President-Stanley Sawyer

Stanley’s Reflections:

“The art league was originally started by Jim? who operated a hobby shop located in an old house at 903 N. Elm. (The building is currently occupied by Rizo’s Salon.) He organized a meeting of arts and crafts people who were interested in getting together to determine how to publicize their talents in the Denton area. We were also interested in establishing a market for the pieces that we produced. One of our first activities was to have an arts and crafts sale on the parking lot of the hobby shop. Our first meetings were held at the hobby shop and in members’ homes.

 

As we became a formal organization, several names were proposed. I think that we finally settled on the name of Denton Area Arts and Crafts League. This later became the North Texas Area Arts and Crafts League, and still later, the North Texas Area Art League. There were more crafts people in the organization at first. As we grew, we attracted more talent and the quality of the work improved as we added more artists to the organization.

 

I remember working with Marilyn Tietchler, Ann Dane, Geri Aschenbrenner, Jim Johnson, James Spurlock, and Martha Robbins.”