Kerrville, Texas

Kerrville is a pleasant community with a population that is a little over 22,000.  It is laid out along a few main business strips, one of which adjoins the small communities of Ingram and Hunt.  Old, new, and historic buildings blend seamlessly.  Kerrville is considered the heart of hill country.  Its advertising states that it is a small community with a big city feel!  It truly has that feel!  It is very active in the arts, with numerous galleries and an indoor and outdoor theater for plays!  The statue pictured is in Kerrville at The Museum of Western Art.  The community has stores and a medical center that one would usually only associate with larger cities.  It is home to Schreiner University.  Kerrville has an upscale feel, but also feels pleasantly rural.  The area is amazingly lush and green with the Guadalupe River running through the center of town.  With the exception of seeing cacti interspersed with the deciduous greenery, it is easy to imagine being in a state other than Texas.  I often found myself comparing it to the Catskills of New York.  We found the flora of the area interesting, as just 70 miles away in Johnson City the ground cover is more that of high desert.  Kerrville has a central location to other communities of interest.  It is only 20 miles from the very tourist oriented community of Fredericksburg, and 60 miles from San Antonio.  Our planned one month stay turned into two months, and we left looking forward to returning someday!

Visual Arts Center

This is the Visual Arts Center located in Ingram.  Ingram adjoins Kerrville.

Admission to the grounds and gallery is free!

This bottle tree is pretty simplistic, but I have to admit I like it!

This is just an old door with random items attached to it.  One begins to wonder about this being art, but once again there is just something about it that creates a mystique and for some unknown reason is likable!

Okay, now these things called art are getting pretty far out there!  I'm beginning to think I should become an artist, and make thousands of dollars for my great works!

I can paint some branches with acrylics!  I wonder how much this sells for!

I could create this, too!  Does it go for a thousand or even a few hundred dollars?

This is the gallery.

I like the colors in these three paintings and the patterns of colors are interesting.

These artist trading cards are interesting.  They are business cards with an example of the artist's work on the back.  When artists are at gatherings, they trade cards.  Knowing about artist trading cards makes me feel like an insider in the art world!

This art project modeled after Stonehenge has an interesting story.  In 1989 Doug Hill, a friend and neighbor to Al Shepperd, was putting in a limestone slab patio.  Doug had a slab of limestone left upon completing his project.  He gave it to Al.  Al stood the rock up monolith style.  Pretty soon Al began to consider getting more limestone slabs so as to build Stonehenge!  Doug convinced Al he could reduce the cost by producing plaster and graphite covered metal mesh stone replicas.  Doug and Al built Stonehenge II in Al's pasture.  It took 9 months.  The finished product is 90% as wide as the original Stonehenge and 60% of the height.  The stones are approximately 8 feet tall.

After a trip to Easter Island, Al commissioned Doug to recreate a couple of the Easter Island heads using the same wire mesh technique as he had used creating Stonehenge II.  Here is Roy pointing up at one!  :-)

In 1994 with ideas dancing in his head of other creations to build, Al Shepperd passed away.  He was in his seventies.  His nephew acquired the property, but sold it in 2010.  The monuments were slated to be torn down!  They had become such local landmarks by this time that the Hill Country Arts Foundation rallied to their defense.  They bought the monuments and trucked all 75 pieces 8 miles to their new location near the Visual Arts Center in Ingram.  In 2011 Doug Hill and Al Shepperd's creations debuted in their new home!     

Kerrville Nature Center

We were at the Kerrville Nature Center at the wrong time of year to see the full beauty of the gardens along the walking trail, but we enjoyed what we did see.  Touring the nature center and gardens is free.

I don't know what this shrub is, but thought the color of the berries was interesting!

The parking lot has a nice succulent garden!

This is a type of Yucca that is common to the area.

This is a Cholla cactus.