(cheery acoustic guitar music) - Hello and welcome to "The Bookmark."

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guests are Andrew Sanson and Linda Reeves, Authors of "The Art of Texas State Parks: A centennial Celebration 1923 to 2023."

Thank you both for joining me today.

- Thank you for having us.

- We're looking forward to this.

- I am so excited about this book, this project, the centennial of our parks.

So let's start at the beginning, and I wanna ask about the history and when did the state park system get founded?

- Well, the state parks system began officially in 1923 under Governor Pat Neff.

And it was at that time called the State Parks Board.

- And kind of grew out of like the National Parks System and project, or was modeled on it somewhat, correct?

- Well, at the time the National Parks Service was only about five years old, and there was a tremendous demand across the country for, every congressional district wanted a national park.

And they realized at the federal level that that was impossible.

So they organized the first conference on state parks in order to encourage the states to set up park systems and Governor Neff attended.

- And what were our first parks and how did they come to be?

- Well, actually the first park in the system was acquired well before the state parks board was created.

And it was the San Jacinto battleground in the late 19th century.

- That would make sense.

As Texans, we wanna preserve that battle site first and foremost.

And you mentioned in the book too that these parks kind of, or the need for these parks grew out of maybe not only wanting a national park, but as automobiles were becoming a thing, people were starting to travel more and they're wanting to see more of the place they're living.

- Well, and among those who really supported the creation of a park system in Texas where the Texas Good Roads and Transportation Association, which was basically the home of highway builders, because they needed to create destinations.

- Sure.

One thing I like about this book is, as it says in the title, it's kind of art and parks together, but you both do a great job of tying them together from the start.

I believe in the book you mentioned that some of the first museums were founded around the same time as the park system was founded.

Can you talk about that?

- Some of the museums, the Witty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, all began really in the twenties as did the park system.

They were formed primarily by, out of women's clubs in the communities.

- That's so interesting.

Why was there a need for them to make formal their love of art?

- You know, I guess Texas had been a frontier and it was beginning to become more towns, more civilized, more education, and the women of the communities wanted the arts and were promoting education for their children.

So the time was right with the settlement of the frontier and the beginning of more formal arts training, culture.

- I think one of the things, just to follow up on Linda's comment about that that has always been exciting for me is that you also have to remember that the time women had just been given the opportunity to vote, and so they began to be involved in these projects because all of a sudden they were newly enfranchised and feeling their oats.

- [Christina] And look what they did!

It's amazing!

- And these were only two of the things.

- We're gonna talk about the centennial art later, but I love how before we get there, you do weave the history of art in Texas into the book and make a case for the fact that there was some art being created, if not in state parks, in places that would become state parks.

- That is correct.

And one of the, even before there were parks, well before there were parks, there were artists coming through Texas and painting, for example, I think everyone is familiar with John James Audubon.

Audubon was traveling, he was actually on a steam ship traveling through the Gulf, and the ship needed some repairs, so they pulled into Galveston.

And one of the paintings of birds in his book is a pair of terns that he painted on Galveston Island while the ship that he was traveling on was being repaired.

- Well, how fortunate for our art history that that happened here!

There also is some interesting overlap during the Great Depression, because obviously it was a very hard time for many, if not most Americans, but government programs were trying to put people back to work, and the Civilian Corps had a major part in building up our parks.

Can you talk about that?

- Well, that brings two things to mind for me.

One is the fact that the state would not have had the means of creating that much infrastructure without federal assistance.

But secondly, many of the structures built in the state parks are today themselves objects of at least a type of art.

I think of the Bastrop State Park, which is a national historic site, because of the CCC facilities there.

- They had such a huge impact.

I remember as a kid, as the Girl Scout, they would point out to us, you could still see the marks and the notices that this was built by the CCC.

- Among my favorite memories of the state park system are attending during the 1990s, the 50 year reunion of many CCC volunteers in various parks.

And in each of those cases, when the celebration would begin, a gentleman, I don't call people elderly anymore, but an older person would step up to the microphone and the first thing they would say is, "God bless Franklin Delano Roosevelt."

- Put a lot of people back to work.

And another program that was the WPA, which was more on the arts side.

Can you talk about that?

- The WPA hired, there were a lot of artists, like everyone, out of work.

And so there are any number of artists that were, that painted murals, they did also some of the newspapers and the newsletters that went out.

Artists were involved in every aspect of the park system.

- We also have some parks that contain their own art.

I wanna talk about a couple parks have cave paintings and ancient art on them.

Maybe you both can speak to that.

- In, of course, once the park started becoming, like the park land started becoming available, the Witty Museum in particular did some expeditions out to West Texas and they recorded the cave art in the Lower Pacus, and they have wonderful artist renderings of cave paintings in the collection on paper.

And then they of course have also made some of that art available in their displays.

- And there's some of it reproduced here in the book, and I think it's so much more powerful than just maybe a photograph, but you're seeing kind of an artist interpreting another artist.

- Absolutely.

- [Christina] And I think that's just beautiful.

- And we were so glad and fortunate that the Witty was able to share with us for this book that particular art.

- It's beautiful.

I didn't know that that happened, so I was so excited and to learn about that and to see it in the book.

So over this past century, the parks obviously have grown from their humble beginnings.

Were there hardships?

I'm sure funding was probably a problem, like with any state institution.

- Yes, funding is a consistent problem, issue for the state parks because each one of them is like a little city.

It'll have a water plant and maybe a wastewater treatment system, roads, buildings, and so the level of infrastructure in the state parks is a continuing maintenance issue.

In addition to that, the last time the state passed a bond issue for the purchase of state parks was when John Connolly was governor.

The last time we had a bond issue for parks in Texas.

So money is a chronic issue.

Now thankfully the citizens of Texas two years ago passed a constitutional amendment which dedicates that portion of your sales tax, which is collected on sporting goods, to state parks.

And that's been a huge benefit.

But in the upcoming session, I think you'll see a push again because the state is expecting a surplus to have the legislature provide funds for the purchase of additional parks.

Today you can go to places like Enchanted Rock and many of our state parks and not be able to get in because they're so overcrowded.

And so there's no question that we need more parks in this state.

- We certainly do.

A lot of the parkland, I was surprised to learn, has been donated or left in people's estates after they've passed on.

Why do you think that is?

- Well, in the beginning when the state parks board was created, the legislature provided no money.

Zero.

And so all of the original state parks were donated.

And typically they were donated by communities like Blanco, Lock Heart, and others that saw, once again, the presence of a state park has been an economic driver for the community.

So all of those original parks were donated.

- I can't have you here and not ask you about your time at the park system, because you actually helped acquire some parks.

How does one acquire a state park?

What is that process like?

- Well, it's exciting.

When I started working at Parks and Wildlife, that's what I did was the acquisition of state parks and wildlife areas.

And I had to start reading trashy mystery novels because I would go to sleep at night and dream about my deals.

So it was one of the most stimulating jobs that I've ever had.

And there was always a combination of both generosity and philanthropy, but also the need to figure out where the revenue was gonna come from, and then mix with that, a blend of politics, so it's an interesting experience.

- It seems like some of these donated lands too come out of people having their family land and their personal land that they love and appreciate that when they pass on they wanna share that appreciation with their Texas neighbors.

- There's no question that philanthropy is a critical ingredient in the acquisition of parks, both from the standpoint of generous families who want to see their land preserved, but also philanthropists themselves, Texas foundations that are willing to put money into it.

All those state park acquisitions in recent years have been a combination of both public funds and private dollars.

Two that immediately come to mind are the Powderhorn Ranch along the coast and the Palo Pento Mountains, which is west of Fort Worth.

And both have been a combination of generosity and public funds.

- It's a good reminder that, as you mentioned, the park system is not static.

It's growing, it's expanding, and hopefully it will continue to do so, but we need to support it and we need to be there for it, like it's been there for us.

I feel very passionate about supporting our parks because, you know, I have good memories of them as a child and I would hope we all wanna protect them and expand them the same.

So let's switch gears a little bit and start talking about the Centennial Art Project.

How did this idea come to be and what is exactly the Centennial Art project?

- Well, I think the idea sort of came out of an earlier book that Andy and Bill wrote and I worked with them on, "The Texas Rivers" book.

And in that book we had about 15 artists who painted Texas Rivers.

The book was very well received, the contemporary artists' renditions of the rivers were beautiful pages in the book.

And it was great to work with the artists.

So really the whole idea was for us to work together again on another book that used contemporary art work as the anchor images in the book.

So the idea of the parks, the state parks.

And Andy was aware, now we're talking 2017 or we're talking several years ago that this idea started forming, Andy knew right away that the centennial birthday of the parks was coming up in 2023.

We said, "oh, this is perfect.

We have time for the artist to paint."

And I think we were actually at a gathering at Andy's house with a group of artists and one of the artists came up and said, "we ought to paint the parks!"

- And you said, "good idea.

We'll do it!"

- And so really it was just a perfect opportunity to showcase the Texas landscape and to work again with Texas artists and to work together.

- As usual, Linda is modest about her own role.

Neither of these projects would've been possible at all without Linda.

She is the one who organized the artists and figured out all the logistics.

And it's been an honor for me to be associated with Linda and her husband Bill.

And the only way that I can describe it today appropriately is celebration.

- It certainly is.

I do wanna ask about some of those logistics, 'cause I can't imagine all the work that went into, you're creating new works of art, you're commissioning basically new works of art.

First of all, how do you pick the artists?

That must have been a very difficult thing to do.

- Well, it was, because there really are, oh, there are 30 artists represented in this book, but we have a wonderful group of contemporary Texas artists who are painting now in Texas.

Actually Andy helped a lot with kind of thinking through, okay, how do we do this?

We formed an advisory group, a committee, a small group, and Bill was the leader in checking out artists on different gallery websites, because we wanted to expand beyond just the 15 who were wonderful and were mostly included in here that we worked with on the "Rivers" book.

So just a careful review of work on gallery websites.

We honed the list trying to make sure that we had artists from all parts of Texas.

We have artists from in their thirties, late thirties, really established artists into their eighties.

In fact, this project has gone on so long, we may have some 90th birthdays before we're over, but we wanted good representation age-wise, style-wise, so the 30 artists were approved by the committee and taken to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission Board who named them Texas Centennial Painters, Texas State Park Centennial Painters, so.

- The other thing about this group, which we've all become good friends with, I mean, I think one of the things I've enjoyed the most is getting to know some of these artists, but this group of people, very talented people, also represents the diversity of the Texas population.

- Yes, I was gonna say that these artists and they are diverse in every sense of the word, age, who they are, where they live, ethnicity, gender, and then the styles they paint or they create art in too.

The media is very different.

So when I got to that, I wish we could had time to show every picture, to talk about each piece of work individually, because as I was turning through the pages, it was like, what am I gonna see next?

'Cause they're just all so different and so wonderful in their own ways.

So I really commend that you do see the diversity of the art and the artists that we have in this state and we're lucky to be so rich to have all this art.

So my second logistical question is how did you assign, or did you pick or did you just kind of say, pick a park in your region or who got what parks?

Was there fights?

- You know, we wanted to have the artists living in different parts of Texas.

And so first, and to the degree possible, the artists were assigned parks within a hundred mile radius of where they live, of where they live and work.

Now, there were several exceptions, because some of the far west Texas parks, we had artists traveling from Austin area all the way out to, you know, El Paso.

But we asked the artist if they could, you know, manage that.

And we have quite a few artists in central Texas that routinely go to West Texas.

But that was really the way that they were assigned the parks.

And to begin with, we assigned each artist two parks.

We did have some suggestions for additional parks, actually the Texas Parks and Wildlife identified a list of, I think they started with 60 parks, and we had some artists suggested, or a park here or there was added to the list.

So some artists ended up painting three parks instead of just two.

- As you mentioned, this is a very large, very big beautiful book, 'cause we wanna display the art to the degree that it needs to be appreciated.

So at like 10 inches by 10 and a half by 11 inches, I wouldn't call this a travel guide by any means, but I certainly felt inspired and I would hope other people as they go through these pages will wanna visit these parks and it will maybe serve as a, if not a travel guide, an inspirational travel guide for people.

Was that intentional?

- Absolutely.

I guess one of the great things about the idea of collaboration with these most talented people is that their work is inspirational.

And so hopefully that will translate into the readers as well.

- I felt it.

I certainly would see a park or a page and think I wanna go there and see if I feel the way they felt or if I am inspired in this.

I think it's a wonderful, and also I wanna highlight too, each piece of artwork has a blurb about the park, so you can learn about the park itself, and then also interesting and fascinating, an artist's statement that kind of explains why they were inspired or how they chose what they chose.

- And let me just say that, you know, the artist took a year to paint, you know, once we got everything assigned, and then they sent their biographical information and responded to a few questions about why did you choose this scene and tell us about it.

And so the artists wrote actually quite a bit more than what we could include in the book, but the idea was really to try to capture their perspective.

- Yeah, and one of the most wonderful things about this project is that many of the artists are so excited.

I mean, we've interacted with them quite a bit through the project and the excitement increases.

We had a gallery showing in Houston recently and a number of the artists came and they were absolutely having a ball and, you know, talking about their work, so that's been a really wonderful aspect of this.

- I also want to maybe just highlight or mention for people that, you know, as the title implies, 2023, the whole year is the centennial year.

So there's this art, the art will be traveling around the state, so if it's possible, I would encourage people to look it up and see, but also the visit your local parks, because there are gonna be celebrations happening at I think every park.

- Every single one.

- Every single park.

So go celebrate your parks is what I would say to everybody.

Well, unfortunately we're running a little bit low on time.

So my final question's gonna be, what do you want people to take away from this book, this project in general?

- You know, I think just, I would just echo what you said.

The state parks are there, take advantage of them, visit them.

They're wonderful places, really.

And I think we need to, as citizens of the state, celebrate the beauty that is preserved and is there for all of us to enjoy in these state parks.

- Hopefully this project and the exhibitions to follow over the next year or so, two years really, will convey to the people who see the paintings and read the book that these are places of inspiration, they are places of spiritual renewal, they are places where you can have fun, but they're only there if we take responsibility for them.

- I wanna encourage people to go a step further and be responsible, but also support their parks.

How can people support their local park or all of our parks?

Voting on bond issues surely is one, visiting, is there other things we can do?

- Well, almost every park has a friends group, which is composed of volunteers that do everything from, you know, voluntary maintenance in the parks to raise a money to help the parks.

So that's one way.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, which has been a partner in this project, has a fund specifically dedicated to state parks.

So there's an opportunity for people to donate money to support the state parks.

I mean, there's any number of ways that parks can be supported, but probably most importantly is to let elected officials know how important these places are to you and your family.

- I think that's the perfect sentiment to end on.

I would encourage everyone to take a look at this book if they can, see if your favorite park is in it.

I know my childhood parks that I've visited the most are certainly here, and I was pleased to see them, and I've moved some up on my list of places to go because of the beautiful artwork.

So thank you both so much for putting this together for all of your wonderful work.

The book itself is a piece of art and the labor and the love is all apparent in it.

- Well, we all have great debt of gratitude to A&M Press.

All of us, Linda and Bill and I have worked with A&M press on many projects and it's a wonderful institution.

- Well, thank you.

- It really is.

You do a beautiful job and we're just delighted always to be working with you.

From the beginning, the manuscript, through all the processes of book making.

You do such a wonderful job.

It's a pleasure.

- Thank you.

I will take those compliments back to my coworkers, but we love books, we love art, we love Texas.

We love all of these things.

So it's a natural fit, I think, for all of us.

Well, that's about all the time we have for today.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The book again is "The Art of Texas State Parks."

Thank you for joining us and I will see you again soon.

(upbeat acoustic guitar music)