This year, I did three Christmas prints, two as part of the Pine Curtain Project, and another as part of K.Co Travel Art, a collaborative project that James and I are working on with our creative travel guide business, K.Co Press.
This print is my grandparents, on what is probably their first Christmas together in East Texas. I was told they’re at my grandfather’s parents’ house in Huntington, TX.
“Christmas 1950s.” Acrylic Monotype by Stephanie Khattak.
The next print is my aunt and two cousins. I believe they were at my grandmother’s house in Homer, Texas, all dressed up.
“Christmas 1970s.” Acrylic Monoprint by Stephanie Khattak.“Vintage Truck, Palestine, Texas.” Acrylic Monoprint by Stephanie Khattak.
We saw this festive truck on a day trip from Dallas to Palestine, Texas. We met my parents there for some (extremely socially-distanced, outdoor, etc.) holiday time. We aren’t visiting our families at home this year since home is full of oldsters who we want to keep safe. We found Palestine to be the perfect place for a holiday visit, and this truck was just one fun scene in Old Town Palestine. I’ll write up a blog post for K.Co once James edits the rest of his photos, but I will go ahead and say that if you find yourself in Palestine, don’t sleep on Oxbow Bakery, aka the pie shop. (Literally, don’t sleep! Get there when it opens because many flavors sell out!)
This will be my last post for 2020. What a horrible year! I truly believe that next year will be better, maybe not immediately, but eventually. May your holidays be festive and your new year be hopeful. Thank you for your support, and I’ll see you in 2021!
“Multitude of Matriarchs,” Monotype Print: Acrylic and Ink by Stephanie Khattak.
This print was taken from a 1960s baby shower at the Homer United Methodist Church. These were the hostesses, family friends who could always be counted on to spray their hair, polish up their cat-eye glasses and punch bowls, and run the show.
Many, many years after this, I hosted my first shower for my own expectant friend, in the same church fellowship hall where these ladies stand. I remember standing in the church breezeway, cutting gladiola stems, wondering if we had enough tablecloths and feeling a connection to the community of “aunties” who I had seen do the same things over the years. I’m proud to come from a community where it is second nature to show up and celebrate people.
AND, yesterday, I received my copy of “They Left No Monuments,” a volume of East Texas human interest stories by the late historian Bob Bowman.
I’m just scratching the surface of these resources, but I have already learned so much! It’s really exciting to read this information, find archival images, and think about how it might fit into writing, art or both.
I’ve settled into a routine where I work and write in my studio most afternoons, and in the evenings I dig around online and read. Routine and purpose have been things I really miss about pre-COVID times when my business was stronger. If you are struggling, too, I urge you to just pick something fun to do and dive in. If you have a fuzzy assistant or two to keep things lively, even better.
“Besties, 1980” by Stephanie Khattak. Embellished acrylic monotype.
In rural East Texas, your first best friends are your cousins and your neighbors. And often, your cousin IS your neighbor! In my case, my cousin spent lots of time visiting my grandmother, who lived just one stop sign and few houses away. So, almost a neighbor. I’m an only child, and people often ask “Weren’t you lonely growing up?” Because of my cousin and my neighbor, I really can’t relate to that question. How could I be lonely when one bestie lived at the far end of my driveway and the other was conveniently at all family functions? Plus, they’re older than me by a few years, so I don’t know what it’s like not to have friends like them. An upside to being related to and living next door to your best friends is that they’re stuck with you for life. Lucky them! And lucky, lucky me.
Today is the first day of fall, and here in Texas it is finally cooler and a bit rainy. “Hygge Weather,” I call it, and for this year at least, at my house late September to late February is “Hygge Season.” No one knows what Halloween and the holidays will look like, but we can be pretty sure that being cozy at home is still the best way to go, at least for those of us city-dwellers. So, I decided to try and take a bit of control over these things we can’t control, and embrace the positive.
Yesterday, in my Instagram archive, an interesting post popped up from seven years ago. I was in East Texas at The History Center in Diboll, TX, researching for the novel I was working on at the time. (And technically still am, as I put it away with about a third of it left to finish.) My research was centered on the more salacious bits of East Texas history, not something I’d really make into a print. At the same time, that research is still very valid, as I still go back to the materials I copied to check my facts around locations, names and milestones as I create art around and write Pine Curtain Stories. I put my novel away when my professional career started to ramp up, and I didn’t have any time to devote to it. I had often regretted not finishing that story. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I have many fewer regrets because I see that time wasn’t wasted. The work I put in then is helping me now, and who knows, maybe I’ll eventually drag my book back out and finish it, too. So, if you’re struggling or feel like you’ve wasted creative time on a project that fizzled out, don’t worry so much. Put it aside and revisit it from time to time, and life may surprise you.
As I keep returning to Homer as a creative focus, the concept of Ghost Towns rattles around in my head. Ghosts of the past, ghosts of what might have been. Literal ghosts? Some say yes. And yet, to me, it never really felt sad or like it has dwelled in missed opportunities. Homer’s population is small, for sure. It has hovered between 350 and 500 for most of my life. But it has always been so busy and vibrant. At the same time, it was definitely insular, “the bubble” as I call it, and I did have a hard time acclimating as my life got bigger. So, in a way, those woods and fields are also full of ghosts I loved and then left behind.
So, how does this circle back to art? As I have mentioned before, for me, art helps me make sense of things that are hard to process and harder to articulate. When I am making a print or painting, especially for this project, it opens up new parts of my mind to communicate with, and to communicate without overthinking. At the same time, art begets art, and when I am working on a piece, thinking about the story behind it, my mind is more open to ideas about future pieces, or stories, or research I want to go back to.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
“Homer United Methodist Church, 1961.” Print and Acrylic Paint, Stephanie Khattak.
For generations of my family in East Texas, life centered around Homer United Methodist Church. It functioned (and still does) as part house of worship, part community hub. Sunday services were of equal importance to potluck suppers, holiday events, and youth group get-togethers as well as volleyball games, dances and other non-religious activities. Regardless of how religious you were or weren’t, whether you were a member or a prospective member, or just there to fellowship – ours was a church that just got everyone together for a good time. It was all part of God’s work.
Those good times bound our community through generations. This print is taken from a photo taken outside the first church building in 1961. In the source photo is my mom and a few of her best friends. She still sees many of them every few weeks at least, and not necessarily at church. Many of my friends and I have the same kind of relationships, which were also cultivated through the church but exist outside its walls. We genuinely liked, and still like each other.
The church sits where the Homer “town square” used to be. So, it has a legacy in East Texas history as a place of excitement and energy. The church seen here was replaced with a more modern building in the later 60s, which is still there. My family lived a few doors down from the church, within walking distance. Or, when I was learning to drive, within driving the riding lawnmower distance!
My corner of the ‘curtain is Homer, Texas, an unincorporated community about twelve miles outside of Lufkin, Texas off of Highway 69-S, on the edge of the Big Thicket National Preserve. Homer is an interesting place. It was once the Angelina County seat, and was thriving and poised for growth until a major railway chose Lufkin for its main route in the 1800s.
Its history includes brawls and bloody feuds, at least one of which is said to have left haunted energy on the land my family still lives on. Even further back in history, there were “panther tales” and “wampus cat” stories of wild animals that roamed the thickets, hollers and ponds. Homer, at least my part of it, is still wild and on our land alone, there are still wailing big cats, sly foxes and an army of feral pigs. (And yes, all of our pets are indoor pets!) There are woods on our land that no one goes too far into.
This print is based on a photo of my grandmother, probably in the 1940s, and probably when Homer was a little more energetic than it was when I was growing up. But even in my time, it had a busy little shop strip offering candy/soda/BBQ, a hair salon and other sundries. It was torn down in the last decade or so, and the operating family replaced it with a big space to sell their handmade woodcarvings, stained glass and other beautiful art. The matriarch passed, and then the eldest grandson, and now all of that is gone, too.
It’s a place the contains multitudes in ghost stories and love stories, church hymns and redemption songs. When I write or create art about my home, no matter where I am, this is home to me. And while it’s not perfect, neither am I.
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