Joe Barbieri studied drawing and anatomy at Nassau College in New York and North Lake College in Texas, but it wasn"t until 1992 that he discovered the joy of painting. Though primarily self-taught, he has benefited from the help of many knowledgeable friends. He studied under California artist Ron Riddick in his "Painting with a Passion" workshop and was the only artist from that workshop to receive a full scholarship to the Prix de West Invitational Exhibition at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
Since 1998, Barbieri has worked with Stanton Glass Studio in Waco where he paints one-of-a-kind stained glass pieces for churches, hotels, museums and private homes throughout the United States. His stained glass, watercolor and oil paintings have been purchased by individuals, collectors and museums across the Southwest and overseas. His work has appeared in the Mountain Oyster Show, the Peppertree Show, the Salon International Show and the Phippen Museum Show.
Barbieri paints commissioned portraits, still lifes and landscapes, but much of his inspiration is drawn from the agrarian community where he lives with his wife and three children. He is often on hand for the spring and fall roundup to capture scenes of his friends and his son as they ride out to bring in cattle for sorting and branding. He loves to communicate through his work the vibrancy of the natural world and the simplicity and beauty of the life, people and relationships he enjoys in Central Texas.

Brian Boyd grew up in Huntsville, Texas and graduated from Sam Houston State University. He and his wife Becky moved to Waco in 1977 where they raised their two sons, Dustin and Lee. Both boys are married and Boyd is Pepaw to his four grandchildren. He has been a State Farm Insurance agent for 33 years in the greater Waco area.
Obviously, his passion is photography. He enjoys taking photos of wildlife, landscapes and people, including the Amish. Over the past few years, Boyd has been privileged to photograph Air Force One and President Bush during his many visits to the Waco area.
Brian hopes to be able to continue his travels across the country looking for new things to photograph, but also looks forward to his many visits to the parks at Lake Waco. He takes great pride in Lake Waco"s parks and the wonderful people at the Corps of Engineers who manage them.

Linda Easter has lived most of her life in Central Texas. In her pre-painting years, she raised three children and worked as a real estate broker. In 2000, she retired and has devoted full time to painting.
She considers herself a realistic painter who strives for impressionistic realism. "I want a certain paint quality that has an interest and beauty quite apart from the object. My favorite subjects are people." And, she has used many family members as models. Children especially capture her heart, she said.
Easter has taken classes at the Fredericksburg Art School, Art in the Aspens and the Bosque Conservatory. She teaches classes at Art Center Waco and enjoys the support and camaraderie of many painting friends. Her paintings have been sold through galleries, group and solo shows and art festivals. Currently, her work is for sale at the Griffith Fine Art Gallery in Salado. She is one of two artists in Art Center Waco's current exhibit, Waco's Own.

Harriet Hayward said that "anyone who wants to paint CAN paint." Hayward's artwork lives on, begging admirers to look deeper into the work to understand its most significant qualities "the thing which is not specifically named there."
She earned her Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Baylor University in 1960. She studied in Palo Alto, California, Instituto de Belles Arts at the University of Venezuela, Caracas in 1949; Engineering Management at the University of Chicago in 1942; and earned a commercial art certificate from the Ray School of Art in Chicago in 1941. Hayward also studied art at the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts in New Mexico with artists Richard Diebenkorn, Nancy Graves, Wayne Thiebauld, Fritz Scholder, Lee Mullican, Gregory Aminoff and Nathan Olivera from 1986 through 1995.
She taught at McLennan Community College, Waco Creative Art Center, Baylor University, Waco ISD and was artist in residence at Art Center Waco, J. H. Hines Elementary, Midway Elementary and the Greater Southwest Arts Project.
Hayward inspired many local artists, many of whom came together to celebrate her life and her art earlier this year at Art Center Waco.

Susan Kennedy, ceramist, said, "The studio is a fanciful place for me. My goal is to create amusing pots, cast as animated characters in an interactive and fantastical reality...Considerations to surface, sound and function are an invitation to begin a relationship where, through use, a piece reveals itself."
Kennedy has a Bachelor's in Fine Arts with a specialization in Ceramics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a Master's in Fine Arts with a specialization in Ceramics from the University of North Texas in Denton. She has shown her work at a number of craft and pottery shows and in galleries across the United States. She staged a solo exhibition at the Croft Gallery in Waco last year. Currently, she is an instructor in art appreciation and design at McLennan Community College and also teaches ceramics classes.
She said her main challenge is finding balance, both visual and literal. "I want the form to have an animated feel...The visual elements that make the pot animated often counteract the actual stability."

Flip Kimmel, a self-taught artist who began his art career by coloring a paper tablecloth at a restaurant one evening in 1996, literally started and has never stopped creating. An avid reader, Flip studied art on his own and continues to read and learn about the arts. He enjoys visiting museums and learning about other artists. Flip's vivid and creative sense of color draws you into his work and creates pure simplicity out of a volume of deliberated detail. Most important to Flip is the interaction of the viewer and the artwork - love or hate - it allows an individual to think and feel.
Flip's art includes influences from literature, music, mythology, and people/society/culture. His pets and animals are often the inspiration and the subjects of portrayal in his paintings. Flip wants to provide the viewer an opportunity to look beyond the "box" and ask questions. Basically, Flip believes that everything in life can be art and is art.
Phillip (Flip) Kimmel was born on December 17, 1967, in Waco, Texas. He graduated from Richfield High School in 1986 and Baylor University in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology. Flip manages and maintains the family business (rental property) in Waco, Texas. He worked as Curatorial Assistant at The Art Center of Waco from 2000-2002. Flip volunteers throughout the community as an art instructor, visiting artist, curator, juror, and supporter of the arts.

J Lyle is the pseudonym for a retired small-town family doctor named Joe C. Smith who is one of the most recognized artists in the Brazos Valley. Anyone who drives past his sprawling white-brick, classic mid-century modernist home on Highway 21 in Caldwell, Texas, has seen his impressive collection of massive metal, wood and stone sculpture. His home and grounds are on the regular Chamber of Commerce tours, with hundreds visiting each year.
Smith grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, one of five sons of a devout Southern Baptist preacher. His plans for college were interrupted by World War II, and, as a Marine officer, he was wounded in the Okinawa campaign. Later, he was sent to China, where he helped repatriate Japanese civilians who had been living in northern China.
After his return to the states, he graduated from Baylor University, where he met his wife Mollie, and later earned his medical degree from Baylor School of Medicine in Houston. He brought his family to Caldwell in 1953 where he was the town's only doctor for much of the 40 years he practiced there and where he and Mollie reared four children.
Always, his time spent in the creative process was how he coped with the nearly impossible demands of his medical practice. Beginning with photography (complete with rolling-cart-in-the-bathroom darkroom), he moved to jewlery making, large scale intensely-colored acrylic paintings, small metal sculpture and finally to 20-foot sculptures. His only formal training in sculpture was at the Glassell School of Art in Houston.
His abstract sculptures stand at the Texas A&M Medical School, Texas A&M Horticultural Gardens, Caldwell Community Center and many other sites around Brazos and Burleson Counties. Perhaps his most ambitious piece, called Eternal Winds, a 25-foot white swirl of steel, was commissioned by the Brazos Valley Arts Council to mark the millennium. It stands prominently on Texas Avenue near the Texas A&M campus.

Steve McCurry, one of today's finest image-makers, is best know for his evocative color photography which captures the essence of human struggle and joy. A member of Magnum Photos since 1986, McCurry has searched and found the unforgettable; many of his images have become modern icons.
Born in Philadelphia, McCurry graduated cum laude from the College of Arts and Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. After working at a newspaper for two years, he left for India to freelance.
His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes of images that would be published worldwide as among the first to show the conflict there. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise.
McCurry is the recipient of many awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year from the National Press Photographers Association and the Oliver Reboot Memorial award twice. His work has been featured in every major magazine int he world and frequently appears in National Geographic. A high point in his career was the rediscovery of "Afghani Girl", Shabat Gula, whose face and photo is one of the most recognized photos in the world today,
Art Center Waco staged a major exhibit of McCurry's photographs in 2007.

Martha McKinney has always loved painting with oils because "it is possible to create luminous transitions, colors with great depth, rich textures and veiled glazes that can mold impressions and expressions." She grew up on a ranch with a horse and said she was "a real Texas person." Her grandparents, aunts and parents exposed her to music and art early in her life. She began her formal education at Texas Christian University, but transferred to Baylor to study with Reynould Arnold, a visiting professor from France. She later graduated from Baylor University with a degree in art, history and geology.
Her work is represented in the Smithsonian Institute, the National's Museum of Women in the Arts and the International Women Artists Archives. She has also been recognized by the Littlehouse School of Arts, Witte Museum in San Antonio, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, the University of Texas, the University of Houston, the University of Arkansas, Baylor University, Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Bosque County Conservatory, Art Center Waco and the "Contemporary Art of the USA" exhibit in Paris, France.

Eugenia Kamrath Mygdal, one of Texas" finest sculptors, is a native of Houston and the daughter of eminent architect Karl Kamrath. A legacy of excellence in design and execution defines the range of her work, including outstanding bronze portraits of well-known Texans. Large scale outdoor bronzes include "Non Nobis Solum" at the Austin Sate School and "Generations" at the entrance to the Lila B. Etter Alumni Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Her bronze childrens sculpture sits near City Hall in downtown Waco.
While Mygdal's focus is on life-size sculpture, she works in a variety of scales and media. Her artistic expression is grounded in the classical tradition and reflects her love of the beauty, charm and dignity of the natural world.
Mygdal began her art education early with classes at Houston art museums and in public school. As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, she worked with sculptor Charles Umlauf and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She traveled thorough Europe and studied at L"accademia delle Belle Arts and the Instituto Nazionale delle Arti in Florence, Italy. Upon her return to the US, she furthered her skills in bronze casting at the University of Iowa where she earned her Master of Arts degree.
She lived in Waco for more than 30 years, earning a reputation as one of the state';s foremost sculptors and teaching artists. In 2006, she and her husband Bill moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.

Thu Nguyen, born in Saigon, Vietnam, spent her childhood upstairs making quilts, doll clothes and painting. She said she was too shy to play with other children. One of her paintings won Best of Show in a 1974 children's exhibit in Saigon sponsored by UNICEF. Soon after, her family was split up and she was in Hong Kong for a year before immigrating to the United States, where she eventually moved to Los Angeles.
She earned her painting degree from Cal State University in Long Beach. She received two grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and three grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.
Nguyen paints mostly in oils on wood panels. She focuses on figurative work, but also enjoys exploring landscapes. She said, "Painting is first and foremost a visual-aesthetic experience. What I dislike in some contemporary art is the notion that the concept of the piece is more important than the visual experience gained from the piece."
Her work is represented in the Smithsonian collection, the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, California; the Win Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, Washington; McDonald's Corporation and Vifon Corporation in Saigon, as well as in many other public and private collections.

Kermit Oliver, born in Refugio, Texas, the son and grandson of African-American cowboys, lives in Waco with his wife, Katie, who is also an artist. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas Southern University in 1967. Oliver lived, painted and taught art occasionally in Houston until 1984, when Katie inherited a house in Waco.
He has always said art is third on his priority list. "It's my family, my life in general and then art." With that in mind, he has worked at the Waco post office for more than 20 years.
Oliver's works have been displayed for more than thirty years throughout Texas, and he is well-known for his corporate and museum collections which include Brown and Root, Inc., Houston; Phillip Morris, Inc.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont. He has the rare distinction of having designed 14 scarves for the House of Hermes, Paris.
"He's brilliant, generous with his knowledge, a student of Greek and Roman mythology and of the Old and New Testaments," said Geri Hooks of Houston's Hoops-Epstein Galleries, who has represented Oliver for about 20 years.
Kermit, Katie and their late son Khristian had a retrospective exhibit of their works at Art Center Waco last fall.

Bob Rynearson's glass art is immediately recognized by his hallmarks of brilliant colors and simple forms. A native Texan, Rynearson grew up in a creative family surrounded by a pottery studio, a silkscreen shop, a paper making studio and a sculpture garden. His mother continues to teach silkscreen classes and writing courses while his father sculpts in marble.
Always an enthusiastic artist, Rynearson searched for focus before finding his medium in a glass blowing class at Texas Tech in the middle ‘90s. In 1998, he opened a studio at the family complex in Temple, hired two glass blowers and began the successful Ryno Glass business.
In addition to art glass, Rynearson fuses colorful glass tile for use in countertops and on tables. Working with a local metal smith, he also creates colorful chandeliers and wall sconces. His impressive 40-foot glass mural hangs in the permanent collection at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Additionally, his work is featured in two permanent installations at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton.
Celebrated as one of a handful of prestigious American glass artists, Rynearson was selected to create a glass piece for the 2002 Winter Olympic games.

Bryant Stanton, owner of Stanton Glass Studio and stained glass designer, said his first encounter with stained glass was when he wrote a high school research paper on Gothic architecture and the building of St. Denis and Abbot Sugar. Soon after, his brother's friend showed him a stained glass panel he had completed for a college art project. "I was so intrigued by this panel. To this day, I remember the dark burnished patina on the wide lead and the turpentine smell of the fresh waterproofing."
Later as an art major at Texas Tech University, Stanton took his first stained glass class at a studio near campus. From that first class, he was "hooked on glass." He visited a glass studio in Austin and knew what he wanted to do for a living. He and his wife, Suzanne, started Stanton Glass Studio on a shoestring budget in 1979. He said he learned from observing others.
One of his first commissions was restoring a handful of windows for Central Christain Church in Waco. Every step was a learning process, he remembered, but the project turned out well. From the work he did at the church, he was asked to do several projects for other clients, and the studio has grown over the years.
Stanton Glass Studio's portfolio includes a stained glass chandelier for the Badlands Hotel in Lajitas, Texas; several light fixtures for Vic and Anthony's Steakhouse in Houston and LasVegas; and a wide variety of lighting for the Driskill Hotel in Austin, including the famed Driskill Dome.

Jordan Stanton operates Stanton Hot Glass Studio, the newest addition to the Stanton Glass Studio. His interest in blowing glass began at a young age as he was influenced by the art around him and the creative people he worked with at the studio.
He is excited about his future with this unique art form . Bending over the glory hole, spinning the pipe, Stanton breathes life into beautiful hand blown glass pieces ? including vases, bowls and Christmas ornaments. He currently is developing techniques for incorporating hot glass into stained glass light fixtures.

Karl Umlauf, Baylor University's artist-in-residence, is a Lorena native. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas in Austin and his Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University in New York. He also attended the Summer School of Music and Art at Yale University.
"Umlauf has distinquished himself in two areas of creativity. The first is the remarkable quality of his art. The second is his amazing capacity to develop a new form, refine it to the level of perfection, and release it. Rather than producing countless variations on a theme, Umlauf, facing the unknown with great courage, begins again," said Vincent Mariani, professor of art at Yale University.
Umlauf's selected collections on display include pieces at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce; American Airlines, DFW Airport; the Martin Museum of Art at Baylor University; Dallas Museum of Art; Cornell University; GTE Corporation; Hewlett-Packard Corporation; Tyler Museum of Art; Silvermine Guild of Artists, New Canaan, Connecticut; as well as many other public collections.
Prior to his residency at Baylor, he taught art at Indiana University, East Texas State University in Commerce and at the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Pennsylvania. He has toured as a visiting artist, lecturer and held various workshops over the past 40 years throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona.

Lillian Lemke-Jacoway is a career artist living in Valley Mills, Texas. Her current medium is acrylic, which allows her to use strokes of pure color in an exciting alla prima style. Her impressionistic expressionistic style has evolved from a background of using oils and watercolor.
Her work is currently on display at Art Center Waco as part of Waco's Own exhibit. She conducts numerous seminars and workshops in Central Texas stressing the fundamentals of art. In 2008, Jacoway was awarded the People's Choice Award for "Tim for Two" from the Bosque County Art Club (BCAC) Other BCAC Awards include Best of Show for "Papa's Girl" and the People's Choice Award for "Nick," which also won Best of Show at the Central Texas Watercolor Society.
She is at work on "Echoes of Texas" an ongoing series of Western paintings which evoke feelings of nostalgia in Texas patrons. Her images include an old red pickup truck, country children and portions of aging buildings.

J Lyle is the pseudonym for a retired small-town family doctor named Joe C. Smith who is one of the most recognized artists in the Brazos Valley. Anyone who drives past his sprawling white-brick, classic mid-century modernist home on Highway 21 in Caldwell, Texas, has seen his impressive collection of massive metal, wood and stone sculpture. His home and grounds are on the regular Chamber of Commerce tours, with hundreds visiting each year.
Smith grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, one of five sons of a devout Southern Baptist preacher. His plans for college were interrupted by World War II, and, as a Marine officer, he was wounded in the Okinawa campaign. Later, he was sent to China, where he helped repatriate Japanese civilians who had been living in northern China.
After his return to the states, he graduated from Baylor University, where he met his wife Mollie, and later earned his medical degree from Baylor School of Medicine in Houston. He brought his family to Caldwell in 1953 where he was the town's only doctor for much of the 40 years he practiced there and where he and Mollie reared four children.
Always, his time spent in the creative process was how he coped with the nearly impossible demands of his medical practice. Beginning with photography (complete with rolling-cart-in-the-bathroom darkroom), he moved to jewlery making, large scale intensely-colored acrylic paintings, small metal sculpture and finally to 20-foot sculptures. His only formal training in sculpture was at the Glassell School of Art in Houston.
His abstract sculptures stand at the Texas A&M Medical School, Texas A&M Horticultural Gardens, Caldwell Community Center and many other sites around Brazos and Burleson Counties. Perhaps his most ambitious piece, called Eternal Winds, a 25-foot white swirl of steel, was commissioned by the Brazos Valley Arts Council to mark the millennium. It stands prominently on Texas Avenue near the Texas A&M campus.

Niko Weissenberger, ceramist, is a part-time lecturer at both Baylor University and McLennan Community College. A native of Houston, he completed his undergraduate work at Trinity University in San Antonio, studied ceramics at Glassell School of Art and recently earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Texas in Denton.
He received the Harvey Hornsby Scholarship for Visual Arts, the TAC-Americas Scholarship for Visual Arts, Glassell School of Art Ceramic Scholarship for two years and the SSAF Scholarship, Southwest School of Art and Craft.
His ceramics have been exhibited at the Martin Museum, Baylor University; Texas Clay Artists Association Six Pack Show, Coop Gallery, San Angelo, Texas; Feats of Clay XXXIII, Lincoln, California; 10th Annual National Juried Cup Show at Kent State University; From the Ground Up in Las Cruces Potters Guild, Las Cruces, New Mexico and many other shows and venues.

Scott Wright was born in the final year of the decade best known for it's free love, hippie lifestyle, or as his (surprisingly ordinary) parents called it, the Sexties.
Named after the protagonist in the popular Bobby Goldsboro song, "Watchin' Scottie Grow" Wright grew up in an environment which encouraged imagination, yet was grounded by a strong-willed, crafty grandmother who instilled an appreciation and acknowledgment of history and family lineage. These early influences imprinted upon Wright a dichotomy of perspectives, which can be seen reflected in his sculptural assemblage panels.
After completing his formal art instruction at the University of North Texas, he became free of the constraints of a contemporary art education and threw himself into creating his imaginary storytelling panels.
Utilizing rescued photographs and salvaged objects, his work captures remembrance and promise, balancing a forgotten moment of life against what fate ultimately had in store. His work is full of fact and fiction, life and loss, and all that is unique and ordinary about our lives, yet preserves the immortality of us all.
"My work is about remembering. And although I take liberties in remembering a truth that may not have existed, I do so in an effort to immortalize and pay tribute to people I will never know, people who may well have been forgotten by everyone they ever knew. In so doing, I represent the eternal in each of us and the belief that the documentation of loss is the talisman that bears witness to our existence, shouting to the world - I was here, look what I did!"