ActivePaper Archive Stephens named latest ‘History + Art’ featured artist - Hot Springs Sentinel Record , 8/22/2021

Stephens named latest ‘History + Art’ featured artist

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■ RIGHT: The historic Post Office construction as seen on Oct. 2, 1902.

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Submitted photos

■ ABOVE: From left, Watercolorist Richard Stephens presents a poster of his painting of “The Old Post Office” to Garland County Historical Society President Julie Brenner Nix and Vice President Bitty Martin.

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Submitted photo

The Garland County Historical Society recently announced that watercolorist Richard Stephens is its newest “History + Art” featured artist.

“The program was introduced last year with a local artist designing a piece of artwork based on their interpretation of Hot Springs’ history,” GCHS President Julie Brenner Nix said in a news release.

“An abstract of downtown Hot Springs by Tansill Stough Anthony premiered in 2020,” Bitty Martin, GCHS vice president, said in the release.

Stephens chose to highlight “The Old Post Office.”

Stephens, in the release, recalls as a child in the early 1950s accompanying his father to the Post Office at 119 Benton St. (now Convention Boulevard). “He remembers passing through the magnificent green doors and then seeing the beautiful marble floors. The two-story Renaissance Revival style building that opened on March 14, 1903, had been servicing Hot Springs residents for half a century before Stephens began to appreciate the impressive structure,” it said.

Hot Springs’ main postal service remained at that location until February 1959 when a new facility opened on the site of the old Eastman Hotel at Reserve and Central Avenue, across the street from the Army & Navy General Hospital. The old Post Office building was then repurposed for seven different government and community organizations that included the Navy Recruiting Station and the United Fund of Garland County. By 1966, the old Post Office was occupied by the City and County Health Department. In 1990, the building was put on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1991, the historic 89-year-old building had been restored by Courtney Crouch to house his Selected Funeral & Life Insurance Company.

Stephens attended Hot Springs High School and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He served as an Army illustrator, began a commercial art career in 1971, and then established his Hot Springs studio in 1974. Recognized for his landscape, architectural, and figurative art, Stephens has been honored with inclusion in the 2014 and 2015 editions of The Art of Watercolour, a French magazine that is widely considered the top watercolor publication in the world. He conducts watercolor workshops in Arkansas and across the country while continuing to produce watercolors that meet his goals of wanting to engage the viewers, entertain them, and share his vision, the release said.

Stephen’s watercolor of “The Old Post Office” will be the featured artwork for the Historical Society’s community outreach programs available at the archives and on https://www.garlandcountyhistoricalsociety.com.

The Garland County Historical Society is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 328 Quapaw Ave.

■ “The Old Post Office,” by Richard Stephens poster. Hot Springs’ main postal service remained at that location until February 1959 when a new facility opened on the site of the old Eastman Hotel at Reserve and Central Avenue, across the street from the Army & Navy General Hospital.