About Us

In the words of our founder, Su Stella

For years Curt Harville and I talked about starting an art event, but we were participating in other people’s events. Then the spring of 2013 we had applied to a very large Shreveport event. At that time, we had heard that the local event promoters preferred out of state artists but that did not discourage us. I put together a portfolio with our art to sell in the booth. We had Louisiana themed jewelry, paintings, postcards, soap and even hand-forged mudbug and gator bottle openers. The letter arrived, Curt opened it and I was shocked when Curt said that we did not get in. I didn’t believe him until I saw the letter myself. Instead of getting mad we used the opportunity to start our event.

HOSTS started in May 2013 with the help of Kathryn Usher and Nadine Charity. The first months it was mainly our outside studio and a few guests. As time went by Highland artists started to participate. Our biggest artist participation was 12 studios and most studios had at least one guest artist. At the Topeka house we had 92 guests come through on one Sunday. Our youngest artist was 7 and she made 2 sales. We had a Texas artist set up, and our farthest guests came from Germany & France.

HOSTS has been run without any budget. There is a huge time commitment from the locals to get press releases done, maps made and setting up studios, and it is a labor of love for all those involved!

As the founders of HOSTS Curt and I THANK EVERYONE THAT has participated, visited, helped, and kept this event alive!

Note - For Artists and Creatives- We may not have made money every time we opened our shop. Money is not everything. We made friends, commissions, we were told about opportunities. The Highland has a stigma of being a lesser area of Shreveport. We are able to get people to visit this neighborhood, who may never have considered stepping their feet on our soil. That breaks down barriers which is so important.