“When I was 12, I began studying under Silvio Scionti, and he taught me how to make music come alive,” said John Sutton Shelton in an interview in 2003. Shelton was a child prodigy at the piano. During his senior year at Sherman High School, Shelton won a music contest that earned him a chance [...]

Blues guitarist Kirby Kelley was down to his last guitar, a custom-made Paul Reed Smith. “Think about it,” said Kelly’s friend at the North Dallas Guitar Center when the musician laid the instrument, which was worth enough to help his family out of a deep financial hole, on the counter and said he wanted to [...]

I start this column with mixed emotions as it was to be my last for Texoma Living! The grand experiment started by Dan Acree, Edward Southerland, and a handful of local writers, editors, photographers, and advertisers was at an end. Well, perhaps not. That said, the pluses and minuses of it all brought me back [...]

In 2008 when Chance Dunlap’s sculpture was featured in Texoma Living!, he was not long out of Sherman High School. Since then he has pursued his formal artistic training and education at Grayson County College and Southeastern Oklahoma State University, gotten married, and scored a major commission. Many times artists have periods of intense work [...]

Last year (2009) Texoma Living! introduced photographic and mixed-media artist Johana Hartjen to our readers. Her work was an unusual mix of photography and collage. Shortly after her appearance in Texoma Living!, she returned to her native Mexico for an artist-in-residency program in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz. She and eight other artists were commissioned to live in [...]

As I was working on this year’s Art Issue, I fielded many questions about art, artists, and what Texoma Living! was looking for in the submission department. After all the e-mails and phone calls, I decided the best answer I could give was the following recipe. It is one of my favorites. Step 1: The [...]

Shannon Cain was the sleeper in Texoma Living’s first Art Issue. A virtually unknown sculptor at the time of his appearance in the Fall 2007 issue, he is now a familiar face in art circles in Texoma and beyond. Since then, the artist aka father, aka student, aka hospital marketing director has been balancing a [...]

The third annual Texoma Living! Art Issue introduces our readers to a group of local artists whom, if you haven’t heard about already, you soon will. At least, that’s the consensus of our panel of experts, who selected them all as talents to watch. The panel nominated artists and took other nominations from our readers, [...]

The lavender face of a green Luna moth and the stripes on the abdomen of a Cecropia moth represent moments preserved in memory for photographer Dana Handy. “I want to look at a photo and have it transport me instantly to the moment I snapped the picture, so I can relive it over and over. [...]

“I grew up with a fascination for collecting toys. When you look around, you find a lot of toy objects. I got to thinking about them as alive, and they were animate and they could talk and tell stories. I began to paint collections of them as toyscapes and gave them unworldly backgrounds.” Durland takes [...]