Winning Talent

by
Maryann Miller

There's got to be something in the water. That's al there is to it. Winnsboro and the surrounding areas have some of the highest concentration of talent I have ever seen. There are actors, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, and more, and three of them have recently been on a winning streak.

Lynn Adler, of Adler & Hearne, just won the 22nd Annual B.W. Stevenson Memorial Singer/Songwriter Competition with her amazing song, "A Hundred Years From Now." (Listen to it on their page on MySpace)

Over the years she and Lindy Hearne have won numerous awards, being finalists at such prestigious songwriting festivals as the Wildflower Festival Performing Songwriter Showcase in Richardson, Texas, the Walnut Valley Festival NewSongs Showcase at Winfield, Kansas, the Kerrville Folk Festival's NewFolk songwriting competition, and the B.W. Stevenson Memorial Singer/Songwriter Competition held each year at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas. 'To The Heart' CD ranked No. 20 on the FolkDJ May 2010 charts.

All those years and all that effort leading up to this special award this year, and Lynn is thrilled. "As a songwriter you always hope people will appreciate what you have to say, and this award says, 'yes'."

"A Hundred Years From Now" is featured on their latest CD "To the Heart" which was recorded at Nashville’s House of David Studio, by producer Rick Clark. “Over all the years of working in music,” says Clark, “I’ve never worked on a project that was as deeply soulful as this. There were times in the making of this album when it was obvious everyone involved was clearly touched, and there was a sense of something special clearly happening in the grooves.”

That is so true of all the music that comes out of the Spring Hollow Organic Song Farm just outside of Winnsboro, which is where Adler & Hearne create their beautiful ballads.

Another talent nurtured in the Piney Woods of East Texas is sculptor, Al Moore, who has quietly won several prestigious awards without a lot of fan-fare. He is most comfortable working in his studio, out of the limelight, but his work deserves greater recognition. Last fall he was one of more than 50 artists from California to Massachusetts and Canada and the Netherlands who were featured in Shorelines, the Rockport (Texas) Center for the Arts first international juried exhibition featuring excellence in coastal inspired art.

Nearly 200 artists entered the international call for entries and the selected artists exhibited in watercolor, oil, pastels, photography, printmaking, video, and mixed media. Entries were juried by Joseph Schenk, Director of the Art Museum of South Texas, and prizes awarded by Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection in Houston.

Al Moore's sculpture "Dolphins" won first place in Rockport last fall and Best of Show in April Arts in 2009 in Mt. Vernon. He won first place in April Arts, 2010 with his sculpture "Ancient Vessel" which is a blend of wood and stone carving. (below right)

Al took a circuitous route to becoming a full-time artist. He said he always had an interest in art but didn't seriously pursue it for many years. He was an engineer and worked in the corporate world for many years. "Fortunately, I had the good sense to leave the corporate world and the great good fortune of moving to this area of Texas in 1999," he says. "I soon discovered its embarrassment of riches in the arts – music, literature, visual and folk arts, and its amazingly friendly people."

His first association with the arts in East Texas were administrative in nature – volunteering as Executive Director and later serving as a Board member and officer of the fledgling Trails Country Center for the arts in Winnsboro. (Now the Winnsboro Center For The Arts) He was an avid art collector and also did wood turning when the volunteering gave him time. Then, as he put it, he was "gifted with the use of a sculpting studio for a week by Bonnie Sir Kegian a local sculptor. I was also given a large kiln by Georgia Lange in exchange for some minor help in re-wiring another. Suddenly, someone seemed to be pushing me to do art."

Georgia and Al married after they both lost spouses in death, and they continue their work at Bent Pine Studioswhere they have His and Hers studios.

Author, Jory Sherman, who lives in Pittsburg with his wife Charlotte, is no stranger to winning awards. His western novels have won the Spur Award and he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, among others. He has written over 400 books, primarily westerns, but he has written a few mainstream novels including "The Ballad of Pinewood Lake."

More recently, Jory has won awards for his painting, which is doubly significant because he is legally blind. He said he took several of his paintings to the Ozark Writers' League conference in February because he thought some of his friends up there might be interested in buying one.

He entered his painting of a cowboy on his horse after a rain in the Art and Photography Show and was amazed that it won First Prize in the Art Competition. He was even more surprised when he was given an award for Best Overall in the show. "No, I did not sell any of the paintings," he says, "But I was in a daze and still feel somewhat bewildered and incredulous that my painting won a prize. It means a lot to me."

For Jory, the creativity of writing and painting are melded together and he has the following posted on his Web site

"The painting is in the poem. The poem is in the painting.

Is it the vision or the imagination that draws me into painting with words and into painting the sensations, the feelings and emotions that painting seems to capture, in oils, watercolors or acrylics?

The same compulsion seems to be at work whether I’m writing or painting. There is the desire to paint vivid pictures in prose and to capture the beauty of a landscape in a single composition."

In a previous interview with WinnsboroToday.com, Jory told how he came back to painting after a number of years. To read that story click HERE

Jory continues to write, but still makes time for painting and his work is shown and sold locally at The Winnsboro Emporium. where he also has many of his books for sale.