Foundation, Greg Thompson Fine Art (429 Main), Argenta Gallery (413 Main), Barry Thomas Fine Art & Studio (711 Main), The House of Art (108 E. Fourth St.) and the Argenta Branch of the Laman Library (420 Main).

EAT & DRINK Three brewers make Argenta a destination for craft beer consumption: Diamond Bear Brewing Co. (600 N. Broadway), Flyway Brewing (314 Maple St.) and Core Public House (411 Main St.), one of the Springdale-based brewery’s many satellites.

North Little Rock is also home of the top-of-the-line roasting and packaging facility for Westrock Coffee, which delivers robust fair-trade African, Central American and South American blends.

It’s sold in grocery stores, restaurants and shops throughout the state. Fischer’s Honey (2001 N. Poplar St.) is the largest and oldest honey processing and packing plant in Arkansas; you can buy directly from its headquarters or in stores throughout the state.

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 15

ART TOWNS

FORT SMITH

THE STATE'S SECOND LARGEST CITY HAS BECOME AN 'UNEXPECTED' ART DESTINATION. An "Unexpected" mural

Don Lee

SEE & DO The $15.5 million, 58,000-square-foot Windgate Art & Design Building is a gem on the campus of the University of Arkansas Fort Smith (5210 Grand Ave.).

It includes gallery spaces, letterpress and printmaking operations and a 150-seat theater, along with multiple classroom and studio spaces for UAFS students. The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum (1601 Rogers Ave.) is a cornerstone of art in Fort Smith. The RAM features traveling exhibits as well as free drop-in art activities, including its “make and take” program that explores various media from noon-4 p.m. every Saturday.

There’s perhaps nothing more exciting happening in the Arkansas art world than The Unexpected, an initiative that brings world-class artists and muralists to historic buildings and other sites in downtown Fort Smith to create lasting public art. The project, curated by the global creative house Justkids and launched in 2015, was named for “bringing unexpected art to an unexpected place.” The annual Unexpected festival, which typically happens in the fall, dedicates new public mural projects, done in collaboration with international artists and locals. The project now includes more than 30 murals around town. You can get a guide for an Unexpected walking tour at Miss Laura’s Visitor Center (2

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N. B St.), a former bordello that’s on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as the city’s welcome center.

Bastion Gallery (914 Garrison Ave.) began life as a pop-up, but has become a fixture in Fort Smith’s art scene. The community gallery gives 100 percent of art sale proceeds to artists. It’s part of a new Downtown Fort Smith Arts Walk that also includes The Bakery (70 S. Seventh), an event space poised to become a brewery and art space.

SHOP Buy locally made goods at the Rivervalley Artisan Market in Ross Pendergraft Park (200 Garrison Ave.) every first Tuesday of the month from May until October.

EAT & DRINK Carrot Dirt (4300 Rogers Ave.) is the place to go for organic juices, smoothies and treats, while great coffee can be had at Fort Smith Coffee Co. (1101 Rogers Ave.). Check out the rotating artworks on display at The Artistic Bean (615 Garrison Ave.) while enjoying your cup of Joe. For lunch, check out the funky food trucks parked at Garrison Commons pocket park (913 Garrison Ave.). For libations, Fort Smith Brewing Co. (7500 Fort Chaffee Blvd.), the first commercial brewery in town in two decades, is a must.

Fayetteville artist Kat Wilson calls painter Don Lee “an art shaman” and says he’s insufficiently heralded outside of Fort Smith (though he has exhibited throughout the state, and in Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, New Jersey, New York, California and Germany). There’s no question that Lee, 75, is well known and admired at UA Fort Smith, where he was a professor of art for more than 45 years until his retirement in May. The second floor of the Windgate Art & Design Building houses the Don Lee Gallery, which showcases students’ art. For a time, Lee oversaw the main Windgate Gallery, too.

He was also an influential force in the launch of The Unexpected, Fort Smith’s massively successful mural project. “Who would’ve thought the rap artists would be the ones making the most money 20 years ago? I think art is sort of following that in some way — what was once graffiti is now street art and has a standing,” he said. “It’s also taking art out of the galleries and museums a little bit, though a lot of [the street muralists] have become well known enough that they exhibit.”

In retirement, Lee is working in his home studio, drawing and painting and using wax, pigment, shellac and mixed media materials. He describes his latest project as a kind of dimensional drawing with cardboard container sculptures. “I like to begin something not knowing where it’s going,” Lee said. — Lindsey Millar

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ART TOWNS

EUREKA SPRINGS

THERE’S SURELY NO MORE ARTS-ORIENTED COMMUNITY THAN EUREKA SPRINGS, A LONGTIME OZARKS VACATION DESTINATION FILLED WITH GORGEOUS VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE AND DOZENS OF ART GALLERIES.

Zark's Fine Art Gallery

SEE & DO Most of the businesses in this mountain town are open only in spring and summer. From November or December to March or April, many of the city’s restaurants, galleries and tourist destinations go dark.

But during the rest of the year, you can usually find some kind of music — be it a drum circle, live music or ballroom dancing — in Basin Spring Park (4 Spring St.).

The Eureka Springs Auditorium (36 S. Main St.), built in 1928 and known as The Aud, has hosted such national talents as Randy Newman, Little Feat, B.B. King and Richie Havens. Its calendar in December is filled with holiday performances. Chelsea’s Corner Cafe & Bar (10 Mountain St.) is a good spot to catch live music from local and regional talent. The Melonlight Ballroom (2 Pine St.) hosts concerts and yoga and a range of dance classes, from ballroom to Latin, swing to country.

No trip to Eureka is complete — especially for architecture aficio-

18 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

nados — without a visit to Thorncrown Chapel (U.S. Highway 62 West), designed by world-renowned architect and Arkansas native E. Fay Jones. Thorncrown was listed among the American Institute of Architects’ top 10 buildings of the 20th century.

St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church is another architectural marvel.

The Spanish-style building was constructed in 1909 and is open for visitation during the day; it once made it into “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” as one of the only churches one enters through its bell tower.

If you want to learn about Eureka Springs’ unique history — and there’s plenty of it; the city was founded in 1879 — visit the Eureka Springs Historical Museum (95 S. Main St.).

For those looking to learn a craft, Eureka Springs School of the Arts (15751 U.S. Hwy. 62) offers dozens of classes on everything from woodworking to jewelry making to “the art of mud” (see more on page 30). Red Scottie Fibers, inside Fleece ’N Flax (51 Spring St.), gives knitting, crocheting and weaving classes.

To fly up and over Crescent Drive in Eureka Springs and get a bird’s eye view of the Crescent Hotel, or watch the mist roll into an Ozarks valley, or see the Christ of the Ozarks jump from two dimensions into three, all you need to do is download an app. The near-magic smart phone app was created by photographer Edward C. Robison III, 42, owner of Eureka’s Sacred Earth Gallery and the technological wizard behind “Eureka Springs — An Augmented Reality Project,” a 48-page hardcover book that lifts the sights and landscapes of Eureka Springs off the page and into a virtual third dimension. Robison, whose primary occupation is nature photography and whose commercial work includes special projects for Bass Pro Shop’s Johnny Morris and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, was inspired to experiment with photo augmentation after he saw his son with a simple device to look at black-and-white pictures in 3D. Robison launched a Kickstarter campaign, developed an app — which he said required a “combination of coding and game development” that he learned from watching internet videos — and, after five months of creating three-dimensional models and time-lapse photos with thousands of photographs, he could publish pictures that move.

Robison has also applied the technology and developed a special app to time-travel in Basin Park, where he’s created and installed 12 interactive panels that animate historical photographs to show the passage of time; the project was commissioned by Eureka Springs’ Historic Commission.

Robison, a Kansas native who moved to Eureka Springs with his wife, artist Janalee Robison, and son a decade ago (the time it takes to become accepted as a “Eurekan,” Robison said), said he was drawn to the Ozarks by its beauty, a source for his highly saturated color images of the Buffalo River and its bluffs and other landscapes. Robison has also published “Ozark Landscapes — An Augmented Reality Project,” (which is almost sold out).

Robison’s gallery, Sacred Earth Studio at 15817 U.S. Highway 62, is open by appointment or when the Robisons are working there. Robison is also showing his photography, from traditional to augmented, at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum in May. The reception is 5-7 p.m. May 9, and he’ll lecture from 6-7 p.m. May 1. The show runs through Sept.

1. — Leslie Newell Peacock

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! SHOP Shop handmade one-of-a-kind retro looks and modern essentials at Regalia Handmade Clothing Studio (16 White St.). Owner and designer Mark Hughes offers gorgeous, flattering patterns in a variety of patterned and plain linen.

Find seasonal produce, baked goods, jellies, jams, cheese and more at the year-round Eureka Springs Farmers Market (44 W. Van Buren St.).

EAT & DRINK Brews (2 Pine St.) is the place to get coffee and Arkansas-brewed beer. Spice things up with Mundi Sauce, a family business based in Eureka that specializes in uniquely flavored small batch hot sauces using only Arkansas farmers’ ingredients. Two Dumb Dames Chocolate Store (33 S. Main St.) has been stocking Eureka Springs with handmade fudge, saltwater taffy and specialty chocolates since 1980. Relax on the patio overlooking the vineyards at Railway Winery and Vineyards (4937 State Highway 187), a family-owned winery near the historic Beaver Bridge and beautiful Table Rock Lake. Or check out art while you taste Keels Creek Winery’s Signature Red (3185 E. Van Buren).

Get a look inside the studios of local artists and see where the magic happens at the annual White Street Studio Walk on May 17, 2019. Visitors are invited to enjoy refreshments and live music as they walk the streets of the upper Historic Loop to tour the homes and studios of dozens of artists and artisans.

GALLERIES & ART WALKS On the second Saturday of the month, April through November, galleries in Eureka Springs stay open after hours to welcome guests, show new work and offer refreshments.

Experience a gallery stroll, or stop in on a visit to delve into the rich Eureka art world. Here are a few galleries to consider: 85 Spring Street Gallery (85 Spring St.), Eureka Fine Art Gallery (2 Pine St., Ste. Y), Fantasy & Stone (63 Spring St., The Green Gourd (12 Center St.), Iris at Basin Park (8 Spring St.), J.A. Nelson Gallery (37 Spring St.), The Jewel Box (40 Spring St.), Keels Creek Winery & Gallery (3185 E. Van Buren), Quicksilver Gallery (73 Spring St.), Sacred Earth Gallery (15817 U.S. Hwy. 62 W.) Serendipity at the Crescent Hotel (75 Prospect Ave.), Studio 62 (335 W. Van Buren St.), Zark’s Fine Art Gallery (67 Spring St.).

WHEN YOU’RE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TRULY HAND-PICKED,

‘Fayetteberry’ by Gina Gallina - Walker Stone House

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 19

ART TOWNS

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS

FAYETTEVILLE, SPRINGDALE, ROGERS AND BENTONVILLE HAVE EACH GROWN SO MUCH THEY’VE ALL BUT BECOME ONE CONNECTED CITY OVERFLOWING WITH MUSIC, ARTS AND CRAFTS DESTINATIONS. The future home of TheatreSquared.

Fahamu Pecou's "Nunna My Heros: After Barkley Hendricks' Icon for My Man Superman 1969," coming to Crystal Bridges in February.

SEE & DO See art openings, catch live music and enjoy nosh from food trucks at First Thursday in downtown Fayetteville. It usually runs from 5-8:30 p.m.

May to October. While you’re downtown, check out the student-run sUgAR Gallery (1 E. Center St.), the Walton Arts Center’s Joy Pratt Markham Gallery (495 W. Dickson St.), or Art Ventures (101 W. Mountain St., previously known as Fayetteville Underground), which showcases regional art and hosts a variety of community events. Fenix Fayetteville (16 W. Center St.), an artists collective, hosts both visual and performing arts events. Like Fort Smith, Fayetteville has joined the mural movement, with the Green Candy public art project. Check out “Owl” on the east side of the former Mountain Inn building: It’s a three-story work by Puerto Rican artist Alexis Diaz. There’s an eclipse mural by Argentinian street artist Marina Zumi on the west side of Hog Haus Brewing Co., and Fayetteville artist Jason Jones is the creator of the gas-masked rabbit at 545 W. Center St. Step onto the University of Arkansas campus to tour The Fine Arts Center Gallery (340 N. Garland), which was designed by famed architect Edward Durell Stone in the 1950s and is part of

20 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

a massive renovation project funded by a $120 million grant from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation to establish the UA School of Art. Looking for an outdoor experience?

Visit the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks (4703 N. Crossover Road) in Fayetteville. There’s a $7 ticket, but you’ll see 12 themed gardens and a butterfly house, and learn about bats or succulents or tea — whatever is being offered in the garden’s educational program.

TheatreSquared (505 W. Spring St.) in Fayetteville is recognized by the American Theatre Wing as one of the nation’s 10 most promising emerging theaters. It’ll get a big boost when it relocates sometime in 2019 from the Walton Art Center’s Nadine Baum Studio to a new, 50,000-square-foot building across the street, at the corner of Spring Street and West Avenue. The new facility will have two state-of-theart theaters, eight guest apartments and a cafe and bar open daily.

Downtown Bentonville hosts block parties year-round, including cultureand shopping-themed First Friday events April through November.

Bentonville galleries Meteor Guitar Gallery (128 W. Central Ave.), Two25Gallery & Wine Bar (225 S. Main St.) and others welcome local and regional work. 21c Museum Hotel (200 NE A St.)

is both the place to stay and a fantastic place to view art, with 12,000 square feet of exhibition space featuring permanent works and rotating exhibitions integrated into the hotel.

MUSEUMS & MORE Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (600 Museum Way) is the prime arts destination in Arkansas, with a collection of work by the country’s top artists that spans the 1600s to the present day on a 100-acre campus. A sister institution, the Momentary (507 S.E. E St.), is scheduled to open in 2020. The experimental visual and performing arts space will include galleries, studio space, a black box theater, an amphitheater, a studio kitchen, cafe, bar and indoor and outdoor public spaces.

Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center (495 W. Dickson St.) brings in Broadway shows, concerts from national acts and more.

The Walton Arts Center also promotes the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion (5079 W. Northgate Road), known as The AMP, in Rogers. This outdoor music venue accommodates 9,500 people with 3,200 covered seats on a sloped lawn. Catch well known national acts in all genres of music.

EAT & DRINK Pink House Alchemy (1010 S.W. A St.) in Bentonville offers small batch artisan syrups, bitters and shrubs to make your cocktails or coffee second to none.

Bentonville’s Markham and Fitz (801 S.E. Eighth St.) is a bean-to-bar chocolatier in the new, happening 8th Street Market, which also hosts a regular Bentonville Wednesday Farmers Market during the growing season.

Northwest Arkansas has a strong craft brewery scene with Apple Blossom Brewing Co. (1550 E. Zion Road, Fayetteville), Bentonville Brewing Co. (1700 S. First St., Rogers, until a new space opens in Bentonville) Bike Rack Brewing Co. (801 S.E. Eighth St., 410 S.W. A St., Bentonville), Black Apple Crossing Cidery (321 E. Emma Ave., Springdale), Columbus House Brewery (701 W. North St., Fayetteville), Core Brewing & Distilling Co. (many locations throughout the region; coreofarkansas.com for addresses), Crisis Brewing Co. (210 S. Archibald Yell Blvd., Fayetteville), Fossil Cove Brewing (1946 N. Birch Ave., Fayetteville), Hawk Moth Brewery (710 N. Second St., Rogers), Ivory Bill Brewing (516 E. Main St., Siloam Springs), JJ’s Beer Garden & Brewing (3615 Steele Blvd., Fayetteville), New Province Brewing (1310 W. Hudson Road), Ozark Beer Co. (109 N. Arkansas St., Rogers), Saddlebock Brewery (18244 Haberton Road, Springdale) and West Mountain Brewing (21 W. Mountain St., Fayetteville).

SHOP Terra Studios (12103 Hazel Valley) in Fayetteville is home of the Bluebird of Happiness and Pink Bird of Hope and showcases the work of more than 100 artists and crafters. Explore the sculpture garden and art gallery, see live demonstrations or participate in an art class. On the Fayetteville Square (15 S. Block Ave.), stop into The Mustache Goods & Wears for unique gifts and locally made goods.

City Supply (15 S. Block Ave.) in Fayetteville offers a great selection of home goods, many of which are made locally.

The Handmade Market (1504 N. College Ave.) is the place to find handmade jewelry, gourmet foods, bath products and more.

Handworks NWA (106 S.E. A St.) in Bentonville offers handcrafted artisan gifts, bath and body products, candles, jewelry and pottery.

Stop into the Crystal Bridges Museum Store (600 Museum Way) after you view the latest exhibit to grab a souvenir and shop the locally made art and crafts.

Shindig Paperie (100 W. Center St.) in Fayetteville is a go-to for outfitting your office with designer pens, organizers and locally made stationery.

Learn how to cook, bake or mix drinks when you sign up for a culinary class at Honeycomb Kitchen Shop (213 W. Walnut St.) in Rogers, or just browse the shelves for kitchen gear and locally made jams, jellies, spices, cutting boards and more.

Sharon Killian On close inspection of Fayetteville artist Sharon Killian’s paintings, the individual brush strokes of color become shapes that are individually defined — as tiny ovals or miniscule squares — yet still part of a whole. That whole, Killian says, is an exploration of the parameters of her own vision and perception. She sometimes refers to her paintings as “masks” because of how the various textures, lines and movement within them work together on a flat surface to create an illusion of the original sunset, landscape or image that inspired her. “All these elements are at once a discussion, for me, with the viewer, that everything is a piece of something, it’s an abstraction,” she says.

Killian emigrated as a child from Jamaica to Harlem, where she gained an appreciation for and comfort with museums and galleries. She and her husband moved to Fayetteville from Washington, D.C., in 2005 to care for his aging parents, and they now live on a hill overlooking the White River, where Killian is able to study landscapes and skyscapes from the comfort of her home studio.

Killian taught an art education course at the University of Arkansas for three years, and now focuses her efforts on her own work as well as her responsibilities as board president of the Fayetteville Art Alliance, a nonprofit arts institution that oversees the Art Ventures Gallery at 101 W. Mountain St., on the southwest corner of Fayetteville’s downtown square.

The gallery’s mission is one of radical inclusivity and representation, according to Killian. “At the very heart of it all for us is diversity,” Killian said. “This is in a real way, not a contrived, not secondary, not after the fact [way]. … Excellence is a capstone always, but diversity of cultures and people and ways of seeing are respected and presented so that all sorts of people can see themselves.” — Rebekah Hall

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ART TOWNS

EL DORADO

THE FORMER OIL BOOMTOWN IS BOOMING ONCE AGAIN THANKS TO A $100 MILLION ENTERTAINMENT MAKEOVER.

MAD Amphitheater

SEE & DO Last year, MAD, as the Murphy Arts District is called, transformed downtown El Dorado. Largely bankrolled by the El Dorado-based Murphy Oil and the Murphy family, phase one of the $100 million project included the MAD Amphitheater, home to music festivals featuring nationally known acts, outdoor film screenings and a seasonal farmers market; First Financial Music Hall at the Griffin, a music venue and multipurpose event center that can hold 3,000 people; the Griffin Restaurant, a farm-to-table gastropub and cabaret with seating for up to 300 guests; and the MAD Playscape, a 2-acre children’s playground that contains ADA accessible equipment. Phase two is slated to include the MAD Art Gallery, a 10,000-square-foot space that will showcase exhibitions from around the country, and a renovation of the Rialto, a 1920s Vaudeville-era theater that will have floor seating for 850, plus a full balcony. It will eventually host the South Arkansas Symphony and traveling films and Broadway shows.

Make sure you check out Oil Heritage Park downtown for a self-guided tour of sculpture, artifacts and plaques that tell Union County’s fascinating history. If you want more, a 15-minute

22 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

drive will take you to the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources (4087 Smackover Hwy., Smackover), where you’ll find more about South Arkansas’s oil boom and the culture that sprang up around it.

Get your fill of theater, art and education at the South Arkansas Arts Center (110 E. Fifth St.), El Dorado’s visual and performing arts center, which includes three gallery spaces, a ballet studio, a 207-seat theater, a costume shop, classrooms, a photography studio and more. The SAAC hosts regular arts classes for adults and children.

EAT & DRINK No trip to El Dorado is complete without a visit to the Spudnut Shoppe Co. (810 W. Faulkner St.) to pick up a dozen (or two) Spudnuts, the famed donut delicacy made with potato flour.

And Hill’s Recreation Parlor (205 E. Cedar St.) is the oldest running pool hall in the state.

A new $14 million boutique hotel, The Haywood, is slated to open in 2020 with 70 rooms and a lobby bar that’s intended to serve as a hangout for travelers and locals alike and will feature art installations.

SHOP Backwoods Art Gallery (209 E. Main St.) offers professional framing services and doubles as an art gallery and gift shop, showcasing paintings, sculpture, jewelry and more.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! Every fall, the city hosts one of the top music festivals in the state in Musicfest El Dorado. This annual three-day event brings in top national music acts in a festival atmosphere with kids’ activities, craft booths, food and more.

The El Dorado Film Festival offers a diverse selection of international and local films with an emphasis on Southern voices. Catch programming, including film screenings, filmmaker panels, concerts and parties, at the South Arkansas Arts Center and Murphy Arts District. Look for the next fest in the latter half of 2019.

CONWAY

THIS COLLEGE TOWN IS ALWAYS GETTING UP TO SOMETHING ARTISTIC.

"Harmonic Fugue" at Hendrix College

SEE & DO For big-time attractions, the University of Central Arkansas’s Reynolds Performance Hall (223 Beatrice Powell St.) is a prime destination. To give a sense of its programming range, this fall, the 1,200-seat, state-of-the-art theater hosted a traveling Broadway production of “Chicago,” blues performer Buddy Guy and EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winner Rita Moreno.

Also, on the campus of UCA, the Baum Gallery (201 Donaghey Ave.) exhibits work by nationally known artists, professors and students with free admission. The school’s permanent collection includes a number of paintings and drawings by renowned Arkansas artists Louis and Elsie Freund, including Louis Freund’s “Age of Man,” an oil painting that can be seen on the first floor of UCA’s Torreyson Library.

Hendrix College (1600 Washington Ave.) regularly brings visiting arts lecturers and stages plays, concerts and literary readings throughout the campus.

Worth seeking out: “Harmonic Fugue,” the sound and light installation in the underpass that connects the campus to the athletics complex across Harkrider Street. Designed by acclaimed architect and composer Christopher Janney, the permanent installation features sensors, audio speakers and colored LED lights

that react to movement with instrumental and native Arkansas environmental sounds, including the buzz of a honeybee and song of a mockingbird. There’s a riddle in the installation that, if solved, triggers a special light show.

The Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, which operates out of UCA, is the state’s only professional Shakespeare company. It produces several plays by the Bard every spring at Reynolds Performance Hall, outdoors and at other venues in Central Arkansas.

The Conway Alliance for the Arts nurtures collaboration, promotion and development of resources for the advancement of the Conway artistic community. Each fall, the group hosts ArtsFest in the city’s downtown.

Another organization dedicated to the promotion of arts and artists is the Conway League of Artists. With more than 100 members representing five counties, the league sponsors several shows annually.

The Conway Men’s Chorus presents two free concerts each year at Reynolds Performance Hall: “WinterSong” on Dec. 4 and “SpringSing” in May 2019.The Conway Symphony Orchestra performs a full season of six professional concerts, including a free outdoor community concert, a holiday performance and a children’s concert.

The CSO also offers a classroom program for local elementary and interme-

diate schools and sponsors a number of ensemble performances throughout the year.

The Conductor (250 Donaghey Ave., Suite 130) is a maker space and community learning facility that’s the product of a partnership between UCA and Startup Junkie Consulting. Free and open to the public, The Conductor hosts regular classes and events and is equipped with 3D printers, a laser cutter, CNC machines, and other woodand metal-working tools.

EAT & DRINK PattiCakes (2106 Robinson Ave.) is the go-to bakery in Conway. Find locally roasted coffee at Blue Sail (1028 Front St.), Zeteo (911 W. Oak St.) or Round Mountain Coffee (2850 Prince St.).

Tacos 4 Life (716 Oak St. and 2235 Dave Ward Drive), which makes donations to Feed My Starving Children, was founded in Conway and is known not only for its philanthropy, but its food. Mike’s Place (808 Front St.) is locally owned and locally loved for New Orleans-style menu and ambiance.

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ART TOWNS

SHOP

You might picture Holly Laws, a University of Central Arkansas sculpture professor whose artwork won a spot in the international juried exhibition “Heavy Metal” in Washington, D.C., this year, wielding a blowtorch with aplomb. But Laws says she is not just a metal artist. In fact, “I usually work in anything but metal,” Laws said. “I work in anything — raw hide, crystals — to get my point across.”

But it was her cast-bronze ocotillo twig — a spiny plant that grows in the deserts of Arizona and Mexico — that made up her piece “Placeholder” and the caged steel and copper wings of “Three Eastern Bluebirds” that earned the attention of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Laws was one of only 20 artists from across the country selected by curator Matt Smith for “Heavy Metal,” NMWA’s 2018 Women to Watch exhibition of work by emerging women artists. Smith also curated the Arkansas 2019 Women to Watch exhibition that features Laws; fiber artist Michele Fox; metal-worker and jewelry maker Amanda Heinbockel; and wood-and-metal worker Robyn Horn. That show will tour the state starting in January.

Laws, who lives in Mayflower, said the cast-bronze twig, which like “Three Eastern Bluebirds” she exhibited atop a wooden ironing board, was “essentially my response to the 2016 presidential election.” In addition to being thorny, the twig is from a plant native to the deserts along the U.S. border with Mexico, giving it a double meaning, she said. The ironing board is a nod to women.

The 9/11 tragedy inspired an earlier project of Laws’ that visitors to the Baum Gallery at UCA will be familiar with. Earlier, as a costumer designer for a Rochester, N.Y., production of the Greek tragedy “The Iliad,” she had imprinted dog tags with a line from the play: “There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.” After 9/11, saddened by the jingoism that arose after the attack, “I really wanted to do a piece that showed our common humanity but referenced war and violence.”

She thought dog tags would be a medium she could use to both show support for the country but also “that I don’t think violence is the way for us to move forward.” For years, she said, she hung dog tags imprinted with various words that spoke to our shared humanity out in nature, on trees and fences, and in the Baum Gallery.

Laws, a Georgia native, moved to Arkansas to work at UCA in 2008, and says the university “is one of the best kept secrets in the state” for its art program.

A member of the women’s art collective Culture Shock with other leading Arkansas artists, Laws working on pieces for an exhibit by the collective opening in January in Batesville. The Arkansas Women to Watch show opens Jan. 5 at the Windgate Art & Design Building at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith.

— Leslie Newell Peacock

24 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

Check out the historic downtown district, where small, independent stores line brick streets. You’ll find dozens of independent shops, including antique resellers, clothing and jewelry boutiques and high-end consignment shops.

Explore your inner artist at Branch Out Paint Bar + Boutique (1116 W. Oak St.), which offers public and private art classes for people of all ages and experience levels.

Find woodworking slabs, furniture-grade lumber and knife-making supplies at Urban Timbers (812 Merriman St.).

Just west of Conway, in neighboring Menifee, find 2Brothers Reclaimed & Repurposed Inventory Sales (201 Cadron Creek Road). This architectural salvage reseller offers rescued furniture pieces and items from reclaimed lumber, as well as hard-to-find components for artists, furniture makers, antique home remodelers and other artisans.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

From musical performances to the World Famous Toad Races, Toad Suck Daze has entertained Arkansans for more than 30 years.

In addition to a carnival and petting zoo, look for tons of local artists and makers selling their wares in May 2019.

20

ARTISAN SHOPS + HERB GARDENS & LIVE MUSIC

craft village

FEATURE/CELEBRITY

CONCERTS Auditorium

APRIL 16, 2019

SEASON REOPENS

SOAK UP THE SOUND AND THE SOUL OF THE OZARKS With over 90 evening shows featuring downhome roots music and 85 days of craft workshops taught by the region’s finest artisans, the Ozark Folk Center offers up a soulful slice of Ozark living. Visit OzarkFolkCenter.com for a complete list of 2019 events.

OzarkFolkCenter.com PARK INFO: 870-269-3851 CABIN RESERVATIONS: 877-879-2741

CONCERT TICKETS: OzarkFolkCenter.TicketLeap.com See us at the Arkansas Made – Arkansas Proud Market at War Memorial Stadium this spring.

Cynthia Schanink of Dardanelle leads a "Painting in Watercolor Outdoors" class in October.

IN ITS 20TH YEAR, THE EUREKA SPRINGS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS MAKES A STRONG CASE THAT IT’S THE BEST CRAFT SCHOOL IN THE REGION.

BY LINDSEY MILLAR

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW MARTIN

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 27

Students work with torches and hand tools in a jewelry making class that introduced enameling techniques on fold-formed copper sheets. Eureka Springs artist Judy-Lee Carpenter led the class.

Kelly McDonough, executive director of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts, does an admirable job of reeling off the various classes the nonprofit school offers to the public: “There’s painting, drawing, textiles, leatherworking, ceramics, woodworking — which, if you talk to the woodshop guys, includes wood turning and wood carving — forging, metal fabrication and welding, stained glass, mosaic, paper cutting, bookmaking. It’s anything you can think about, just about.” A few minutes later she remembers jewelry making and basket weaving.

A scan of ESSA’s 2018 catalog reveals a few more: printmaking, concrete art, tool sharpening, stained glass, leather working, papier-mâché, glass fusing, calligraphy and needle felting. It’s no wonder McDonough can’t name everything ESSA does off the top of her head: In 2018, the school offered 90 sessions, which included all kinds of subcategories of the above.

As unquestionably the top arts and craft school in the state, and arguably the region, ESSA draws students from all over the U.S. McDonough estimates that roughly a third come from all across the country, a third come from Northwest Arkansas and a third come from Eureka Springs, Holiday Island, Green Forest and other nearby towns. Classes range from a half-day to five days and often span a long weekend.

Like most commerce in Eureka, the school’s schedule is heavier May through November.

The draw is multi-factored: The campus, on more than 28 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

50 acres about 6 miles north of Eureka Springs on U.S. Highway 62 W., gives off the calming vibe of a woodland retreat, and its facilities are inviting and well equipped. An almost 4,000-square-foot metalworking studio stands out.

It’s outfitted with four propane forges (which can be shared by two students), two large coal forges, welding tools and various heavy-duty metal-cutting machines. The studio has large bays that open to a covered area for fire-related projects that work better outside. Perhaps even more impressive: a similarly sized woodworking studio built in 2017. It has tall ceilings, a flood of natural light and is fully stocked with every machine a woodworker might need. One room has workbenches and another is stocked with lathes; each is equipped with big screen TVs that connect to digital cameras to record, in tight detail, the handwork of those leading the classes.

Then, of course, there are the instructors, many of whom are nationally esteemed. They’re often drawn from the region.

Billy Owens of Jenkins, Mo., just north of Eureka taught the 2018 basket-weaving class. Owens is a second-generation traditional white oak basket-maker who tackles the full production: He fells oak trees, mills lumber out of them and then hand planes the wood strips used for the baskets. He travels the country teaching his craft.

On a recent tour of the grounds, McDonough took a visitor through the clay studio in the basement of a former house that had been converted into a multi-use space. More than a dozen miniature sculptures of a woman sat on shelves,

each capturing the nude model in different expressive poses.

Students had 20 to 40 minutes to complete each model in a class taught by California-based artist Misty Gambill, who helped them understand body proportion and symmetry.

Gambill has had residencies at craft schools around the world. McDonough pointed to a fully realized sculpture of a foot. Gambill did it in 15 minutes, she said.

Teachers also include longtime Eureka Springs arts and crafts legends Eleanor Lux, a weaver and beadmaker; Mary Springer, a painter and sculptor; and internationally known woodworker Doug Stowe. (The Arkansas Arts Council has designated Lux and Stowe “Arkansas Living Treasures.”) Lux, Springer and Stowe co-founded ESSA, which had no campus at first: Classes were taught in local arts and craftspeople’s studios. In 2004, ESSA purchased a building and the acre of land it sat on.

This year, Lux and Stowe not only taught but took classes in disciplines unfamiliar to them (Lux gushed about her concrete sculpture class and Stowe said he was “so proud” of what he created in his first blacksmithing class). They’re the most prominent examples of the dedication the local arts community has put toward ESSA, McDonough said.

McDonough became executive director in 2017 after relocating to Eureka Springs a few years back from Austin, Texas. “When I started here, the first thing that hit me was the idea of the village that has come together to make this happen. It’s almost a sacred thing, when so many people have put so much into it over so much time. You just don’t see this

kind of thing everywhere.”

ESSA has eight staff members, all part-time, including McDonough. Many others volunteer.

Stowe said the origins of the school stretch decades before its founding. “I remember having a conversation with a friend who said, ‘Eureka Springs was a crisis waiting to happen.’ In association with Chinese philosophy, the idea was that crisis was actually a good thing and the important thing was to have the right people there to put the pieces back together, or reassemble them in a more meaningful way. Who were the right people? I believed that my fellow artists were the most sensible to lead our city in a sensible direction … instead of letting us wonder off in a theme-park mentality.”

That was the origin of the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists and Craftspeople, which formed in 1976. Springer was an early president and Lux was in the mix. The group drew inspiration from famed Arkansas artists and longtime Eureka residents Louis and Elsie Freund, who started the city’s first art school and were instrumental in early preservation efforts. ESSA emerged after the guild failed to get nonprofit certification from the IRS. The guild’s original aims have been realized, Stowe said.

When business leaders visit ESSA today, they see the broader value of an arts community and better appreciate the sense of place that comes with that culture, Stowe said. “We don’t look at our trees with the same disdain. We look at the curves and bends in our roads as being important to us.”

Stowe said that much of his guidance for ESSA derives

Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 29

Dale Custer of Roland leads a beginners' blacksmith class in ESSA's large metal-working studio. from his experience teaching across the country, particularly from the time he’s spent at the nationally esteemed Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C., and the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tenn. There’s no similarly highly regarded school in the Midwest, though ESSA is working toward filling that void.

The campus includes a cottage set on a ridge with a lovely Ozarks vista dedicated to visiting instructors; nearby there’s a studio for the artist in residence. ESSA hopes soon to build more instructor cottages. There are grander plans, too, though Stowe said, “We are on a ‘grow slowly’ plan. … Arrowmont has grown to what it is over a nearly 100-year period. We want to do it right.”

To learn more, visit essa-art.org. A 2019 class catalog will be released before the end of 2018.

30 Arkansas Made | 2018-2019

ESSA co-founder Doug Stowe works a bandsaw in the wood studio's machine room (bottom) and uses a hand plane in the bench room (right). Students sign their names on particle board walls after completing classes.

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MAKING THE ABSTRACT COME ALIVE UA INSTRUCTOR AND CERAMICIST LINDA LOPEZ DIDN’T VISIT AN ART MUSEUM UNTIL COLLEGE. NOW SHE’S IN DEMAND ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

BY KATY HENRIKSEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY NOVO STUDIO

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Lopez at work on a new piece, "Pink and Yellow Dust Furry."

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Lopez' childhood led her to give personality to inanimate objects. That whimsy comes through with her "Dust Furry" sculptures.

"DON'T EAT THE COUCH, THE BREADCRUMBS WILL MAKE IT SICK."

A self-described late bloomer, ceramicist Linda Lopez creates inanimate objects that teem with personality and whimsy, most notably in her many “Dust Furries,” which are blobby faceless and limbless sculptures meticulously formed through hundreds of dripping scales.

Her signature style for playfully animating inanimate objects can be traced back to her 1980s childhood on a farm in the Central Valley of California. She lived in a home where English was a second language, her parents both being immigrants. Her mom, a Vietnamese refugee, would explain in broken English, “Don’t eat on the couch, the breadcrumbs will make it sick,” she recalled.

“That fueled the idea of inanimate objects being animate to me,” Lopez explained. She often entertained herself by feeding everyday objects, like a loose edge of the living room carpet, which she’d ply with little strips of paper.

“Anything I could try and care for, I would,” she said. “Oftentimes it was just me left to the devices of nature and me figuring out what I could do with these things.”

Now based in Fayetteville, where she is an instructor in art and ceramics at the University of Arkansas’s J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences, Lopez’s career as a ceramicist is flourishing.

She participates in group shows nationwide and has gallery representation in Miami, where she will make an appearance at the Pulse contemporary art fair of the prestigious Art Basel trade show. The art website artsy.com named her one of seven contemporary ceramicists to collect. She was also one of only 20 artists in Northwest Arkansas recently selected through Artists360, an initiative of the Mid-America Art Alliance and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. She received the $7,500 grant to collaborate with four women Michelin star chefs to design ceramic dishes for meals that rethink the dining experience. The 12 pieces she designs will also stand on their own as sculptures.

Despite all these accomplishments, Lopez hadn’t even stepped foot into an art museum when she enrolled in community college.

After receiving an associate degree, she hungered for more learning. An aptitude test resulted in the counselor telling her she’d be good at farming.

Though she grew up in an agricultural community — she helped raise a dozen goats and two cows — farming wasn’t an inspiring career path. Because Lopez enjoyed a recent art history survey, the counselor recommended she enroll as an art major, telling her she could always change her mind later.

“It was the most horrifying semester of my life,” she said. She was enrolled in beginning sculpture, beginning ceramics, beginning printmaking and an art history class. She wasn’t ready for the rigor, the critiques or to be in the studio all the time. Despite working diligently, she received a paltry B in ceramics.

“That’s what got me into ceramics,” she said. “That was basically a failing grade to me. The challenge of feeling like I did everything I was supposed to, that mystery of, ‘What is lacking that I’m not understanding?’ For me it was that moment, and after that I fell in love with the material.”

After two years in community college, followed by five at a state university, she continued study in ceramics with an M.F.A. from University of Colorado at Boulder. Then came a stint as a resident

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(Counterclockwise from left): An inspiration wall at Lopez' studio; sculptures; glass nets made during a residency at the Toledo Art Museum; Lopez at work on "Pink and Yellow Dust Furry"; Lopez holding "Green Loaf Dust Furry with Gold Rocks"; and porcelain test tiles.

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ceramicist in Philladelphia for two years before moving to Fayetteville in 2012 with her now-husband, Matthew McConnell, who was offered a visiting assistant professorship in a state neither of them had ever visited before.

“I moved here on a deal. I was like, ‘I’ll move to Arkansas if you marry me because I’m not going to move out there and be stuck,’ ” she said. She also requested a goat so she could live a country life that felt like home in the central valley of California.

McConnell is the interim dean in the School of Art. He and Lopez are parents to a 2-year-old daughter.

“Juggling teaching, a studio practice and a kid has been crazy, but also not as crazy as living in the city,” Lopez said, adding she’s seen an explosion in the arts with the opening of Crystal Bridges, “and ever since I’ve moved here it has been a push forward. I feel so lucky to have landed when I did.”

Lopez said the pace of life in Northwest Arkansas reminds her of home. “I think it’s a really great hub for emerging artists,” she said.

The easier pace of life and lower cost of living compared to big city living means the luxury of full days in the studio to work on projects like a 5-foot tall Dust Furry or collaborations with Oaxacan weavers in Mexico for a foray into ceramics melded with weaving.

This luxury found in her new home allows Lopez to focus on her passion.

Her eyes light up when she describes what she loves about her chosen medium.

“You can make anything out of clay. You can make things that look fat, things that look hard, you can make things look like the real thing,” she said of her love for ceramics. “You can make it totally abstract, and I think the malleability of it, and the permanence of the object, is really interesting.”

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MAKING A MINT

SPRINGDALE’S SHIRE POST SPECIALIZES IN FANTASY COINS.

BY MOLLY MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHY BY NOVO STUDIO

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Tom Maringer (left), holding a freshly struck Shire Penny, got a nasty cut on his hand after setting up a coin press. From left to right below are antique "hubs" Shire Post purchased from another mint that was going out of business; engraving tools for cutting dies, a wire brush and buffing compound; a finished coin die for a Shire Penny.

With their powers combined, Tom Maringer and family summon tokens from fantasy worlds into the realm of reality with their business, Shire Post Mint, traditionally crafted coins.

Bill the pony, the oft-overlooked but steadfast member of the Fellowship of the Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel “The Lord of the Rings,” joined Frodo Baggins and friends when they bought him for 12 silver pennies before setting out on their adventure. This deep cut of Tolkien trivia is the only reference to coins in the entire series, but it planted a seed that eventually bloomed into the Springdale business that crafts coins from beloved fantasy works, such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “A Song of Ice and Fire,” using traditional engraving and pressing techniques.

Helen Maringer, CEO of Shire Post Mint and Tom Maringer’s daughter, said her father’s lifelong interests of coin collecting, metalworking and fantasy fiction collided in a chance encounter with an antique coin press. The 12 pennies from Tolkien had been rolling around in his head for years. They sparked his curiosity — what would a penny from the Shire look and feel like?

What would it say? By the time he came across the coin press for sale, he was already an accomplished knife and sword craftsman. Here was an opportunity to answer his long-dormant questions by making his own Shire penny.

After several failed attempts, Tom Maringer successfully wrought his Shire penny. “It said ‘The Shire’ in English and it had a little tree,” Helen Maringer said. Tom Maringer’s Shire penny is still framed in the Shire Post Mint office today. His vision hadn’t extended beyond bringing this figment of his youthful imagination to life, but the plot thickened when he posted his creation online and the penny caught the eye of George R.R. Martin, creator and author of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the source material for HBO’s runaway hit show “Game of Thrones.”

Martin was so impressed with the coin that he wanted Tom Maringer to bring coins from “A Song of Ice and Fire” to life. He granted the license to the Maringers, and Shire Post Mint was born. Key to the fledgling mint’s survival was Martin’s loyalty when confronted by HBO on the licensing rights.

In an interview with John Picacio recorded at the World Science Fiction Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 39

It's all in the family at Shire Post (left).

With (from left) Tom Maringer, Peggy Maringer, Woody Maringer, Helen Maringer and Chris Kelsey. Using about 40 tons of pressure, a Shire Penny die (below) is ready to strike a copper blank.

Convention in San Jose, Calif., in 2018, Martin recalled the kerfuffle over the licensing rights. “That almost killed the TV deal,” he said.

Despite the pressure from HBO, Martin stuck to Shire Post Mint and other subsidiary rights holders. “I’m really honored that we can work with some really amazing authors who are just amazing as people,” Helen Maringer said.

The magic of coins from Shire Post Mint comes from the duel forces of genuine love of the subject matter and the use of traditional techniques that give each coin an authentic character. Deep historical knowledge combined with careful consideration of how each design might have actually been made in the fantasy world of its origin lend verisimilitude to the coins of Shire Post Mint. The world-building of the fantasy creators is respected and carried through the whole process, from design to press to a tumbling process intended to give the coins a worn look, as though they had been stealthily pilfered straight from a dragon’s ancient hoard.

“Another really early coin for ‘Game of Thrones’ was the Torrhen Stark penny, and it’s engraved in the same way that Viking pennies were,” Helen Maringer said. “So you have a bar and you have a circle, and you just make the design out of those two elements. It looks really authentic and it feels really different. And some of them are struck in a way where the edge is scalloped. You’re used to coins feeling smooth along the edge and even having that flat rim, but we don’t strike coins in a way that creates that because it’s not how it used to be done.”

In addition to working closely with the creators of their licensed coins’ origins, Helen Maringer places high value on input from fans.

“Our best designs — our best-selling things — have been suggestions from customers. We love every piece of info we can get,” she said. One top request was a coin featuring an ancient Icelandic symbol called the Vegvísir, a talisman against getting lost. “We did this really nice incuse [stamped] design,” she said. “Instead of going out of the metal, the design goes into the metal so it gets really dark and it wears really nicely. There’s this phrase; it’s in Icelandic and then transcribed in runes, so even if you know runes you have to know Icelandic also to read it. But it says, ‘I do not stop when I am tired, I stop when I am

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"OUR BEST DESIGNS—OUR BEST-SELLING THINGS— HAVE BEEN SUGGESTIONS FROM CUSTOMERS."

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Finishing the dies (left) for a coin that features accurate engravings of the near and far sides of the moon. Tom's first coin press (below left), an antique, strikes with about 40 tons of pressure. Just like with their coins, the Shire Post team handles all the design, printing and packaging in-house (below right).

done.’ People have been asking for it for a long time.”

Enthusiasts were also eager to see Shire Post Mint create a memento mori coin. Helen and company obliged and added their own spin to the classic idea. “Memento mori is this ancient and medieval philosophy about not being connected to your earthly possessions and your body. It’s Latin for ‘remember that you have to die.’ So we added a flip side, ‘remember that you have to live,’ memento vivere.” The memento mori coin is more complicated than most of their other coins because of its octagonal shape and complex design elements, so it’s a little pricier than other single coins.

But Helen says the extra effort is worth it. “There’s a lot of work that goes into that one, but dang, it looks good. I think people feel the value of it.”

The thought and care that goes into the craftsmanship of each coin undoubtedly stems in part from the deeply personal nature of a family business. After the HBO release of “Game of Thrones,” the business skyrocketed, growing until it employed most of the Maringer family.

Of course, working with family brings unique challenges as well. “You are so connected to this that when you fail, it’s a really big emotional blow. That’s definitely been hard for me to wrestle with,” Helen Maringer said. “Because of how much this company has changed all of our lives. It definitely changed my life. You know, George R.R. Martin allowing my dad to make ‘A Game of Thrones’ coins back in 2003 helped me go to college. So, I feel like I have a huge personal stake in

helping this business succeed. Figuring out how to take the failures well in a family business is difficult, but doable.”

But with more and more creators approaching Shire Post Mint to make tokens based on their work, and big retailers like Barnes & Noble starting to carry its products, the future is looking bright as a silver Shire penny for this coining operation. Shire Post Mint launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign Oct. 2, 2018, for “Pre-Conquest Coins of Westeros,” a set of coins based on the ancient history of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” world. Depending on how much backers contributed, they were rewarded with perks ranging from a single coin to the whole set of 11 coins framed with a map of Westeros signed by George R.R. Martin himself. The campaign reached its goal in just four hours, raising more than $43,000 from 347 backers.

“Being able to know that the work I’m doing — it’s not going to some CEO who has no stake in my life, or some company who’s just going to spend it all on corporate bonuses or weird retreats — it’s going to my family,” Helen Maringer said. “And the work that I do in promoting the company — it’s sharing this thing that my family has created.

And I think that’s really beautiful. That we can all work together and share all of our talents with the world.”

Coins come in a variety of metals; single coin prices range from $1.50 (the 5p nickel gaming coin) to $100 (the silver strobe spinning top, for example). Coins are sold in multiples as well. Orders may be made online at shirepost.com.

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CRAFT AND 'GRAM

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1 Dower's Alie Handbag

HANNAH CARPENTER of Searcy is a freelance illustrator and, among Arkan-

sans who are not famous in regular life, perhaps the most famous person in Arkansas on Instagram. She has 112,000 followers on the social network, where she mostly posts pictures of her four children and (much less often) her Harding University professor husband. She’s so popular on Instagram that she’s attracted national advertisers, including Apple and Toyota, who pay her to run sponsored posts, and she and her family were featured in a 26-page spread in Vogue Living Netherlands. Carpenter and her business partner, Heather Thrash, also run the company Little-Biscuits, which makes Dress Me notepads for kids that feature Carpenter’s illustrations of children dressed in white underclothes, on top of which young artists can add “clothes” and “accessories” with crayons.

1. What are you working on? My business partner and I are working on some products for our company, Little-Biscuits. We’re developing a product that has a focus on diversity.

2. Where is your favorite local spot to gather inspiration? Whenever I leave the house I tend to go to my favorite antique or thrift shops: Sweet Home Furnishings and Midtown Antiques in Little Rock and 410 Vintage Market in Fayetteville.

3. Tell us three handmade items on your wish list. 1. The Alie Handbag by Dower, the Little Rock leather goods company. It’s just so pretty. 2. A family portrait by Kat Wilson. I tend to gravitate toward art that’s a bit on the creepy side. 3. Any painting by Grace Ramsey.

Again, wonderfully creepy.

4. Name three can’t-live-without locally made eats or drinks. The Root Cafe’s Spicy Banh Mi sandwich and Three Fold’s noodle soup bowl (with the egg) in Little Rock and cream cheese kolaches from Wild Sweet Williams in Searcy.

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5. What’s your favorite local hangout?

In Searcy, Midnight Oil is an indispensable local hangout. It’s owned by The Kibo Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with communities in East Africa to reach their full potential, tackling poverty and injustice, and they contribute profits to these global communities. Midnight Oil is also great about providing a place for local musicians to perform and displays art by local artists. And if you ever find yourself in Searcy around lunchtime, the curry chicken salad is my favorite.

6. Name a local artist/musician who deserves more recognition. Isaac Alexander. I’ve been living in the shadow of my big brother, a musical and art prodigy, my whole life, but have never been jealous, only amazed and proud.

Amazing talent and human, that guy.

7. What’s your favorite art/music venue or event? Fayetteville Roots Festival. It’s indoors and I’m oldish, so I love it. We took the kids a couple years back, and it was very family friendly.

They always have special concerts and events for kids, too.

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1 Cooperative Way • Little Rock, AR 72209 • (501) 570-2200 • Arkansas www.aecc.com Made | 2018-2019 45

THE NWA CREATIVE DIRECTOR

3 3 MIKE ABB of Bentonville is creative director with Runway NWA, a DJ and public

art and event coordinator. Earlier this year, he collaborated with several groups to repaint basketball courts at the Jones Center in Springdale to pay tribute to the heritage and geography of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, where many Northwest Arkansans hail from.

1. What are you working on now? A number of public art projects across the region, including one at Jefferson Park in Fayetteville where we are painting the basketball court with designs from Fayetteville artist Cory Perry. I love working on overlooked places that can be dramatically changed with a touch of beauty.

2. What is your favorite local spot to gather inspiration? A great part about living in Arkansas is the access to nature.

With the addition of the ever-expanding trail systems here, I find myself immersed in the forest every chance I get. The forest is the ideal place to channel your thoughts and see how planet Earth is designed.

3. Tell us three handmade items on your wish list. I would love to have some custom textiles from Hillfolk that I could display on my wall or take to the park and sit on. It would be nice to have a sweet new jacket from LVSN for the winter months.

For No. 3, I’d top it off with a custom chair from Matt Buell.

4. Name three can’t-live-without locally made eats or drinks. Gotta start with Native Nectar juices. Seriously, folks, this is the fountain of youth. The CSA agriculture boxes from New South Produce — real food from real folks right here in Arkansas.

I also really like the Lil’ Wrecker IPA from Bentonville Brewing Co. It’s a perfect postbike ride reward.

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5. Where do you go to find handmade crafts and gifts? The Bentonville and Bella Vista Farmers Markets are really stepping up their game, and you can always find something local and handcrafted. As a bonus you get to meet the artisans and hear how and why they got into creating.

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6. What craft fair do you most look forward to and why? I really dig the winter market held the past few years at the Meteor Theater. It’s a really eclectic mix of items and a great social gathering with folks from across the state.

7. What’s your favorite local hangout?

My new fav hangout is 8th Street Market in Bentonville. They have so many things under one roof. It’s the modern take on the mall, and I dig it.

8. Name a local musician who’s under the radar and deserves more recognition? I really enjoy the work of Will Gunselman, a Bella Vista-based singer/ songwriter. He can absolutely channel the depth of emotion in us all and allow his music to free it from us.

9. What’s your favorite art/music venue or event? I’ve been joking that Northwest Arkansas should rebrand to call itself Eventonville. With so many great things happening every week, I would be remiss to say anything is my favorite. I live in the moment and each day I wake up and get to enjoy the wealth of things to do in this area, and that is my favorite feeling.

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PRODUCING RESULTS.

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TOP HATMAKER

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Michael Shaeffer

MARKIA HERRON is the designer, maker and

sole proprietor behind Herron Hats, a line of fashion-forward fedoras and other classic wide-brim styles. The Monticello native said she started her own business in 2016 “when faced with the daunting task of finding an accessory” that worked with her “unique style.” She’s self-taught; she watched tutorials online and disassembled old hats to learn the craft. Her hats are made of rabbit felt and come in various sizes and bold colors with snazzy accoutrements. The inside black lining in the crown of her “Nevaeh” hat has the word “anarchy” printed in white with white polka dots lining the brim. If you need a one-of-a-kind, she’s game for bespoke work, too. In her day job, Herron is an instructional designer at UA Little Rock. Buy a hat at herronhats.com and follow @herronhats on Instagram, where you’ll see celebs like R&B singer Anthony Hamilton and actor and writer Lena Waithe styling Herron’s toppers.

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1. What are you working on? I’m in the process of rebranding and refining my processes for making hats so that I can become more efficient. By spring, I hope to produce a line of hats that reflects a renewal of my craft.

2. Where is your favorite local spot to gather inspiration? On the campus of UA Little Rock, the second floor of Dickinson Hall brings me serenity and clarity.

There, I am able to focus and flesh out fresh ideas that otherwise seem stifled by clutter and distractions.

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8 South on Main

3. Tell us three handmade items on your wish list. I’m going tell you instead about a couple of things I craved until I recently got them and one that I’m in the process of getting: Most recently, artist Michael Shaeffer of House of Shaeffer blessed my workspace with four paintings of me crafting hats; they’re simply amazing. During my last fashion show, at Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week, I purchased a jacket from Bruce Davis’ 22nd Element. Last but not least, Bryant Phelan of O’Faolain Leather is making me a custom wallet.

I’m incredibly grateful to be able to own pieces from their collections.

4. Name three can’t-live-without locally made eats or drinks. The food at Breaker Drive-Inn in Monticello and Mongolian Grill in Pine Bluff and drink from Rock Town Distillery.

5. What’s your favorite local hangout?

I thoroughly enjoy Samantha’s Tap Room. I can count on them to provide a good vibe, great food and smooth libations.

6. Name a local artist who deserves more recognition. One underappreciated local artist is Bruce Davis of 22nd Element. I believe that his latest line of clothes is truly inspirational because it pays homage to the Tuskegee Airmen while managing to be incredibly fashionable.

7. What craft fair do you most look forward to and why? In recent years, I have looked forward to attending Africa Day Fest on South Main Street in Little Rock. This event highlights African heritage by showcasing art, music and talents that express diversity.

ses Cl a s t r ·A ure evenings t p l cu us RG y · S RTrageo h p TS.O a A S r I t g T a R ms oto TA A · Ph n t m e d iu CH I A s U g re in | O -3 a i n t i th d i f fe 957 -SAT 10 P 1 · 7 w R y S t r A E n l , e e IDA 15 | TU J ew x p e r i m 1 U NT E

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Arkansas NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUM

Located on Camp Robinson, North Little Rock Hours: Monday-Friday 8:00 am to 3:00 pm Take exit 150 off I-40 & follow signs to Camp Robinson 501.212.5215 | arngmuseum.com To come on Post you will need a driver’s license, proof of insurance, and vehicle registration.

8. What’s your favorite art/music venue or event? I enjoy the variety of artists that South on Main features. The annual Blues on the River festival, too.

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THE INCLUSIVE ILLUSTRATOR

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BRYAN MOATS is an illustrator and graphic designer living

in Yell County near Dardanelle. He and his wife, Meredith Martin-Moats, and their three children run Sulphur Springs Truck Patch, a small farm operation from which they sell flowers, veggies, eggs, baked goods and iron skillet popcorn. When he’s not building chicken coops, Bryan (a former art director for Arkansas Times) works on Bash-O-Bash, his series, with a big assist from his family, of artwork and stories for gender-fluid kids. Look for a book before too long and check him out at bryanmoats.com and bashobash.com.

1. What are you working on?

I’m focusing on Bash-O-Bash and portrait commissions.

2. Where is your favorite local spot to gather inspiration?

When at home my favorite spot is anywhere I take a walk or stare out a window. There is so much going on in the woods, alongside dirt roads, in the distance across horse pastures.

I also get a lot of ideas while mowing the lawn, which I spend a lot of time doing in summer.

3. Tell us three handmade items on your wish list. A super flat leather pouch for a select collection of drawing pencils, pens, erasers and such.

I’d love to find someone making pencil clips by hand. I’d buy 50 of them. I’d love to have a custom-made road bike from Meech out of Jonesboro.

4. Name three can’t-livewithout locally made eats or drinks. The honey from Rural Route Farms is really, really good. The coffee from Retro Roasts is excellent. And I know I’m supposed to say this, but the cookies from Sulphur Springs Truck Patch are killing it.

5. Where do you go to find unique, handmade crafts and gifts? I’ll be honest, I don’t seek them out like, ever. I tend to let them find me. However, I’ve found going to craft fairs to be the most fruitful and exciting when I actually am on the lookout.

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6. What’s your favorite local hangout? I really enjoy going to the Garage Arcade in Russellville and listening to the sound of arcade games while I draw.

7. What craft fair do you most look forward to and why?

Anything Cattywampus does.

8. Name a local artist/ musician who deserves more recognition. Layet Johnson deserves more spotlight. He’s a treasure.

9. What’s your favorite art/ music venue or event? All-time favorite would be JRs Lightbulb Club in Fayetteville from 2000 to 2006. More recently, I enjoyed Kings in Conway when Matt Besser came to town. The White Water Tavern will always be my most genuinely experienced favorite of recent years.

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Discover an array of talent in the outstanding cities and towns of Arkansas!

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Arkansas Made | 2018-2019 51

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