Little Houses

“Little House,” Pastel and Gouache on panel by Stephanie Khattak
“Little House, Night” Pastel and Gouache on panel by Stephanie Khattak

A good thing about hoarding up art supplies for so many years is that by now I usually have what I need without having to out and buy new things. I’ve been experimenting more with my lesser-used pastels, and how to combine them with gouache to create a certain look. It’s a very messy process and still not quite right, to my eyes. But getting there.

Scenes from a Year in Travel

As I have mentioned, I have a business that publishes travel books and produces custom travel programs and content. This means I travel a LOT. What constitutes a lot? 91 towns in 2022! Our books focus on small towns, so while we see plenty of cities, we are especially fond of what you can find if you leave the interstate. Here are my favorite photos from a year on the road!


Kilgore, Texas
January 2022

Shreveport, Louisiana
January 2022

Cranfills Gap, Texas
FEBRUARY 2022

Downtown Baird, Texas
April 2022

Albany, Texas
April 2022

Overton, Texas
May 2022

Hamilton, Louisiana
June 2022

Colorado City, Texas
August 2022

Tucumcari, New Mexico
August 2022

Texarkana
OctOBER 2022

Galveston
December 2022


If you like what you see, you might like our books! If you’re a business and would like to learn more about our corporate services, get in touch. Otherwise, just enjoy and be inspired.

You’ll notice these photos are much better than the ones you usually see on here. That’s because my husband took them! No particular order to these beyond the date. Just quirky destinations that that stood out to me.

We plan a few big trips a year in pursuit of our books. In 2023, we will be doing a trip up the Texas coast, from Port Isabel to Port Arthur as well as spending time photographing around the Texas Frontier regions – North Central Texas and the Panhandle. I’m sure there will be other trips along the way — the best ones are often instances where we just get in the car and go!

Resources: Kilgore Geekend 2022

I was invited to participate at the 2022 Kilgore Geekend, sharing the inspiration and processes behind my work on the Pine Curtain Project. As part of my presentation, I also shared some of my resources for Texas history research, and some favorites I have found in the archives. I’ve listed them below, in the order they appear in my presentation, along with the accompanying art, photographs or artifacts.

Featured Art:

“Birthday Party,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Future Cat Lady,” by Stephanie Khattak

“The Reverend” and “Down to the River,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Waves,” by Stephanie Khattak

“In the Pines,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Grand Ol’ Time,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Railroad Gang,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Dunbar Marching Band,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Her Golden Lasso,” by Stephanie Khattak

“Embroidered Paper,” by Stephanie Khattak

Found in the Archives: Maps

Geological Survey (U.S.). Kilgore Quadrangle, map, 1936; Reston, Virginia. Accessed May 5, 2022. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.
Caddo Lake State Park – Project Map. 11/19/34.
Draftsman: Westbrook, Joe W. Waxed linen with brown, red, and black ink.
Legend and compass. LN: 48.46 x WD: 35.66
Found in the Texas State Archives Flickr account.

Found in the Archives: Photographs

Lee, R., photographer. (1939) Oil worker eating lunch. Kilgore, Texas. United States Kilgore Texas, 1939. Apr. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
Lee, R., photographer. (1939) Oil field workers taking timeout to read the paper, oil well, Kilgore, Texas. United States Kilgore Texas, 1939. Apr. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
Lee, R., photographer. (1939) Street scene. Kilgore, Texas. , 1939. Apr. [Photograph]
Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Found in the Archives: Newspapers & Ads

The Kilgore Daily News, June 1939. Newspapers.com.
The Kilgore Daily News, June 1939. Newspapers.com.

Found in the Archives: Scrapbooks

[Photograph album belonging to Elanor Trotter], book, Date Unknown; accessed May 5, 2022, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History;
crediting Palestine Public Library.
[Loose Page Covering Austin, Tyler and Longview], photograph, Date Unknown; accessed May 5, 2022), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Private Collection of T. B. Willis.

Found in the Archives: Student Publications

English IV Presents “The Bard of Avon,” 1960. Courtesy of the Dunbar Hall of Honor collection at the East Texas Digital Archives, SFASU.
“Tiger Rag,” 1961. Courtesy of the Dunbar Hall of Honor collection at the East Texas Digital Archives, SFASU.

Research:

Portal to Texas History

Library of Congress

The History Center in Diboll

East Texas Digital Archives, SFASU

Texas State Archives Flickr Account

Art: “Queens for the Day” inspired by a photo in The History Center archives.

Sounds + Video

Internet Archive Sound Recordings

Texas Moving Images Archive Collection

American Folklife Center

Image: The Angelina Four, Keltys.

Family + Community

Ancestry.com

FamilySearch.com

FindaGrave.com

Art: Digital Collage, “Church Ladies”

Contact Me:

info (at) khattakstudios.com

Instagram: @pinecurtainproject

Facebook: @khattakstudios

Interested in a piece of art that you’ve seen here or elsewhere? I offer hand-embellished fine art reproductions of most pieces made to order. Prices start at $100 for an 8X10 hand-embellished piece, and will deliver in approximately two weeks from order confirmation. Please let me know if you see something that speaks to you. More information can be found here, and information about commissions, etc. can be found here.

Would you like for me to speak to your group? Please get in touch to discuss options for events, meetings or workshops starting Oct. 2022.

Homer Church Angels

Work in progress.
“Homer Church Angels,” acrylic monotype print on paper by Stephanie Khattak.

Each year, my community church puts up a lighted nativity scene, replacing the live nativity scene that it produced in the 1980s, after everyone got older and more tired. After Thanksgiving, busy groups of people work together to test lights, assemble figures and finally, install them on the church grounds and roof. This piece is based on a photo of that process. (I dare not call it vintage since it was within the last 15 years!)

I purposefully left the figures a little abstract. The main reason is because they’re so tiny that trying to personalize them would not render them recognizable anyway. But also because at gatherings like these, it is less about the individual and more about the group. And I would go further and say it is less about this particular group, and more about the spirit of tradition and faith moving through them, as it has before, after and as it will again.

East Texas Research Trip

Halloween tree at Kurth Memorial Library, Lufkin, Texas.

I spent the past weekend in and around Lufkin, conducting research and visiting family. I added an extra day to my usual weekend visits to fit everything in, and I still didn’t fit everything in!

Due to the size and complexity of the Pine Curtain Project, I have divided it up into a multi-year roadmap and what I hope are small, manageable chunks. The last time I visited for this work, I focused on some cemetery tours and family oral history. For this trip, I chose two local history centers and narrowed down my research to Old Homer History and the beginnings of a Huntington, Texas history that I am pursuing.

Researching takes a long time, longer than expected and longer than people realize. When I look through archives or do field interviews, I usually have one or two main points I want to explore, but I also have to leave time and “brainspace” for other ideas and topics that I encounter along the way, to either fit them into the narrative or file them away for later. Especially when I am interviewing or consulting someone. This is why you may notice that sometimes my art production goes dark for a few weeks – it is just hard to do everything at once. The past few weeks have been devoted to launching the podcast and preparing for this trip.


Because the Ora McMullen Genealogy Room hours aren’t compatible with my non-resident schedule, the Kurth Memorial Library team was kind enough to pull stacks of requested materials and set me up in a study room on Friday. I stayed for nearly three hours and only made it halfway through. I spent my time going through three large file folders: One on the historic role of the Masonic Lodge in Homer; one on general Homer history; and one on Huntington, Texas around the 1930s-40s. I have 347 photos from my trip, and most of them are of documents found in these folders, if that tells you anything.

Workspace view and archival documents, Kurth Memorial Library, Lufkin.

Saturday morning, I woke up early and drove out to Huntington, to spend some time talking to Darrell Bryan of the Huntington Genealogical & Historical Society. Darrell is a longtime Homer, Huntington and East Texas historian whose work focuses on armed conflicts, cattle rustling, racism and land disputes. He is also a friend of my father’s, and very nice.

Darrell gave me a tour of the historical society building in Huntington’s Centennial Park, and then spent most of the morning sharing his research finds and opinions; and helping me understand the bigger picture around the incidents I am learning about. I came away with a better idea of the “whys” around the “what happened,” and also new, bigger mysteries to contemplate.

View of Heritage Park from the Huntington Genealogical & Historical Society and Centennial Park, Huntington, TX.

Suite at the Courtyard Marriott in Lufkin.

Since most of my work was in Lufkin proper, I stayed at the Courtyard Marriott. I’m a frequent guest there, and this time they upgraded me to a suite! Score! So, I spent the evenings with lots of space to spread out, organize my notes and snack from the giant bag of gummy candy I bought at Target.

When I wasn’t working or in the hotel, I was at my parents’ house catching up with their animals, and that was pretty cool, too. Less cool is the blighted field across the street from them, that used to have horses, goats, tall grass and trees. Soon, the field will be an all-night gas station and truck stop. An infuriating but important lesson that nothing lasts forever.

Poncho!
Sweet NaNa.
Soon, the construction site here to the left will be an Exxon gas station in Homer. To the right is my grandfather’s front yard. Harder to see – a great big hole at the end of the street to catch groundwater and God knows what else that drains from the site.

Pine Curtain Art: Texas Forestry Museum

“Southern Newsprint,” by Stephanie Khattak

The Texas Forestry Museum invited me to contribute a piece to auction in its annual Feast in the Forest fundraiser. While the end sale would be an original piece, the museum worked with me in a similar process as a commission, providing a few photo options to work from for the end result. This piece is from one of their archival photos, and I chose it to work with because I loved how it set the scene and really brought back a sense of time and place. For my process, I have to prioritize which elements of a photo I want to emphasize on the print and for this one, I wanted to make sure to capture the railroad tracks, the water tower and the smoke coming from the building on the far right. While I knew I wouldn’t be able to capture the detail in every letter on the water tower, I loved the stylized first letters and wanted to retain those. In the original, many of these elements were further enhanced with iridescent and metallic paint.

This project captured all of my favorite things about working on commissions, and it was nice to be able to contribute a piece to an organization that is so important and shares my passion for capturing and preserving the rich history of this part of East Texas.

This was a unique piece, but the Texas Forestry Museum is also a retail partner, so please get in touch with them if you’d like to see another option in their inventory.

Contact me if you’re interested in initiating a commissioned project of your own! If you’re thinking of one for the holidays, its best to get in the pipeline by Oct. 1.

East Texas Video Archive

I’m not the first amateur archivist in the family. My dad, for as long as I can remember, has documented community and family life in East Texas, first with reel-to-reel recorders and Super 8 videos, then with a huge brick of a VHS camcorder (which went on every family vacation, duct-taped and cumbersome, until the late 90s, when the battery kept falling out at Graceland.) Now, like everyone else, he uses his iPhone and sometimes the video functionality on his digital camera. But he kept EVERYTHING, and a few years ago gifted me with a box of roughly 30-40 discs, each with 4-5 events captured on it. Best of all, he had long before captured the Super 8s onto the VHS, a painstaking process where he set up the screen in the living room, put on his oldies records, and videoed the screen while my mom and I tiptoed around the set-up and tried not to knock anything over or share incriminating gossip that might be picked up on audio. He later transferred those videos to DVDs as well, so they’re also in the box.

As modern technology evolved, I eventually found myself with no DVD player, and also no real way to copy those discs to a digital format. But they are treasures, and I knew that in particular, there was a Homer history talk by the OG Homer Historian, Mrs. Ruth Grant, in an event at our church in the early aughts. Because I don’t know of a labled map of old Homer, I needed to see if she mentioned any locations or had other information that I could use in my upcoming folklore presentation. So, I went on Amazon, bought some new equipment and started my journey down memory lane.

The good news is that it all works perfectly and I have been having a great time seeing so many memories again. I did find Mrs. Grant’s lecture, and it provided some missing links and also, since she was an expressive talker, I am able to estimate some of the important landmarks of old Homer based on which direction she pointed as she spoke.

This is really exciting for me, not only for this particular event I am preparing for, but also in general to see how I can use more multimedia content to create for and enhance the Pine Curtain Project.

The missing link!
The family dog’s haircut and then his funeral. Not on the same day. RIP Tater.
Not sure what happened at the Smokey Bear museum, but it must have been unpleasant!
My patron saint these days. She’s done all the hard work, I’m mostly just sifting through and organizing it.
How I wish she was still with us to discuss these things in person!