Paintings, sculptures and mixed media on canvases stretched across the walls and room in downtown Conway at Neighbors, an art show.
The theme, “Then and Now” highlighted art pieces that reflected over the years 1875, 1950 and 2025.
Engage Management hosts the art show annually and has hosted for nine years.
This year it fell on the same weekend of Conway’s 150th anniversary celebration of being a city.
“Our company really just wants to give the community a fun, safe place for everyone to hang out and have a good time and enjoy arts, culture and entertainment,” Morgan Lesler said, director of marketing for Engage Management. “It’s just a fun, family-friendly, free event that takes place.”
Engage Management is a property management company that has commercial and residential properties in cities throughout Arkansas.
The artists were all from the Conway and surrounding areas.
The art show submissions were open to all skill levels and all ages.
“We believe in local artists and their skills and their quality of work that they produce – all skill levels,” Lesler said. “We want to encourage and support all artists in our town and in the state of Arkansas as well.”
The youngest artist, Lesler said, is about nine years old.
“We really try to incorporate every piece of artwork that we possibly can,” Lesler said. “As you’ll see in the room tonight, there’s not an inch of open space. We have around 100 pieces here tonight.”
There were performance art arrangements including aerial hoops from Gemini Fitness, towering aerial silks and other aerial performances by Spectra Studios and acroyoga – acrobatics and yoga – by Arkansas AcroYoga.
One of the aerial artists, Melissa Vance, said she started seven years ago when a friend invited her to try a new class.
“It’s so fun,” Vance said. “Exercise is boring and terrible. With this, you get to make art and help your body.”
A local Conway artist had two pieces in the art show.
“I submitted in one of their first shows, and I just kind of look forward to it every year,” artist Nathan Terry said.
Nathan Terry said that he drew inspiration from the Neighbors art show theme, “The theme usually gives me a good idea to do something I wouldn’t normally think of that kind of helps with the creative part of it.”
“They tell me ‘Then and Now’ so I did some digging … and I didn’t know we had an old theater,” Terry said. “I only found two pictures of it.”
Terry created “Moonlight Marquee” and “Fragments on the Frontier” for this year’s art show.
“Really texture inspired it,” Terry said. “It was a fun way just to get something that stimulates the viewers, it’s a lot to look at.”
Terry owns his own painting company and paints houses. About five months ago he did a mural in Greenbrier on the side of the Panther Station.
“I call [myself] a ‘single color specialist’ by day and an artist by night,” Terry said.
