Creativity Camp March 9-13 will be our FIRST effort at a spring break camp for children 8-15. The Boys & Girls Club Clubhouse has been generously donated for our use as classrooms. There will be ten instructors (two in each area of art, music, theatre, dance and creative writing). A generous grant from Better Together is helping with instructor stipends and student scholarships. Each day will offer activities for the campers in one of each of the five areas. Hurry, spots are filling fast! If you have a child or know a child that would need financial support with a scholarship please direct them to nacartscollab@gmail.com or to their school arts teachers. NISD is collaborating with us to connect with interested students and to offer scholarships. Cost for the camp is $225 for Monday through Friday 9AM-5PM and $175 for additional siblings.
“TOY DINOSAURS: A STUDY”, new art by Weelynd McMullan is now on display in our Falling Star Gallery. The show is open Saturdays 11 – 4 and is free to the public. An art talk is scheduled for April.
Our first Arts Market in 2026 will be Saturday, March 28 10 a.m.-2 p.m. in NAC’s parking lot at 320 North Street. Find registration for vendors at www.nacartscollab.com/vendors and come out to enjoy our markets and buy from local artists and craftspeople.
The 3rd Annual Naco Verde Upcycled Art Competition will kick off at the March 28 Arts Market. Entry into the contest is $20. You will pick up some curated “trash” from our ample pile at the NAC booth, create a beautiful piece of creative (or functional) art and return it to us at our Arts Market Saturday, April 25th. We will host a show of the upcycled entries and prizes will be awarded to the highest sold piece and People’s Choice voted by show attendees. This year we are rolling out a THIRD prize category for students!! Kids 6-16 are encouraged to enter for an award given specifically for their category. Visit our website for details and registration.
March Artist Spotlight – Meet Kirby and Justin Oakley!
This married couple, both native Texans living in Garrison, has been participating in local East Texas arts markets since 2022 with what they describe as “Oddity Art”. Their unconventional pieces embrace the strange and unusual, and often involve sustainably sourced animal bones and skulls, pinned butterflies or scorpions and other offbeat elements in “cabinets of curiosities”-style pieces. Kirby’s assemblages are often in shadowboxes, while Justin is partial to broken antique clocks whose interior workings are then replaced with his artful oddities.
“We’ve shown our work in Lufkin, Tyler, and Longview, as well as Nacogdoches.” said Kirby. “Not everyone appreciates it, but those who do, really love it.” Their reputation has grown in recent years, fueled by their Facebook page, ladybonesbaubles. People often bring them donations of raw materials for future projects. “We get cicadas, butterflies, and bags of animal bones.” But Justin emphasized that “it’s important to honor the remains of this animal that once was alive.” That said, there are limits to what they can legally use. “Any protected species, such as owls, or anything covered by the Migratory Bird Act, for example, is off the table. We won’t use them because legally, we can’t,” said Kirby. “Still, we have a friend with a 3-D printer and we’ve been experimenting with printing facsimiles of bat skulls or other bones we can’t obtain otherwise,” Justin said.
In 2026, Kirby became the Arts Market Manager for NAC. There will be six arts markets this year, the first taking place March 28 (see details above). “Everything is handmade. And there’s a wide variety of art on offer, everything from ceramics to paintings, original sticker designs to wire sculpture, and of course, our pieces too.” She notes that AI-generated art is barred from sale at the market and that this prohibition is noted on the vendor application form. “We’re only interested in original work created by humans.”
Remarkably, neither Kirby nor Justin have a background specifically in visual art. Both are SFA graduates. Kirby majored in political science and her husband took his BA in history. Justin is also a musician, playing locally with the Piney Rats, a Celtic-inspired ensemble in which he plays guitar, mandolin and Irish tenor banjo. But neither of them became oddity artists via any studio training. “We are curious people and always learning new things,” Kirby said. “Nacogdoches is a hotbed of artistic talent of all kinds and we have found our spiritual tribe here. There’s always something new. Come to the Arts Market on the 28th, and you’ll see what I mean.”