blacksmith, Bill Epps

Bill has been a full time blacksmith since 1986. Before that he was a farrier where he started making his novelty horseshoes and snakes. In 1987 he started doing commission work while working for Old City Park in Dallas as their resident blacksmith.

He has taught weekend short courses to give people the basics of blacksmithing and his many years experience as a machinist, tool and die maker during and after his hitch in the Navy have contributed to his overall knowledge of steel and the ability to make any tool he needs to do a job.

portraits, Perri Sparks

Armed with a Master’s degree in Medical Illustration from the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Perri worked for many years at a variety of academic medical institutions producing surgical illustrations for publication, medical animation, and classroom teaching.

Today, she produces fine art for commission and gallery sales as well as maintaining her position as Assistant Professor teaching in the Biomedical Illustration Graduate Program at UT Southwestern Medical School. She hosts a weekly nude figure painting session and schedules 5 or 6 workshops each year in Dallas, the Texas Hill Country, California, and Italy. Her work can be seen on the web at www.EarlyLightGallery.com.

After years of precisely portraying surgical anatomy for limited color production, she enjoys creating full-sized figurative pastel and oil paintings. Her goal is to focus on capturing the subject’s more elusive qualities the surface during the exchanges that occur when working with a live model. Her pastels are colorfully expressive and lately she has enjoyed capturing smaller, on-site landscapes in this looser manner. "I guess after years of ‘red for the arteries, and blue for the veins’ I needed to break out and tell my own story!"

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