The Idle Class Architecture & Urbanism Issue (Winter 2016)

THE IDLE CLASS THE ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM ISSUE

CELEBRATING THE ARTS IN ARKANSAS / WINTER 2016

LOVE ORGANIC

LOVE YOUR CO-OP

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Editor’s note PUBLISHER

Cannon McNair

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kody Ford

MANAGING EDITOR Katie Wyatt

EDITORS-AT-LARGE

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PHOTO / KAT WILSON

ew things influence us more than our community, yet the design and interactivity are things that we tend to take for granted. If you’re not an architect or a city planner, you don’t always notice the little details that make a building or a neighborhood great. We saw this issue as an opportunity to celebrate the individuals and organizations who make our state great through architecture and urbanism. Whether it’s the generations of great architects from Fayetteville or the incredible artists who paint walls that give you something to smile about while strolling through your neighborhood, our state has a lot to offer.

These topics are something we have never really covered before so it took a lot of work from our contributors and a helping hand from people like Angela Carpenter, Greg Herman, Robert Sharp, Jimmy Moses, Claire Kolberg, Bill Solleder, Allie Koon and Catherine Wallack with the University of Arkansas Library Special Collections. This issue was fun and challenging. We are grateful to all of those who chipped in.

Also, I would like to thank Billy Shayne Johnson for doing that beautiful layout for our public art section and a shout out to Kelsey Ferguson, Chelsie Martin and Brad Carroll for assisting with ad sales. As always, please visit the businesses and organizations who advertise with us. The Idle Class wouldn’t be possible without them.

Back by popular demand, we will host the Black Apple Awards again, only this year we will hold showcases in Fayetteville and Little Rock in April. Follow us on social media for more information. Last year far exceeded our expectations and we know this one will be even better.

Finally, we want to welcome our new publisher Cannon McNair. He’s advised me on certain things since our inception, but recently decided to get his hands dirty. We are happy to have him on board and look forward to all the amazing things to come in 2016.

See you in the spring, Kody Ford Editor-in-Chief editorial@idleclassmag.com

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Jeremy Glover Marty Shutter

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Angela Ward Kelsey Ferguson

CONTRIBUTORS

Mike Abb Mike Bell Aaron Brewer Dayton Castleman Heather Canterbury Angela Carpenter Sandra Spotts Hamilton Martin Herlacher Alexander Jeffrey Kevin Kinder Brandon Markin Aaron Sarlo Samantha Sigmon Donna Smith Melissa Tucker Dylan Turk Rodney Wilhite Kat Wilson Terry Wright

LAYOUT

Kody Ford Billy Shayne Johnson

COVER

Conjunction of Junction Bridge

by Kat Wilson

FOLLOW US

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THE ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM ISSUE

WINTER 2016

Structura by Kat Wilson

THE UNEXPECTED

ARCHITECTURE IN THE OZARKS

COMEBACK KIDS

Last fall, some of the biggest names in street art descended upon downtown Fort Smith.

The results were spectacular.

Fayetteville has been home to some of architecture’s legends. Can a new generation carry the flame?

Across the state, municipalities are looking for new ways to breathe new life into their downtown.

PAGES 28 - 31

PAGES 38 - 41

PAGES 42 - 46

ALSO FEATURING

THE WINDOW SEAT

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

URBAN COWGIRL

Filmmakers Angela Carpenter & Dwight Chalmers provide a new view of U.S. Rt. 66.

Gustav Carlson’s latest comic Tourist Unknown leaves the Ozarks behind for outer space.

Kat Wilson approaches her photography with a keen eye and a little bit of “Katitude.”

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#NDSTurnsTen

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PAGES 20 - 25

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MUSIC

HOT & FRESH

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Little Rock R&B singer Sean Fresh releases the first of his planned trilogy of albums & it doesn’t disappoint.

STORY / AARON SARLO PHOTO / BRANDON MARKIN

rkansas’s own Sean Fresh is back with a new album, the first in a planned trilogy. The Teshuva Project I — Fresh Season is a lush, expansive, yet personal album, a shiny and well-produced record from start to finish, showcasing Fresh’s rich, warm vocals throughout.

Named after the Hebrew word for forgiveness, the album features an array of instruments played by skilled musicians. (I recently had the pleasure of seeing Sean Fresh live, and damned if the band wasn’t even better than this album!) There are dramatic skits at the beginning and end of most tracks, but they’re short and well-recorded.

Stand out tracks include “My Heart,” “Circles” — my personal favorite — and “Kill Em All” with its killer chorus and sudden, rapid-fire freestyle breakdown, a feature on more than one cut, though not all. Give “Kill Em All” one listen, and see if it’s not stuck in your head the rest of the day.

The Idle Class recently caught up with Fresh to ask him a few questions about the album and it’s upcoming sequels.

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What is behind the lyrics of the heaviest hitter on the record, “Kill Em All”?

How many members are in your band, and how many of those guys recorded on Teshuvah?

What are your thoughts on hip hop and specifically the hip hop scene in Arkansas?

There are seven members, including myself. On the first part of the Teshuvah Project I — Fresh Season, DJ Ellmatik and Rafael Powell (flute and sax, respectively) contributed.

When is Teshuvah 2 coming out?

Arkansas is the best. We have the best talent, musicians and work ethic.

As you have seen before, whenever we are given a platform, we dominate. I love the music scene here. Whenever you hear a record or witness a show you can sense the creativity and hunger and it feels great to be a part of the pack.

I am aiming to release The Teshuvah Project II: Moscato & Leftovers in the first quarter of 2016.

twitter: @seanfreshonline

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Anger. I had a lot of crap happen all at once. I was being laid off from a company that I had poured my heart and soul into. So with a little more free time on my hands, I started watching more television and paying more attention to crap on social media. During that time, I saw innocent people being hurt, children being molested and having their innocence removed from them. My people being gunned down, and treated like animals. My mother’s house was even broke into while she was off preaching the word of God. I was angry, and I needed an outlet. While writing [“Kill Em All”], it was a little weird because my previous music was all about love, roses, and unicorn piss. This was different. This was the theme music for when the protected have to become the protectors.

FILM

rediscovering the road A

merica’s iconic Route 66 and the resulting ephemera - hotels, pools and car parks - are the focus of the short film Dim the Lights, though not from the traditional perspective of Route 66’s former glam and popular place in our psyche. The film by Dwight Chalmers and Angela Carpenter of Fayetteville was shot completely on color 8mm film.

“The idea of decay would not have been as strong filmed through a different medium,” says Carpenter.

Dim the Lights follows the highway west towards Santa Monica, and en route we see building after building, sign after sign, and car after car left behind. Once a staple of American culture and a sign of the automobile’s impact on our society, Route 66 has been left behind by time, forgotten when the major highways came and barely seen by today’s traveler.

“The structures shown in this film play a key role in explaining the life of the road during its rapid growth in American culture. Mostly you see reminiscence of a life that existed in support of the car,” says Carpenter.

Throughout, the film feels as if it is about to tell you something, some great and hard earned truth, as if a narrator or some outline or bit of story is about to reveal itself.

“The editing was mainly performed in-camera because of the travelogue style,” says Chalmers. “There is no shot-list and what you shoot becomes your timeline and that is based off of what you experience while you are there.”

The familiar tropes of documentary and narrative storytelling never appear, rather the viewer sees a story that is still being told. We are not watching stilllifes of a graveyard, for the highway still flows nearby. Occasionally, a modern train passes, a bird flutters into the open hood of a rusting Buick… We are not watching a history of Route 66, rather a moving portrait of its most recent chapter.

“This film, I believe, shows an interesting representation of what might seem like abandonment, but in fact is showing how these structures have now become what’s known as the landscape,” says Carpenter. All that sprung

For decades, the Historic U.S. Route 66 etched itself into the American consciousness. Two Fayetteville filmmakers take a different look at this legendary highway with their short film Dim the Lights.

STORY / MARTY SHUTTER PHOTO / ANGELA CARPENTER

up around the highway and bled into our culture and psyche are still there, though nature and time are clearly taking back the scene.

“The music really helped decide how the story would develop and help support the journey,” says Chalmers.

A soundtrack full of comforting bass tones beneath long and occasionally unsettling arcs of higher ones was created “in 2001 when I had an experimental music show on KXUA under the name The Sleep Sessions,” says Chalmers. He continues, “The idea was to break up patterns in music using sound design and field recordings. It seemed to fit the feeling of being out there on the older parts of the route where you really do not run into many people. A desolate Western ambient feel…”

Errant sounds litter the score like the rusting cars in the visuals. Dogs are heard, cold wind accentuates a harsh, rocky hillside; the faint creaks of a train can be heard. The music doesn’t tell us what to feel, but rather leaves us primed for our own reactions, our own internal narration to the film.

Dim the Lights ends in Santa Monica and ends as Route 66 always has, at the beach. In California. Chalmer’s and Carpenter’s visuals of Santa Monica Beach are reminiscent of 60’s California tourism promotional videos with the people removed and the ominous beauty of Chalmer’s score replacing the crash of waves, caw of birds and sounds of fishermen on the pier’s end.

“When I am filming, I seem to look for the hidden corners. If everyone is looking up, I look down. Shooting in this style has made me realize that you need to capture the subject when you have the inspiration,” says Chalmers who adds, “…don’t wait too long.”

Dim the Lights has been shown in several festivals from Arkansas to LA to Canada. It has been awarded Best Experimental Film at the Victoria Film Festival and Best Experimental Film in the online fest: “Best Shorts Film Competition.” Dim the Lights is one of four films Carpenter and Chalmers have made in this manner. New York, San Francisco and Italy have also been their subjects and the four films will be shown at festivals over the next four years.

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POETRY

Deconstructed Canary Extraordinary how postmodern political debate came back.

Icon vaudeville is over all. You guys in old gangster movies regularly get cut yet remain untroubled by failure. Rhinestones help frame you even when the Justice Department says nothing. What are you? Yellow?

Even with that microphone? You’ve given the world sportswear and strangled parachutes. You have a cable show and narrate away news as private histories of lost love trifles as magical realist ephemera.

Down in the reddest states photos and videos of you are tagged surveillance authorized. Every uppity canary not much used to being used must be caged then crushed by magicians or gas.

- Terry Wright ABOUT THE POET & ARTIST “Deconstructed Canary” is from a series called Google Poems. The artworks are created first, and then the poems are collaged from Google search engine paragraph threads resulting from searches of the poems’ titles.

Terry Wright is a writer and artist who lives in Little Rock.

His most recent poetry chapbook is Fractal Cut-Ups (Kattywompas). His art has been exhibited widely and featured in numerous venues, including Queen Mob’s Tea House, Sliver of Stone, Third Wednesday,” and USA Today. His writing has likewise appeared in scads of journals, including Leveler, McSweeney’s, Potion,” and Rolling Stone. More creative work can be found at his web site: cruelanimal.com. Terry believes his sunrise can beat up yours.

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ART each work sort of a snapshot in a narrative you’ve drawn from?

Storytelling is most definitely intrinsic to my practice. I find that in a simple image a story lives and breathes within it.

When I am in the studio the paint follows the story and I easily become lost in it. Telling a compelling story in a single frame is what excites me and I feel that the titles are hints into understanding that world.

How do you find your subjects? Are they of actual people, historical or from the present time?

My subjects vary from spirits to dreams to actual people. Last year, I started painting missing women of color, including women from Little Rock to the missing Nigerian schoolgirls.

I was inspired to create that series after I almost became lost in New Orleans. This year, I was asked to create a work for the ACANSA Arts Festival in conjunction with the play Blood at the Root. For that work I painted a series of ashes personified as women to tell the story of American lynching.

You mention on your site that your studio practice incorporates influences from both academic and outsider work. I think some artists worry about the “folk” line of making, as if that were a bad thing. How do you meld the two worlds, or do you see a difference between more structured, academic thoughts about painting and what might be considered “other”?

As a self-taught artist, I had the advantage of learning from whatever source that I needed to gather from; whether it was the entire Janson’s History of Art to experimenting with farmers to create works on saw blades in East Arkansas. Melding the two worlds is natural for me because I consider both ways of approaching art to be valuable, critical and essential to my process.

In Kinfolk and the Apothecary Dream series, you also use empty glass bottles as part of the installation. What made you decide to add additional elements to the work’s in that space?

ARTISTS WE LOVE:

ANGELA DAVIS JOHNSON INTERVIEW / DONNA SMITH

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ccasionally, you just come across an artist you just immediately like. You are impressed by their work, but also, you enjoy their spirit and willingness to truly be engaged in a community. Angela Davis Johnson, a painter and maker working in both Little Rock and Atlanta, is one such artist. Johnson’s works include a wide range of mediums and subjects from mixed media paintings of missing women of color from across the globe, to practicing performance art through #3everyday, an organization providing awareness and openness about domestic abuse. In the midst of preparing for shows and finishing a new mural with artist Jose Hernandez at the House of Art in North Little Rock’s Argenta district (it looks amazing, so go check it out), Angela talked with us about her work and finding the balance between her own voice and storytelling.

The use of color and shape in your paintings feels very modern, despite artists using those devices throughout the history of painting. What helps you keep your practice fresh?

I think the key to staying fresh is to remain authentic to my own vision yet always be open to learn from other artists. When I first started painting, I was in love with so many artists’ work - Bearden, Gauguin, Wangechi Mutu, Dana Schutz. I referenced their work in my paintings so much that I had to learn how to digest that admiration.

For me, it is important to find that balance between trusting my own visual voice while observing what other artists are doing to expand my vocabulary.

Many of your works have titles that lead me to thinking about narrative. Do you have a certain storyline in place to draw from when you’re painting? Is

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Kinfolk and the Apothecary Dream was the first time I created an installation. I had a dream that I was being led out of the city by a strange character, through an apothecary, into the woods and when I came out of the other side I found all my ancestors working in the field. I wanted to recreate the apothecary by hanging empty bottles from the ceiling and placing them on the wall. I asked participants to write on a piece of paper to add their dreams, fears or anything they wanted to release into the bottles. I remember a particular note - someone forgave their father for dying. It was that moment that I understood the potential and power of installation art.

In several of your works, I see the addition of pattern either through lace, text or something I can’t quite recognize. By layering these materials, how do you see that providing extra context to the subject you’re portraying?

So much of my art is about relating a story or revealing untold stories. By including texture and text, I believe it adds another level of understanding that paint alone will not articulate. I recently completed a public art project called Autumn. Love. Cycle. Stories of Love told from Atlanta’s Unheard Voices to amplify the voices of the homeless population in Atlanta. I created structures with reused wood, plastic, lace and fabric. The materials conveyed a sense of who my subjects were and particular beauty through the layers.

Most of your paintings showcase a female subject. Does the work ever become autobiographical for you and you find yourself as the subject? Or do you try to stay away from too much specificity?

Although most of my subjects are actual people, certain artworks act as a signifier to my interest and personal life changes. For instance, when I see my series Mouthless Mabel and Dollbaby, I think of being pregnant with my first child.

The idea of becoming a mother was so new and overwhelming, I couldn’t put it into words. I created Mouthless Mabel to express that feeling of not being able to verbalize my concerns and fears of motherhood.

Can you tell us a bit more about the work you’re creating for #3everyday? How did you get involved with this project?

I was honored to participate in Jessica Caldas’s #3everyday project that brought awareness to domestic and intimate partner violence during the month of October. I met Jessica when we were both selected as Joan Mitchell Visual Art Scholars for the organization Alternate ROOTS. Jessica choreographed movements paired with questions abused women are confronted with to spark conversations about domestic violence. She invited several artists to perform the piece with her at various locations throughout Atlanta. I am proud to say I performed several times alongside her. It was an amazingly emotional experience.

You spend time in both Little Rock and Atlanta. Do you feel that both places influence your work? How have you seen the art scenes in both areas develop over the last few years?

Little Rock’s arts community has been like a family, supportive and encouraging. I have learned a great deal about being a professional artist and I have gained lifelong friends in the process. When I moved to Atlanta over a year ago, it was challenging because I didn’t know anyone, but I was infatuated with its energy and vibe. Now that I am starting to know other Atlanta artists, I am expanding in ways that I could have never imagined. As far as the art scene, I get the sense that both cities are on the edge of a renaissance and great things are stirring in the pot.

If you had to use any other medium to create work, what would you use?

I am really interested in film. One day I want to combine my interests in painting, installation and performance art. I think film would be a cool way to pursue that kind of work.

What are you working on currently in the studio?

I just completed a mural at the House of Art with one of my favorite artists - Jose Hernandez. In the mural there are flying children of color who escaped the grief and constructs of this world. Now that I am back in the studio, I am working on a body of work that focuses on what that liberation can look like. I am still painting missing women of color. I think that will always be a focus of mine.

Where can readers see your work? Are there any upcoming shows we should know about?

You can find my work at The Butler Center Retail Gallery and Matt McCleod Gallery in Little Rock and Argenta Gallery in North Little Rock. In January, I will be starting a residency with a collaborator Muthi Reed in Jackson, Miss., at the Mississippi Museum of Art. My cup is running over.

VISIT: angeladavisjohnson.com Instagram: @angeladjohnson

(Above) Mouthless Mabel and Dollbaby (Pg. 14) Mother

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ARTISTS WE LOVE:

CYNTHIA KRESSE INTERVIEW / SANDRA SPOTTS HAMILTON

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ureka Springs artist Cynthia Kresse uses pastels, oils, and clay to explore her fascination with “the barely seen, the almost there.” Her life is an interplay between working with people as a nurse practitioner and creating her art in solitude at her country home.

The drive to Kresse’s home studio involves a watchful eye, counting mailboxes, going a distance given as a “country block,” and looking for the yard with the chocolate lab. Upon arrival, I am greeted by the chocolate lab and the artist, who both seem happy to have the company in their home, a stone’s throw from the White River.

Kresse’s white studio in her country cottage is awash in light playing with shadows created by the trees outside. Pastel works in progress are taped to the walls. They reflect the same abstracted interplay of light and shadow, a fascination and inspiration for the artist. It is apparent this artist lives deep inside her work.

Your abstracted landscapes are all about the relationship of dark to light. Why did you choose this as your subject matter?

I was inspired when I moved to the country, first to family property and then to this place. Away from the city lights, I could actually experience the light at dusk. When I moved here, I knew immediately why I was always drawn to the work of Vermeer, Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

You have worked as a medical illustrator, which dictates a certain precision. Your pastels are very abstracted and imprecise. Did your pastel style come out of a need for relief from the exactness of medical illustration?

Yes, I worked as a medical illustrator for five years and found the work too confining, but I did love working with the clients. I studied under Kathy Holder at UALR and learned to use pastels in a different way. I build up layer after layer and work it with my fingers. The true test is to turn the lights off and to see if the work is glowing. I keep working it until I see a “pop.”

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Your portraits are cropped in unusual ways. What do you want the viewer to see?

I crop my portraits in this way because I consider them “facial landscapes.” I see how close I can get without losing who the subject is.

You currently work at the Echo Free Clinic in Eureka Springs. How does your work there impact your art?

I read in first grade about Clara Barton and loved science. After nursing school I studied art, getting a Masters of Art degree and I graduated from UAMS and now work as a nurse practitioner. Taking care of people uses a very nurturing, maternal energy. A friend told me, “You are artful in your caring for people and you are careful in your art.” It also gets me out of an isolation that can become comfortable. Working at the clinic provides the income that allows me to continue with my art.

How do you approach your clay sculpture?

I see it as working in the same way as I do with pastels, building layer after layer and then seeing what figures come out. I want the roughness of the clay shape to still be there in places.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a series called “Nocturnes.” My siblings shared time caring for our sister and then our dad when they were ill. This series is based on locations on my drives during that time between Little Rock and Eureka Springs. These scenes became comforting friends along the way. Most of my work is about what I am mesmerized by: how everything becomes little lighthouses, oddly lit objects. I did a portrait of my niece.

The sweetness of moments that are special, very personal.

VISIT: cynthiakresse.com

(Pg. 14) Super Moonscape with Clouds (Above) Front Porch Chair (Right) Night Lighting

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I

f you try to google John Kushmaul, you won’t find a website housing the Little Rock artist’s work, but you might be so lucky to find him talking about the great city he loves, or find an image of one of his cinematic urban landscapes. While Kushmaul confesses that he does have an Instagram account, (please see the part about cat pictures below because it’s one of the most honest things someone has ever added to an interview), his feeling towards his studio practice is what we all want in my opinion. That is, to make work about things in which you’re interested, in a place you feel a part of, and that be the main point. Social media outlets grow and change every day, but to make solid work like Kushmaul over decades, that’s what I would click “Like” for.

Place, specifically Little Rock, seems vital to your work. What is it about this city that continually engages you when you’re in the studio?

We moved around some when I was growing up, but it was mostly small town. Little Rock seemed to offer more opportunities relative to small-town Arkansas. We have hot summers and the occasional snow in the winter.

The cost of living is low, and somehow I’ve met a lot of people with similar goals and experiences in trying to make a life here.

You don’t have a Facebook page for your work or a website. In a world where a celebrity gets 1,000 likes for posting a picture wearing a baseball cap, how does that affect how you think about your audience seeing your work, for better or for worse?

I’m still figuring out social media. Facebook and the like are either evolving, or someone up the chain has it all figured out and I’m not privy to how it works without exerting energy figuring out some best plan. I’ll do what I can, but marketing has never been very interesting to me. I’m counting on others coming to me, instead of going to them. That could be some sort of mistake, but I’m not too concerned. I am on Instagram, but it is an even split of painting and cat pictures.

Your studio is above Vino’s, correct? If that’s true, you may have been painting upstairs while a hoard of music lovers rocked out downstairs.

How does your studio location influence your painting process?

Yes, the studio above Vino’s has been home base since the Fall of 1998. It is good to have a place away from home to make a mess. There is a lot of overlap between music and art in Little Rock. Several of my favorite bands practiced down the hall through the years, and for a long time I would pick up a couple of shifts a week. I can paint for a while, then go downstairs for pizza, entertainment and conversation. I can’t imagine a more ideal way to work.

ARTISTS WE LOVE:

JOHN KUSHMAUL INTERVIEW / DONNA SMITH

After looking at several of your pieces, they have a very cinematic quality, like they are taken from a storyboard of a film, albeit, a very developed and lovely treated storyboard. In other parts of your life, such as your day job working in television, do you find parts of those areas make it into the paintings?

I worked in television in the mid-1990’s, then quit to focus on painting, then got back into working in local news four years ago. I feel lucky for both opportunities to be a part of a newsroom. Since then I’ve been working to temporarily maintain a balance between making a living and creative freedom. Work frustration can be turned into energy for painting. It also probably helps the painting for me to have to put down what I’m doing to go to a full-time job.

Some artists might feel stunted staying in one place for too long, but that does not seem to be your experience at all. What is your favorite part about living in downtown Little Rock? Are there any other places from where you draw inspiration?

When I feel stunted it is not because of external reasons. Little Rock has been good to me for almost 20 years. I have a lot of favorite things: kickball at Allsopp Park and the two seasons a year before I start working on the weekends. The way downtown used to be mostly abandoned on the weekends, but for a few spots like Vino’s.

INSTAGRAM: @JOHNKUSHMAUL

(Upper Right) Robinson Construction (Left) Arkansas Queen 16

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“Gods of Angkor,” 10” x 14”, acrylic on canvas

MUST SEE EXHIBITS Sean Fitzgibbon

University of Arkansas Fort Smith Gallery Jan. - Feb. 2016 Featured artist Sean Fitzgibbon will be exhibiting work at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith art gallery January through February 2016, with a reception on February 3, 2016 from 5 - 6 pm.

Fitzgibbon’s art is composed of drawn and painted, interconnected images that explore concepts of mystery and perception while incorporating many visuals observed through

his travels.

Along with exhibiting work throughout the US, he has also illustrated books and is currently illustrating a documentary style graphic novel that chronicles the Norman Baker years (1937-1939) of the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs.

VISIT: seanfitzgibbonart.com

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transmissions from the edge Northwest Arkansas comic book writer & artist Gustav Carlson has worked on the indie comic fringe for the last few years. Now he takes a radical turn from Ozark folklore to science fiction in his latest comic Tourist Unknown, but his love of storytelling remains the same.

INTERVIEW / DAVE MORRIS

S

torytelling and folklore are traditions almost synonymous with the Ozark Mountains. They are also art forms that are almost as old as the mountains themselves. Local artist and writer Gustav Carlson combines these customs with the relatively new medium of webcomics to create avant-garde material that has garnered him attention from mainstream comics sites such as Bleeding Cool and has allowed him to regularly display his work at comic conventions.

Mostly known for his titles Backwood Folk and Eve of the Ozarks, which play upon regional folklore and fairy tales, the Newton County, Arkansas, native’s current work, Tourist Unknown, sees him branching out from his previous pastoral themes into more prominent comics fare such as outer space and sci-fi while retaining his singular narrative voice. The Idle Class recently caught up with him to discuss his latest endeavor.

How would you describe the differences between your previous works and Tourist Unknown?

Backwood was kind of the warts and all way I saw [the Ozarks], and Eve the romantic view of it. Tourist Unknown is obviously quite a bit different. After four or five years of Ozarks stuff, I kinda burned out. I never really wanted to settle into just doing Ozark stuff. My earliest loves are mostly monsters and sci-fi. And I wanted to do something that allowed me to explore as many different settings and meet as many new creatures as possible. Each story having its own new setting and its own new cast. So it’s absolutely my love letter to stuff like Hitchhiker’s Guide, Doctor Who, ‘50s pulp sci-fi, the Alien movies, and a great matter of other things.

But again to its general sales pitch – it’s the story of a woman stuck in a machine that sends her anywhere in time and space. She has no control of where, and she has no control of how long she’ll be there. Which is both the most freeing dang thing and kind of a nightmare!

Do you prefer working in the medium of web comics or is that more out of necessity?

Backwood and Tourist - it is more a necessity thing. Eve had a bit of a different structure, so it was more of an embrace of the medium. Tourist will be playing a little bit more comfortably in the webcomic format in the coming year though.

Webcomics are still in their infancy on some level, so it’s certainly a growing pains sort of conundrum. Backwood was supposed to be a fairly large scale story. Which, frankly, read pretty poorly when broken up in a page by page sort of situation. But when you’re new to it, and in college, there’s not a lot of other ways to tackle that. That said, it certainly taught me how to pace pages and get a much stronger work ethic to producing pages on a deadline.

Tourist initially was gonna be a weird merger. I wanted to do 2-12 page short comics that I would post in their completion all at once. Meanwhile I would work on 40-80 page larger stories that would be available in print/ download. Unfortunately the first big book, which was sixty pages got cut off at the knees ten pages from completion at the beginning of this year.

Basically my hard drive failed in the middle of uploading it to Dropbox.

Luckily the hard drive is now in the process of repair. But it put quite a hamper on those plans. I ended up working on its follow-up (which given its standalone nature, worked out alright) But given that I lost a year on the previous book, I wanted something coming out on the site. So I ended up serializing it on the Tourist site. And that book ended up being “Transmissions From the Machine World.”

The plan for 2015 is to get another full book out (hopefully the lost one) but the site will have serialized stories that are 4-12 pages. Bite-sized

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enough to work in a sort of page a week format without having a single setting dominate that year. Happy medium, I suppose.

But yeah. The webcomic aspect is somewhat crucial for the smallerscale “comicer” in my experience.

Your work is featured on ComiXology. Digital comics have at times been a controversial topic in the mainstream comic community. How do you feel about the effect technology has had on the art of drawing and making comics?

As much as I love comic books stores, and thankfully Fayetteville has a great one, I have to be mostly pragmatic about it. Comics are rough, especially if you are outside of the superhero world. It’s certainly getting better due to Image Comics, but if you’re on the indie, indie edge of things the internet has been some level of godsend on getting your book out there. If it weren’t for ComiXology I don’t know that Eve would have gotten any interest outside of Arkansas, but thanks to it, it certainly has found many more hands than I could have expected. It has opened up avenues for a great number of new and diverse creators and stories.

And while I think most mainstream entertainment is behind on that particular front, I think comics are an especially egregious offender. Also, it’s created a means for the general reader to have more access to them than ever. Comics were initially one of the forms of art that any person could access on spinners at a grocery store. And it hasn’t been that way in a while. If someone being able to hop on their laptop or pulling out their phone returns that accessibility? Sign me up.

So I think overall the internet has been almost a purely good thing for comics as an art. As a business? I don’t know, that’s relatively impossible to tell.

Catch Gustav Carlson at the River City Comic Expo on June 10 and 11 in Little Rock and at the Little Rock Comic-Con on May 14 and 15 in Benton.

TWITTER: @BackwoodGoat

ERIK LARSON April 1 at 7 p.m.

401 W Mountain l faylib.org l 479.856.7000

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URBAN COWGIRL Kat Wilson’s photography ranges from ethereal to gritty, her subjects from sand dunes to close friends. No matter what she shoots, it’s always done with “Katitude.”

WORDS / DYLAN TURK PHOTOS / KAT WILSON

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at Wilson quickly walks to my car as I pull into her driveway. Her camera bag hangs off of her shoulder, along with her purse; her hands are filled, one with a bottle of wine and the other with her “lesbian hiking shoes.” I was arriving to interview her, but the lighting was good so we were going to get a jump on a photo shoot. We both thought that this would be the most relaxing and, let’s be honest, “would kill two birds with one stone,” Wilson said over a text message. I agreed, because who doesn’t want their photo taken by one of the state’s best contemporary photographers?

Charmingly confident, Kat Wilson’s boyish curiosity is contagious. She reminds me of the high school friend that convinced me to jump fences, spray-paint walls, and smoke pot before class. A self-described “urban cowgirl,” Wilson stands proud in a pink topcoat and gold Oxfords, her blonde hair cut modern and short. I imagine that the swagger, cool hats and potential to arrive at the local bar on horseback attracts Wilson to the cowgirl lifestyle, but it is expressed in her undeniable confidence. Joined in life and work by Emily Lawson, empress of pink House Alchemy, Wilson’s talents extend far beyond the gallery walls with gorgeous photographic explorations into the romantic world of cocktails and the people that craft them. Well known across the state for her beautifully crowded portraits of Arkansans in their environments, Wilson – Fort Smith born and raised – depicts her subjects with the confidence and detailed inquisitiveness of a woman conquering her frontier.

Wilson approaches photography with a deep understanding of art history, a profound desire to know stories, and a strong sense of place. Her work completely aligns with her outgoing, adventurous personality, and is an outpouring of her lifelong desire to observe people. Fascinated by perceptions and the objects, clothes, and contexts that formulate those perceptions, Wilson’s series Habitats profiles people in their homes and studios surrounded, shrine-like, by the objects that define their spaces. Her subjects are embraced in comfortable familiarity by rhythmic, sometimes chaotic, stacks of records, photographs, lawn mowers, jewelry, shovels, cars, etc. Not only do the objects in her portraits tell stories about the people and the places, but pose questions about real versus desired perceptions. Completely familiar with art historical references of stacking a scene with objects to tell the ‘personality’ of the subject, Wilson understands that she only tells the story of the perception she shoots that day. She says, “My work is about giving you as much information, filtered through me, about this thing.” A record of her momentary glimpse inside a stranger’s crafting of their exterior identity.

Formally, Wilson’s work pulls at the art-lover’s heartstrings with intense,

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baroque lighting treatments that strangely ground the photographs in the south – real, story-worthy and complex, just like her. She understands and embraces the power that light and composition has over the influence of the perception of her subject. The stacked, triangular, Renaissance-inspired compositions reference liturgical depictions of someone holy, yet depict people Wilson knows. That is what she is about, bringing reverence to the everyday. Her subjects are locals because that is whom she sees. She elevates the world around her to be looked at with consideration, respect and pride.

As the asphalt abruptly transitioned to mud, the air cleared revealing the Ozarks. I drove up the mud packed road, continuing until Wilson gave me an almost-too-late-signal to turn one-way or another; we ended at a cemetery. Immediately upon arrival, she mentioned that I should disregard the high school cheesiness of shooting at a cemetery, because we weren’t.

It was chilly, but the sun made my skin warm. We walked through the forest, over logs, through bushes, discussing photography and the almost ADDlike quickness that she becomes obsessed with a hobby, excels at it, and then gives it up. Photography was the one that she kept; it was a conscious decision to stick with it and be great.

Wilson smiles speaking mid-laugh, “I started to love it, so I pursued what I wanted to be.” It worked with the life she wanted, one filled with people and places, and the freedom to express herself.

Optimistically happy, Wilson shares ideas about the future of Layers, the series she began last year. Layers was a departure for her, as she let go of the physical manipulation of her subject and their environment, leaving it all up to technical manipulation on her end. Wilson continues to tackle issues of identity, technique and environment, through her depictions of people and places. Rather than distorting perceptions of space through a horror vacui approach to composition, she stacks multiple layers of photographs on top of one another to create ghosts of information captured in less frequency. The results are quite stunning. Landscapes, buildings and people captured, as if in a warm summer haze, from varying perspectives.

Layers will open in her hometown at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith in April.

Wilson, never forgetting her roots and impelled by success, maintains a constant mood of creative exploration and innovation in her studio. Excited by new photographic challenges, she doesn’t bind herself to specific series or types, but looks at every situation as an opportunity to take a picture, pour a cocktail and tell a story.

VISIT: KATWILSONARTIST.COM

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(Upper left) Irish Peggy (Upper right) Kris Johnson, Photographer (Right) Nashville, AR (Pg. 22, Top) Title Still Unknown (Pg. 22, Bottom) Landscape: 360 degrees About Kat’s Self-Portrait on Pg. 21: Galvanized by Cindy Sherman’s revolutionary photographs of herself ‘performing’ various female personas, Kat Wilson embodies the persona of a photographer. Unmistakably male, the figure in Title Unknown, confidently stale, suggests the life of a war or wildlife photographer consumed by his subject.

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“My work is about giving you as much information, filtered through me, about this thing.”

(Above) Conjunction of Junction Bridge (Right) 1824 South Garland (Pg. 24, Top) 360 Degrees of Gay with Trucks (Page 24, Bottom) Circle. Tree. 360.

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FEATURES

REPURPOSED

Fayetteville electric vehicle sharing company SUMO sought the unconventional for their headquarters.

WORDS / JEREMY GLOVER PHOTO / TIMOTHY MADDOX

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f you reside in or frequently travel to Fayetteville, you’ve likely seen the spunky, compact neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV’s) cruising around town. They are likely part of the SUMO (Sustainable Urban Mobility) fleet.

Founded by Mikel Lolley and Bob Munger, both graduates of the University of Arkansas and former architects, they see the enterprise as “the Western Hemisphere’s first car sharing service based on street-legal NEV’s.” When it came time for an office space for their burgeoning business, they chose something that meshed with their vision and aesthetic – a shipping container. They enlisted DeMx Architecture to get the job done.

What made you first decide to start looking into utilizing a shipping container for your office?

I have been fascinated with shipping container architecture for well over a decade. Me and my business partner Bob Munger jumped at the chance with SUMO, especially when we learned that a 40-foot intermodal shipping container would meet the minimum requirements for an Arkansas Dealers license. Additionally, it reinforced our brand and story about the future of mobility. To be able to place our headquarters in front of an abandoned gas station in an optimum location was icing on the cake. Imagine the awkwardness when trying to explain to the Arkansas Motor Commission when they asked us if we had any plans to improve the gas station? No, with all due respect, we chose this location specifically because it was in front of a vintage 1920’s abandoned gas station because it merely reinforced our business model and belief that the internal combustion engine, gas stations and automobile ownership will quickly become a thing of the past and the future of autonomous transportation will be all electric and car-sharing.

What was the process like acquiring the container?

Fairly simple. We shopped locally first, then Tulsa and Memphis and selected Tulsa due to price ($4,000.00 delivered to Fayetteville) but also due to a storefront manufacturer in the Tulsa area that could produce the glazing and doors and merely place them inside upon transport and help us avoid the added cost of separate shipping.

Are there contractors that specialize in converting containers that you worked with to get the building set up?

My business partner and I are reformed architects – in that we have no desire to go back to that profession for a laundry list of reasons. Additionally, I

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was a licensed general contractor in multiple states across the country, and Bob was a certified construction manager and held several LEED certifications with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The initial decisions for insulation and framing are critical to ensuring that the shipping container, given its air tightness, does not encourage vapor drive due to the temperature differences between inside and outside, particularly given a climate of extremes like what we have here in Arkansas. Therefore, we specified a closed cell spray foam insulation for walls and ceiling.

We also avoided mechanically fastening the framing to the metal box of the shipping container to avoid vapor drive through the fasteners as conduits that would promote moisture problems, not to mention the energy inefficiencies that this would produce. We merely glued up the framing and it was surprisingly easy. After those two initial decisions for the insulation and framing, the rest of the build out was traditional, really. We did go for a 1-ton mini-split for the heat and air package, which is becoming more and more common even around here.

Was the whole process easier or more difficult that you first envisioned?

We were the first shipping container permitted in the City of Fayetteville, and this cost us some time initially waiting for them to get their brain around a first-of-its-kind project. Once we got out of planning and plans review, the process went very smoothly. The whole thing - furnishings and all - came in at $35,000 and we know we can do the next one for our next service area even less expensively. We are very proud of how resourceful this solution has been in achieving all the local building requirements, state requirements for the Arkansas Motor Vehicle and federal requirements for ADA. How happy are you with the finished office?

Very happy! It has served as a perfect vehicle, a functional billboard really, for capturing our brand ID and telling our story of sustainable urban mobility. We can literally pick up the building and move it to another locale or another city for that matter. We can for our next service area build one, sign land lease, hopefully in front of an abandoned gas station, and load it up with several low-speed electric vehicles (LEV’s) and ship the business in a box to another city. Open it up, drive out the LEV’s, and hang an open sign in the window.

visit: sumobility.org

ONE DAY ONLY

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n a crisp Saturday in October, the sound of hammers thudding on wood echoes off the thin sheet metal walls of a warehouse in downtown Little Rock. Large pallets lie on the floor, soon to be broken down and transformed into benches, bike racks, tables and other forms of landscaping. Next week, it will all be deployed for a day, and then packed up and broken down as an exercise in guerrilla urban planning, also known as a Pop Up neighborhood.

Officially, Pop Up in the Rock is a partnership between studioMAIN and Create Little Rock, who organize these Pop Up’s, but the volunteers today are from a variety of backgrounds. A quick survey reveals there are architects and engineers, at least one lawyer, as well as community activists, artists and students. They are all passionate about their mission to inspire a vision of a vibrant community - one that grows from the center outwards, is sustainable and capable of attracting and retaining creative talent.

“We get here before the developers, and demonstrate what could be, and hopefully inspire people in the community, and some of the business owners to see what it would be like if this were a functional neighborhood,” said Chris Hancock, who serves as co-chair of Pop Up in the Rock and is coordinating the day’s events.

As I wander around talking to the various volunteers while they pry nails and splash paint, Chris fields phone calls and gives subtle directions. I stop to chat with Andre, an artist and drag performer who has spent time in Philadelphia and New York, but ultimately decided to come back in an effort to make a difference in his hometown. He mentions his experiences as a member of the LGBTQ community, and how he hopes to serve as a positive role model for young people and work to make Little Rock more inclusive. This is particularly poignant, considering that today’s project is on 9th Street, and the history of its demise is a lesson in disenfranchisement.

Pop Up in the Rock seeks to remind Little Rock of what once was & inspire what can be.

WORDS / BRANDON MARKIN PHOTO / HEATHER CANTERBURY At the heart of the African-American community, 9th Street was once a bustling hive of activity, full of industry and entertainment that boasted thriving businesses and venues that hosted the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. It was undone by an economic depression, short-sighted development, and the construction of the Interstate-630 corridor, effectively exiling much of the black community to the south side of town.

In its current state, 9th Street is lined with empty lots and anonymous warehouses surrounded by razor wire, with the Mosaic Templars building to the East and the Dreamland Ballroom to the West serving as bookends. Whether by design or by unhappy coincidence, the loss of such a vibrant cultural heritage was devastating, and the area has never recovered. Pop Up in the Rock hopes to change that, and they have a reason to be hopeful. A stroll down South of Main (one of Pop Up in the Rock’s past projects) on any given weekend is a testament to how quickly things can turn around.

A week after the volunteer work day, I return to see what Pop Up 9th Street looks like in action. Rain has set in and it alternates between deluge and heavy drizzle. Understandably attendance suffers, but those who have come out are in good spirits and eager to pause for a quick chat.

There are people riding bikes, browsing merchandise, and eating from food trucks as a few plucky children run rings around it all. I work my way from the Arkansas Flag and Banner building to the Mosaic Templars Museum where I end up in the balcony of the third floor auditorium listening to the blues and soul music played by a band on stage below. I pause to look out the window, and I see a community, a space for people to grow connections and interact, to exchange ideas and be inspired. Whether or not it takes root is hard to predict, but the vision has been presented, if only for a day.

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MAKING THEIR MARK The Unexpected recruits major names in street art to revitalize Downtown Fort Smith on a grand scale.

WORDS / K. SAMANTHA SIGMON PHOTOS / MIKE BELL & MARTIN HERLACHER

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n a beautiful Friday, mid-September evening in downtown Fort Smith, Garrison Avenue was absolutely buzzing with activity. Couples strolling, bands blaring, kids loitering, and artists from around the world finishing up their murals in front of astonished passers-by, created that feeling of being involved with a one-of-a-kind important moment - the presence of a place becoming reanimated. What is going on here with a handful of creative folks is nothing short of magical, another city bursting back to life through site-specific innovation and thoughtful downtown development. That evening Fort Smith was vibrating from a major shot of adrenaline to the heart of the city, thanks to the first Unexpected mural festival.

The Unexpected, put on by parent company 64/6, an organization committed to bringing vibrancy to downtown Fort Smith, took place from September 3 through September 12. Participants included Portuguese artist Vhils, UK artist D*Face, New Zealander Askew, Puerto Rican Ana Maria, Irish artist Maser, Belgian artist ROA and Brazilian team Bicicleta Sem Freio. Attracting this many diverse artists in one remote location for one week poses the question, how did this happen?

Why Not?: Planning a Dialogue The project started with a few passionate locals in November 2014. Claire Kolberg, a native Northwest Arkansan, is project manager for Fort Smith’s 64/6 and festival organizer for the Unexpected, as well as manager for prominent street artist Maser, who made Northwest Arkansas a home base for a few years.

Maser was Kolberg’s first introduction to street art and, through this connection, Kolberg became more interested in the personal and economic power of art, she explained.

As 64/6 got off the ground, the organization began to envision a revitalization of downtown, which contains many old buildings with large, blank exterior walls. Using Maser’s experience at mural festivals, he recommended engaging curator Charlotte Dutoit with whom he had previously worked. Upon meeting the curator, Kolberg said she “hit the nail right on the head with the story we already wanted to tell.”

From there, a team of six people from the area was assembled on the philosophy that beautifying public space creates opportunities for people to visit downtown, increases revenue and demand for vibrant local business, and attracts a demographic of young, passionate people to the area. The name “Unexpected” embraces the surprise of making Fort Smith a destination outdoor gallery, Kolberg said.

From her experience, curator Charlotte Dutoit knows that street art contributes to an increase of interest in a neighborhood. “When you start to see street art in an area, it’s the sign that there are other things coming; it is a healthy marker of a vibrant community,” she added.

Street art began with the folks who rode trains in the 1970s and ‘80s from New York to different cities throughout the United States. Graffiti followed the traveling patterns of these people on the fringes of society, creating their own subcultural iconography and communication codes. This form of underground artistic expression “evolved with new techniques, medias, and inspirations from the street culture...[It now] has become a global cultural phenomena, probably the most important art movement of the last century [which has] infiltrated the art world and the art market,” Dutoit said.

Kolberg said choosing street art - a relatively new medium for Arkansas - will continually maintain interest in the historical downtown. “It’s all art, it’s always been art. It’s just more widely accepted now and people really are owning a craft,” Kolberg said. “It’s a craft. It’s handmade. A lot of our things have been made by machines, in bulk. This is unique and permanent.”

“What’s good for downtown is good for all of Fort Smith,” Kolberg added.

Ultimately the background for the event is simple. “The story is really cohesive.

We really wanted to do it. We said, why not? We called Charlotte. She said, okay. And here we are. This is actually happening.”

Charlotte Dutoit: A Passion for Uniting Place and Artist The Unexpected was able to involve such a wide variety of talented street artists thanks to the expertise and passion of a curator like Dutoit, a fascinating character who has carved a place out for herself and for the legitimation of

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street art through her projects around the world.

She grew up traveling and immersed in the rich artistic environment of Paris at a very young age. Dutoit moved to Puerto Rico in her twenties and became a commercial interior designer for hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Dutoit combined things she liked, mixing styles and incorporating street art into her designs and, through the process, meeting local artists and collectors. From cultivating her artistic knowledge, Dutoit began to organize shows, inviting her artist friends from Europe to participate, and then moved toward larger mural festivals.

Dutoit is drawn to street art for a few reasons. She said, “[It] opens a dialogue with a community. Also, I like the change. I like to have the opportunity to do an event in London and the next month in L.A. and right after in a smaller city. It’s inspiring to meet new people, get inspired by a new scenery, discover a new architecture, and this is also very important for the artists.”

After many successes in the field, Dutoit started JUSTKIDS in 2013 as a multidisciplinary dynamic interface that creates international art events and increased connectivity including fine art gallery shows, conceptual design for high-profile clients and uniting top-tier urban artists with leading global brands.

The curator has done her research on Fort Smith and treats the city with respect. She chose Fort Smith because of the downtown architecture, a place with many large buildings and blank outdoor walls. Also important is the city’s story as a western town with a wild history and rich context. “The fact that it was a border town and when you crossed the river there was no law west - I find it fascinating and inspiring,“ she said.

“I follow my dreams. I want the best project with the best artists, and I try harder,” Dutoit said. “My inspirations are the artists I work with...They are my motor and the reason I am here. Without them, there wouldn’t be anything.”

D*Face: Don’t Call It Street Art Winged bullets shoot with dire purpose from a revolver clutched by death’s hand while an outlaw with a red bandanna, riding a spooked horse, cocks his gun. This action-packed scene takes place in front of a red-orange sky as if frozen in some sort of animated fantasy-western noir. This mural was created for the Unexpected by London-born artist D*Face.

This artist has been strongly rooted in the graffiti. D*Face used art to escape academia, mainly through skateboarding and tagging. As an elevenyear-old, seeing Marty McFly skateboard through Hill Valley in Back to the Future at the cinema changed the artist’s life, and afterwards he “wanted

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a big wide American skateboard and wanted to live in a California town.”

Walking into the skateboard shop was another seminal experience, filled with “skateboards, punks, cool kids, stickers, graphics, and I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’”

While “dreaming of skateboarding and dreaming of graffiti,” D*Face took an animation class where he realized he could become an illustrator and designer with his skateboarding aesthetic. Using tagging as inspiration, he began drawing on stickers and sticking them around town. Looking to make graphics bigger and more permanent, he began to get invited to create murals around the world instead of tagging illegally. His path led him on a successful adventure, with future plans in New York, Las Vegas, Reykjavík, Mexico, Tokyo and Miami in succession after Fort Smith.

Frequently a participant in mural festivals around the world, D*Face has problems with the term “street art.” Making art was about being active and pro-active and did not necessarily have a style, he said. His Do-It-Yourself mentality comes from his dad helping him make toys when they couldn’t afford to buy them. Then skateboard culture taught him to continue to look at the world differently. As a street artist, “you see the curve as part of architecture or spot that may be blank high up, and you look at it as canvas,” D*Face said. “It teaches you to look at the environment differently...[and to] interact with a public that will not necessarily go to gallery.”

Fort Smith is not a place D*Face and many of the other artists would ever have visited, but the artist said he has had an amazing time talking to people and becoming inspired by the history of the city. As he explains on his website dface.co.uk: Fort Smith was the last pit stop for anyone trying to escape the law... before hitting the Bad Lands, a territory known as such because if you liked robbing and killing it was kind of the place to hang, quite literally, especially if the sheriff or Judge Parker got hold of you. The town itself was no idyllic retreat with six brothels and numerous bars. Unfortunately the shifts of time had left this town in the past, until that is the invite came through to leave new marks and make new history. It must be in the water because the locals were welcoming and hospitable to the rabble of out-of-towners that rolled through and blessed the walls with murals and the start of a new chapter in this historic town.

Fort Smith: Where the Magic Happened The festival was a huge success, and if you did not see images of the murals blowing up your news feeds online, you missed what was a truly world-class arts festival. Street Art News, the largest street art blog in the world, handled all social media. The event also included a collaborative

student-made mural, a spoken word night, and Printology, an indoor gallery show at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith’s new Windgate Art and Design building, curated by Dutoit and featuring artists like Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Invader and more.

But, the most important take-away was simple. The main attraction was that anyone could come downtown anytime and watch the painters while they were painting. “These are modern day masters,” Kolberg said. “To see a wall from conception to finish is nothing short of amazing.”

“The Unexpected was a huge success and it was moving to see people fall in love with downtown Fort Smith,” Kolberg said, in a follow-up interview about the event.

“I wouldn’t change anything – the small, intimate feeling the festival had gave the spectators and the artists an opportunity to interact with each other on an intimate level, and the artists felt the vibe was laid back and very enjoyable.”

Kolberg says they are beginning to plan the festival for next year as well. The lasting implications of the festival include renewed cultural interest and economic impact in downtown Fort Smith. “Our goal is to continue to create vibrant spaces and places in downtown which will attract people to live, work and play in the area,” Kolberg said.

Charlotte Dutoit adds, “When art is great and people share, that’s when the magic happens!” Indeed, Fort Smith has

created magic with the Unexpected Festival that is sure to stick around.

VISIT: 646downtown.com justkidsofficial.com

(Above) Badlands by D*Face (Pg. 28) Ana Maria painting her wall (Page 27) Vhils’ Cherokee mural

WATCH & LEARN University of Arkansas - Fort Smith art students benefit from the Unexpected.

WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTO / MIKE BELL

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esides downtown revitalization, the Unexpected provided another positive benefit – the chance for students at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith to watch artists at the top of their game painting on walls in the students’ hometown. Don Lee, head of the Art Department at UAFS, recruited Bryan Alexis, assistant professor in graphic design, to teach a mural painting class and provide student with a hands-on learning experience.

The class watched Brazilian art duo Bicicleta Sem Freio paint a mural in the brand new Windgate Art Building on campus. The painters had space constrictions and had to think creatively about ways to project the image on the wall and develop other techniques to perform such a difficult task. Experiencing these artists at work paid off when the students painted their mural at 709 Beech Street.

While Alexis designed the mural, the students had to execute the project incorporating the techniques they had learned.

“Students had to problem solve like what colors come first,” he said. “They had to angle the projector like La Bicicleta so they messed with the image in Photoshop to get it right before projecting it. They learned from the artists working downtown. Sometimes they’d come by and give the students tips.”

The experience was certainly inspiring for the students.

“I think they’re in awe, completely excited and completely turned on by the process and engaged with what’s going on,” he said. “They’re excited about the attention the town is getting and [the Unexpected] opened them up to the possibilities. I have some students who say they want to paint murals full-time.”

For their final project, the students had to truly collaborate by designing a mural 8-foot high by 100-foot long on campus. This proved to be more of an arduous task. Alexis

put them through different exercises and they learned how to accomplish the project through trial and error.

“The students had complete autonomy with that as far as producing and designing it,” he said “As instructor, I was kinda there to act as a filter for the final design, but I didn’t design it. Getting them to work together collaboratively was a pretty big hurdle. Everyone had their own ideas. Getting 10 artists to agree on something was a big challenge.”

Given the massive size the students had to become very creative in the test runs.

They drew on 8-foot sheets of paper. Once painting began, they learned about how they could paint it in shifts. They learned how to put the design together so they could follow a pattern to put the design on the wall. They also used some spray paint in their art with stencils, another technique they picked up from the Unexpected.

“It turned out pretty good,” he said. “At the end of it, everyone had a stake in it and their input was represented. One of the more innovative things to see was how they learned to project things and move it down in increments. They had a great solution - stack projectors - top half on one and the bottom on another. The images met in the middle, which made the projections smaller. This was a great solution and I think that was a direct result of them watching how the artists [at the Unexpected] had to take each building and work out those kinks as they came.”

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COUR AGE TO LEA D DENNY HASKEW

SHOP LOCA L JASON JONES

PEACE PR AY ER FOUNTA IN

PUB EXPOS NEV ER FORGET T I G E R S A S H A & J Ö E L L E S TO R E T

HANK K AMINSK Y FAY ET T E V I L L E & BE N TO N V I L L E

ETHER TIGER SASHA

LIC SURE

Public art is essential to revitalizing a neighborhood. Here are some of our favorite works from around Arkansas.

Photos by Cannon McNair, Mike Abb, Kody Ford, Aaron Brewer, and Nick Gibson

EXPLOR ERS KENNE TH SIEMENS

BOR DERTOW N SK ATE SHOP MUR A L M ASER & CONOR H A RRINGTON

4TH A ND POPLA R ST. MUR A L A N G E L A D AV I S J O H N S O N & J O S E H E R N A N D E Z

CONUNDRUM D AV I D C L E M O N S

M A LCO HEA RT X3MEX

W INDS FROM THE SOUTH WAY N E S U M M E R H I L L

LOW K EY A RTS PEEL A NDER ARTS

MUSHROOM GIR L ICY & SOT

L IT T L E RO C K & HOT S P R I N G S & F T. S M IT H

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he Bachman-Wilson House is an important example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs for living for persons of more ordinary means. He called houses such as this one “Usonian” – a term that fused “United States” with “American” – and hoped to spread them throughout the land as a response to the uniquely American way of living, especially as it was coming to be understood in the period beginning in the 1930s and beyond. He appreciated the casual way of living most Americans sought, their sense of economy, and their strong connection to the land and to simple materials – all ideas that were designed into the Bachman-Wilson House.

Arkansas is now home to this beautiful house, and it is so very appropriate for it to be here, where Wright’s own apprentice, architect Fay Jones, made his career in teaching and practice, and adapted so many of Wright’s ideas into his own vision of an architecture of its place, “of the land.” The Bachman-Wilson house is now permanently “of the land” in Northwest Arkansas, and will serve generations of not just architects, but all people, as an example of gracious, well-considered living that is as relevant today as it was upon its completion over half a century ago.

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UNIQUELY AMERICAN For years, Frank Lloyd Wright’s main connection to Arkansas was through his pupil Fay Jones. Now Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has brought the legendary architect to the Natural State.

WORDS / GREGORY HERMAN PHOTOS / NANCY NOLAN

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STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS The heritage of design in Northwest Arkansas is as deep as the state is beautiful.

Can a new generation of architects achieve the great heights of their forebears?

STORY / KEVIN KINDER PHOTOS / CANNON MCNAIR

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rchitecture doesn’t happen very often,” said Marlon Blackwell, someone who has by all measurements committed multiple acts of architecture. “And when it does, it’s fairly controversial.”

But there is growing consensus that Northwest Arkansas serves or served as a home to many of the finest examples of postmodern American architects. Edward Durell Stone, who designed the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and co-designed the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, among many other projects, was born here. Fay Jones logged many hours as a protégé of the most important name in American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright. Jones, a Pine Bluff native, later opened a practice in his adopted hometown of Fayetteville. And there are now practitioners such as Blackwell, himself creating significant design works and being internationally recognized for them. The next crop of notable Fayetteville architects might be walking the corridors of Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus and its adjacent Steven L. Anderson Design Center, an award-winning project that debuted in 2013 with design by Blackwell and Polk, Stanley, Wilcox Architects of Little Rock.

Or perhaps one of the recent graduates of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, already working in practice somewhere else, will find their way back. They often do.

“We really do have an architectural gravity that’s pretty powerful,” said Chris Baribeau, formerly of Blackwell’s firm but now principal at Modus Studio, also of Fayetteville.

A Notable Lineage Edward Durell Stone first brought international attention to the quality of architectural work from this area. A boyhood friend of J. William Fulbright, a man who would garner power and influence in the United States Senate, Stone too rose to national prominence. He designed or contributed to the design of works such as the Radio City Music Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the PepsiCo world headquarters and the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India. He worked from the East Coast; his older brother was already a practicing architect in Boston when Stone left Arkansas. But he would not leave the area behind.

Blackwell credits Stone’s design of the Fine Arts Building on the University of Arkansas campus for starting the architectural revolution in the area. That building debuted in 1948. The years that followed were busy for Stone locally – he also designed the Willis Noll residence on North Sequoyah Drive that was later purchased by the university and used as a home for the chancellor and for a time, former Razorback basketball coach Eddie Sutton.

The architecture school at the university started in 1947. One of the students in the introductory class was Pine Bluff native Euine Fay Jones.

He would eventually study at Rice University, and he later taught at the University of Oklahoma. There, a meeting with Wright started a friendship that led Jones to Wright’s teaching facilities at Taliesin West in Arizona and Taliesin in Wisconsin. Among many important works in the area and around the country, Jones’ crown jewel is Thorncrown Chapel, built in 1980 just outside Eureka Springs. Crisscrossing wood planks frame the Ozark hillside there, and the building was a sensation almost immediately.

Jones, who passed away in 2004 in Fayetteville, earned some of architecture’s highest awards following Thorncrown’s completion, including the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor the organization gives. Thorncrown was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, just 20 years after its completion.

Peers of Jones in the first few years of the architecture program also proliferated around the area, including Warren Segraves, who designed

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many of the instantly recognized properties in the downtown Fayetteville core – the E.J. Ball Plaza building on West Center Street, what is now the Today’s Bank building on the northeast corner of Dickson Street and College Avenue and, just to that building’s east, the former Fayetteville Public Library building, now commercial office space. All of those Segraves properties utilize a combination of steel and glass. Examples of postmodern style, with direct nods to an American icon, became common in the region, Blackwell said.

“There was a search for regional modernism regarding the Wrightian principle,” he said.

Inspirational Surroundings Blackwell stops short of saying Northwest Arkansas has a defining style. His works are in the tradition of, but different from, the natural world framing system popularized by Wright and later continued by Jones and a host of other architects. But he understands why architects have flocked to this area. He sought an opportunity to teach and operate a practice at the same time, much like Jones had done. Arkansas provided just that, and it worked exactly to Blackwell’s design. He served as department chair for a time, and his firm has attracted international acclaim. His design of the museum store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville perhaps garners the most foot traffic, but his most-awarded and most-discussed work might be his design for the St. Nicholas Orthodox Christian Church near the Randall Tyson Recreational Complex in Springdale. He converted a metal shop building into a church and fellowship hall at a cost of $100 per square foot. At a recent speaking engagement of Blackwell’s in Malaysia, it was the building everyone already knew and wanted to discuss.

Blackwell believes another factor in the stylistically dissimilar but often exceptional architecture from this area comes from the blank slate presented by the area. Bereft of coastal traditions, companies could reimagine how to do business. That idea worked for Walmart, which revolutionized retail, and for Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, which found success in the protein and transportation industries, respectively. Similarly, Arkansans found their own style.

“Fay [Jones] proved you could make architecture in the middle of the country,” Blackwell said.

Baribeau, of Modus Studios, knew he wanted to be an architect as far back as the sixth grade, when he took a career-finding course. He chose the University of Arkansas due to its proximity to home and its reputation.

When he enrolled in the school, he was unaware just how long Jones’ shadow over the department was, even with his name on the marquee of the architecture school.

But it didn’t take long to discover, and it didn’t take long for Baribeau to see one of the elements that inspired Jones. The natural landscape of Northwest Arkansas serves as a beautiful backdrop for thoughtful design.

Modus’ defining project thus far is the ECO Modern Flats, a sustainable, LEED-certified renovation of an apartment complex just to the south of the Arkansas campus. It features outdoor green areas and a community garden, too.

That’s part of what inspired him to stick around and start his practice here. The natural beauty, and the power of the architecture school, are major factors.

There’s also the power of supply and demand, and right now, Northwest Arkansas has the demand. The growing residential population and the growing student population have created many needs, and Baribeau’s firm is capitalizing. Modus architects designed the student housing

ABOVE: EDWARD DURELL STONE. (Courtesy of the Edward Durell Stone Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries) complex called The Cardinal, located adjacent to the university. The amount of work needed for the booming population has proved his decision to stay in Fayetteville a smart one. He started the firm in 2008 with business partner Josh Siebert. Their first project was the Green Forest Middle School. They’ve since grown the firm to dozens of projects, and they employ 23 between the design firm and the associated fabrication shop at the firm’s headquarters on Church Avenue in Fayetteville. Certainly, Baribeau and his cohorts would love to expand regionally and nationally. But Northwest Arkansas has provided a plethora of opportunities, too.

“We’re happy to work where we live,” Baribeau said.

Blackwell too acknowledges that perfect storm of opportunity in the area, a combination of inspiring natural beauty, booming business and forward-minded individuals who want smart design.

“It takes the right mixture of economy and entrepreneurship,” Blackwell said. “Nature is the connective tissue in all of that. It’s a potent mix of things that’s allowing this to happen.”

An Encyclopedia of Examples There are many ways to reap the benefits of the region’s collision of architectural good fortune and carefully cultured advancement. Chief among those is a visit to Thorncrown Chapel, considered one of the most important buildings in America. There’s also the architecture of Crystal Bridges, the art museum in Bentonville. Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie’s idea of a hidden city of a museum complex attracts warranted attention. But the museum’s attention to architecture expands far beyond the copper-topped, glass-walled arches spanning a local spring. The museum in recent months purchased a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home from a New Jersey couple, who wanted to protect it from the floodwaters that often encroached the notable building. The home, from Wright’s Usonian series of mid-sized homes for the middle class, was moved piece by piece from the East Coast and reassembled on the Crystal Bridges grounds. Students at the University of Arkansas

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interacted with the piece as they designed an interpretation and viewing pavilion that serves as the access point to the Frank Lloyd Wright home, which opened to the public in November. Additionally, the museum offers tours four times per week. Nearly 1,700 guests took the architecture tour the first 10 months of 2015, according to statistics compiled by the museum.

Further research can be done via the University of Arkansas’ special collection department in Mullins Library, which preserves and maintains important documents. The architecture-related wing of special collections contains the papers of both Edward Durell Stone and Fay Jones.

It’s the closest thing to a Fay Jones museum, and it includes a full history of the man’s work, from student drawings to introductory sketches of Thorncrown Chapel. He was always working, and the archive captures that sentiment.

“We have sketches on napkins and envelopes,” said Catherine Wallach, architectural records archivist at the local university.

The collection also contains works from several notable architects of the area, including Segraves, Alice Upham Smith and John Gilbert Williams, the founding instructor of the university’s architecture school.

Researchers often pore through the collection, but the archive is less frequently used by the general public. Wallach said the enthusiasts of architecture already know to come explore. For all interested parties, the archive provides a comprehensive look at all the architects represented there.

Those design forerunners already wield significant influence, and that brings students here. The architects they’ve influenced might be working in other locations right now, Blackwell said, but they might too come back to teach and operate a practice, like Jones did 30 years ago and Blackwell is doing now.

“I see our students doing great things. They are going to go where there are opportunities. There is an atmosphere of hope,” Blackwell said.

And a long tradition of great works to follow.

PAGE 39: FAY JONES SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, University of Arkansas.

PAGE 40 (Lower right corner top): STEVEN L. ANDERSON DESIGN CENTER, University of Arkansas, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects.

PAGE 40 (Lower right corner bottom): ECO MODERN FLATS, Fayetteville, designed by Modus Studios.

University of Arkansas Purchases Fay Jones Home for Laboratory, Residence In a move designed to further the synergy between the University of Arkansas, Fay Jones and student architects, the school has purchased the first home the notable Arkansan designed. The Jones family residence on North Hillcrest Avenue was the first home the acclaimed architect designed.

“It’s an intimate, domestic residence,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas.

MacKeith said deliberations and negotiations regarding the purchase of the home took many months. And it will take many more before it becomes a residence again. In the tradition of Jones’ legacy as a teacher, the home will be used as a laboratory and workspace for architecture students to get hands-on restoration practice. MacKeith said updates to the nearly 60-year-old structure will span five years and will include foundation and roof repairs, kitchen and bathroom work and mechanical system upgrades. The renovation work will preserve what Jones intended for the space, which served as a template for the 200 residences he would design throughout the region.

“The DNA of his design principles are embedded in the (building),” MacKeith said.

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DOWNTOWN

TURNAROUND Once the centers of culture and commerce, downtowns across Arkansas are seeking new ways to reinvent themselves. It seems to be working.

STORY / MELISSA TUCKER PHOTOS / KAT WILSON, ALEXANDER JEFFERY & DAYTON CASTLEMAN

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owntown developer Daniel Hintz has pondered and deconstructed the nature of a city’s center so often, he’s condensed it down to the basics.

“The first downtown was really the fire pit, if you want to go way, way back,” he said. “People gathered around, cooked and ate food, did commerce. If you look at ancient cities, they all have a square, or some sort of central place where people could go.”

However, the advent of the automobile moved people away from downtowns. Despite their efficiency in space and socialization, many were abandoned in favor of the suburbs.

“You started to see social challenges, health challenges,” he said.

“And financial challenges started to affect a city over time as we spread too far, building roads we can’t maintain.”

By contrast, in downtowns you have a tendency to get max density, he said. You have mixed use areas, and downtowns are far more resilient economically and culturally than many of the suburbs. You get more bang for your buck, Hintz adds.

He would know. He’s spent the previous decades helping the cities of Northwest Arkansas resurrect their downtown areas, bringing in culture, culinary arts, the element of surprise, and compelling reasons to return to the heart of the city again and again.

The revitalization of downtown spaces is often called New Urbanism because it borrows heavily from the designs of the pre-automobile, preWWII era. Redevelopment starts with a master plan. City leaders define the boundaries of downtown, create a long-range plan for that area, and begin the investments that turn vision into a reality.

As Chief Experience Architect at Bentonville’s Velocity Group, Hintz has a four-prong approach to revitalizing a downtown he calls The DNA of Place - safety, selection, service and surprise.

Those four pillars can be interpreted in varying ways, he says. Safety is more than physical. It’s also about feeling safe expressing new ideas.

Selection can also mean having a wide variety of people to meet, and service works both ways — not only about how communities can be of service to residents but also avenues for locals to get involved. And surprise means finding new things to discover in your own city.

Cities across Arkansas, both large and small, are working to implement master plans, which incorporate new infrastructure and ways for citizens

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to get involved in shaping their downtown areas. In Northwest Arkansas, Springdale recently approved a master plan for its downtown area, which looks ahead 10 to 15 years. The city has also hired its first executive director to head the Downtown Springdale Alliance. According to Hintz, the five major cities in the Northwest — Springdale, Fayetteville, Rogers, Siloam Springs and Bentonville — are working both individually and regionally to add new life to their downtowns while other cities in the state are slowly manifesting their own visions for the future.

Little Rock’s Creative Corridor The biggest driver and the biggest obstacle to downtown development is culture, said Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, where he has consulted with Little Rock city leaders on the plan to revive downtown, and most notably on Main Street’s Creative Corridor.

And sometimes the culture needs to be changed. Main Street was originally designed for department store shopping, to move people very efficiently through a shopping atmosphere. But those stores have decamped to the suburbs, and they’re not coming back, said Luoni. That means the area must be retooled for a 24-7 work-life environment combining offices, arts and culture, dining and traditional services — grocery stores, dry cleaning, etc. — that support residential life.

Luoni says Little Rock’s comeback story is intriguing. The city was once decimated by urban renewal, and now the single greatest land use in downtown Little Rock is surface parking.

“Go to the top of any tall building in Little Rock and look out over the city, and you’ll be blown away by how many vacant lots there are,” he said. “The upside is the city has great urban neighborhoods and early housing stock that would be the envy of any city its size.”

Today, Little Rock’s long-range plan is to develop one neighborhood at a time and then connect them together.

“Part of the public sector’s job is to show the private sector that it has the vision for a place and will conduct the investments,” Luoni said. “A lot of downtowns stay fallow because there is no public sector investment.

The private market needs to be rewarded for taking the risk in downtown reinvestment, and part of that reward is public sector upgrades.”

Once you get pockets of activity around those early galvanizing projects, you’ll start to see critical mass take hold, he said.

“That’s what’s happened on Main Street. It’s taken years to revitalize.

Now, we’ve reached a tipping point, and that’s because of the public sector planning. And as the neighborhoods start to connect back to the city, you start to see urban neighborhoods as well as the central business district reemerge because people want that lifestyle.”

Fort Smith’s Mural Support In Fort Smith, the city’s downtown is galvanizing around public art. The area is already healthy, said John McIntosh, executive director of 64/6 Downtown, but the plan to add murals to the city’s walls has been “transformative.”

In September, the Unexpected spearheaded the addition of 11 striking murals in 10 days, and to celebrate, the project culminated with a Festival of Murals.

“When you have people coming downtown to see things and to do things, it creates traffic for merchants, which is really what we want,” he said. “We want to fill up every building downtown and create new business opportunities.”

McIntosh says Fort Smith has a lock on historical attractions, but he thinks the city is also ready to embrace a fresh direction.

“Downtown Fort Smith is healthy, but I would say it’s hungry for change.

We have historic tourism opportunities … but I think the feeling among a lot of people is we can more than that,” he said. “And when you start to program space in your downtown, and you do it purposefully, it works. We were very purposeful about programming spaces for this art, and we have the same process going on for the 2016 party.”

Mike Abb, creative director of Bentonville’s RopeSwing group, says public art like murals adds an element of pride for residents. For people relocating to Arkansas for jobs, it’s pride in showing where you live to your family and friends, he said. In addition, Abb says public art is relatively easy and has a quick payoff — it’s accessible to everyone and sparks discussions.

“It’s something you can wrap your head around in a shorter amount of time,” he said. “Whether you’re young, old, affluent, poor, hillbilly or débutante, art is something that draws you in. It starts conversations.”

Abb and Bentonville’s developers ultimately hope the art will create reasons to gather and linger in downtown areas. He says additions in the culinary and arts scenes, as well as pop-up events like an art gallery launch in early October, are attracting people and generating a buzz.

“They put up some murals, lights and local artists’ work in the gallery, and we had a huge mountain biking event, and now people are stopping by in masses,” he said. “It’s not 10 minutes before I see people taking photos of the art, and that just wasn’t happening before.”

(Above) The Three Feathers by Dayton Castleman in downtown Bentonville (Pg. 44) Main Street in downtown Little Rock (Pg. 43) Mural in Little Rock’s SoMA District

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El Dorado: City of Soul In El Dorado, arts and entertainment is the impetus behind breathing new life into downtown, but the underlying reason is largely economic. The city has faced population declines in recent decades after prominent companies and factories began closing. Rather than relocate their headquarters, remaining companies decided investments in the city were necessary to retain a strong workforce.

“We didn’t rectify the problem, but we stymied the population loss,” said Austin Barrow, president and chief operating officer of El Dorado Festivals and Events. “The population is stabilized now, and we’re even seeing slight growth.”

Now, El Dorado is dreaming big. Barrow and Terry Stewart, CEO of El Dorado Festivals and Events with ties to the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, want to turn El Dorado into a musical and cultural entertainment hub. One worth the drive.

“We’ve got four performance venues and our intent is to program them on regular basis,” Stewart said. “If we do it right, you’re gonna look at the El Dorado paper to see what’s playing on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before you look at the Little Rock paper. It’ll be performing arts, theater, visual arts … we’ve built our financing around to assure we can program aggressively to find the right audience.”

But Barrow says it goes beyond festivals because it’s programming for all age demographics. It’s about interactivity.

It’s about compelling people to drive a couple of hours for a grand experience.

“We have four fully functional facilities that can house anything from a comedy show to an amphitheater that seats 8,000, and everything in between,” he said.

What was the typical El Dorado resident’s reaction to this plan?

“We described this project as prodigious and ridiculous at the same time,” said Stewart, with a laugh. “When people hear about it, most of them are overwhelmed with the scope of what we’re doing, and not surprising, many are skeptical, but we want it to be bodacious. We recognize how hard this is going to be, but everyone is excited beyond belief.”

Barrow contrasted El Dorado’s approach to that of Northwest Arkansas by saying, while Crystal Bridges is a world-class museum, it may not always bring visitors back for repeat visits.

“I think it’s an absolutely wonderful facility, but what we’re doing is something that changes on a daily, weekly and

(Above) Programs from the El Dorado FIlm Festival — part of the town’s efforts to revitalize itself through cultural events. monthly basis because of the variety of venues [and shows],” he said. “It’s something you would come back to again and again, and I’ve even noticed Bentonville trying to bring some of these other types of venues to that area” to draw a crowd that goes beyond visual arts.

Whether the emphasis is on arts, entertainment or livability, the revitalization of any downtown is essentially a shift in the culture of that area, where civic leaders and residents work together to change the course of the community. Each community’s vision and the master plans they create will be different.

“Downtowns are at the crossroads of community culture and commerce, and sculpting the downtown area has to be owned by the community itself,” Hintz said. “And that looks different for every community. There’s more than one answer.”

BOOK REVIEW True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley

by Kelly Mulhollan (UA Press, 2015)

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remember the first time I saw one of Ed Stilley’s guitars. It hung on the wall of Fayetteville Underground as part of an exhibition of rural artists in conjunction with Fayetteville Roots Festival. The exhibit also included the assemblages and difficult landscapes of the great Tim West. Starkly different from the art of West, which spoke a troubled and nuanced language, Stilley’s guitar hung earnestly and invitingly, broadcasting without irony, in looping carved letter, its exhortation to “have faith in God.” Next to it hung an x-ray showing the nests of wasps that had taken up residence inside and now seem to be an inseparable part of the instrument itself. I was stricken at the time by the hard geometrical precision of the x-ray and how that contrasted with the earthy, unfinished homeliness of the guitar, and couldn’t help but think of this as analogous to body and soul, material and ideal.

The book True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley by Kelly Mulhollan of the local folk band Still on the Hill, recently published by The University of Arkansas Press, documents many of Stilley’s 200 or so handmade instruments in beautifully-composed photographs by Kirk Lanier. The color reproduction is exceptional, capturing the lumber scraps, barn paint, and rust that give the instruments their soulful appearance. They seem to hover in the darkness of the black backdrops, glowing from their inner “true light.” Interspersed throughout are Dr. Dennis Warren’s x-ray images, which show the “innards” of springs, sprockets, pot lids, and saw blades placed by Stilley to give the instruments their tone.

What impresses me is that much of the text is concerned with the functionality of Stilley’s choice of materials - how he intentionally placed reflectors from cans and lids to focus the sound of the guitar, how he invented a “jingler” similar to an African thumb piano to add resonance.

Stilley is depicted as an intelligent craftsman/artist, which is far preferable to the problematic way many self-taught rural artists are often written about. Dr Robert Cochran provides a poetic and erudite introduction that further places Stilley within a tradition of self-taught religious artists going back to El Greco.

I find myself poring over the fine details of Stilley’s work, the oddly-shaped soundholes, the gracefully lopsided headstocks - all the handiwork of a creator in praise of a Creator - and I can’t help but think of a poem by the Arkansas poet J. Camp Brown: “If I am an instrument, there must be a Luthier./If I too cage my breath, if I too am kerfed with ribs…”

Like the wasps that have nested in the “ribs” of his guitars, Stilley has humbly crafted his work within a greater Creation, and his work’s flaws, its messiness, reflect the complex beauty of spirituality.

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True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley (UA Press, 2015) is available at Nightbird Books.