A Texas artist’s work is now on exhibit in the Gene and Jerry Jones Hall in SMU’s Hamon Arts Library.

Food and drinks were provided yesterday to celebrate the opening of “Jerry Bywaters – Lone Star Printmaker,” a collection of multiple prints created in the early 1930s to the late 1940s. A live jazz band was also featured upstairs.

Bywaters wanted to strengthen the national awareness of the artistic values found in Texas and much of the Southwest, and he favored printmaking and lithography to be a “perfect medium” for such regionalist ideas.

He began in the early Depression-era 1930s with a few experimental lithographs, and likely became aware of different styles of lithograph drawings at the Art Institute of Dallas in 1930, where he met the AI director and fellow painter Olin Travis.

As an artist, Bywaters became the leader of a group of young painters known as the Dallas Nine (this group included painters such as Alexandre Hogue, Everett Spruce, Otis Dozier and Olin Travis) who overcame the limits of provincialism and attained national recognition in the 1930s. However, the “nine” became more of a placemark and less of a factual title as the group expanded far beyond the nine original members. The group became nationally known, with many of Bywaters’ work featured in numerous Dallas libraries.

Bywaters also had a hand in the day-to-day dealings in North Texas culture by acting as art editor and critic at The Dallas Morning News.

The Hamon exhibit features all 39 original prints drawn by Bywaters between 1935-1948, and many of these prints feature Texas locales, such as “Texas Courthouse,” or “Garganta.” The former is drawn to look like any North Texas courthouse, and the latter is specifically drawn to look like Denton County’s Lomax House, which was built in the early 1920s.

The Jerry Bywaters exhibit will be open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday. More information can be found at smu.edu/cul/hamon/.