Prizer Arts & Letters is a nonprofit with a mission to support artists and cultivate connection through socially engaged art exhibitions, literary readings and interactive community events.
Join Us on March 22nd!
Join us on Sunday, March 22nd in Smithville for a poetry reading with Cindy Huyser and Katherine Durham Oldmixon Garza. They will read from two recently published books of poetry: Cindy Huyser's Cartography and Katherine Durham Oldmixon Garza's Life Afterlife / A Book of the Hours. Both books share journeys of grief for a beloved spouse (Cindy's wife, Katherine's husband) as current or undercurrent, but they do so in distinct ways: Cartography, draws on mapping, the task of orienting oneself in space and place, while Life Afterlife / A Book of the Hours, engages natural seasons, cycles, and dimensions of time. For this event, writer, interfaith chaplain and grief tender Robin Bradford will facilitate a conversation between these books and their authors.
Cindy Huyser is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Cartography (3: A Taos Press, 2025), the contest-winning chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems (Blue Horse Press, 2014), and co-editor of Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems (Dos Gatos Press, 2016). Her work has garnered multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and has appeared or is forthcoming in anthologies and journals such as Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry (Lamar University Literary Press, 2022), San Pedro River Review, Defunkt Magazine, Comstock Review, Equinox, and The Windward Review. A featured author in the 2025 Texas Book Festival, Huyser holds an MFA from Pacific University.
Katherine Durham Oldmixon Garza is the author of Life Afterlife / A Book of the Hours (3: A Taos Press, 2024) and the chapbook Water Signs (New Women's Voices Series, Finishing Line Press, 2009). She holds a Ph.D. in medieval English literature from UT-Austin and MFA in creative writing from University of New Orleans. Director of the Poetry at Round Top Festival and professor emerita at historic Huston-Tillotson University, Katherine is an ecological gardener, writer, and visual artist at home in Austin, TX.
Artist-in-Residence Spotlight
Prizer is thrilled to announce that Houston-based artist Jonathan Paul Jackson will be the artist-in-residence in Smithville from mid-March through mid-June! Stay tuned for opportunities to take workshops with Jonathan as well as chances to see his amazing work.
About the artist: Born in 1984, Jonathan Paul Jackson grew up in remote far West Texas before moving to Houston, where he continues to reside. From a young age, Jackson developed a deep love and passion for nature which continues to impact his art making practice. While Jackson has some formal art education and served as a studio assistant to several prominent Houston based artists in his formative years, he is largely self-taught, holding a high regard for experimentation. Jackson continues his work with nature-inspired imagery on non-traditional surfaces, drawing inspiration from the renowned Houston artist Jesse Lott (1943-2023), who utilized found materials for the basis of his artistic practice. Jackson has been and continues to be deeply inspired by nature; his scope is broad—from flowers seen on walks in his east side, Houston neighborhood to the geological forces that shaped our planet billions of years ago. Recently, Jackson has been developing a method of recycling paper, making paper so thick (up to one half inch) it becomes suggestive of walls, frescoes, or archeological remains. This paper varies in color, texture, and thickness, as bits of colored paper remain fully visible in the final painting. Through the process of recycling, Jackson takes his place amongst environmentally conscious artists, mindful of how their studio practices impact the environment. His arcadian imagery flutters somewhere between optimism and sorrow; optimism that even during times of great distress that nature can be a source of renewal, and sorrow for the animals negatively impacted by modern human’s ideas of progress.