Paint party set for Sept. 10 at Wichita Falls Jason's Deli

A guided two-hour painting class billed as the Boo at the Barnyard Paint Party is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Jason's Deli in Wichita Falls, according to the organizer's registration page. Gainesville's official September community calendar lists events on Sept. 8 and on Sept. 11, and shows no community event on that Thursday.

The organizer named on the registration page is The Everyday Monet, which gives a mailing address in Iowa Park. The listing describes the evening as a paint party, with participants led step by step through one featured painting. It puts the venue at 2907 Garnett Ave., the address Jason's Deli gives on its own location page for its Wichita Falls store. The primary event record places the class in Wichita Falls, not in Gainesville or Cooke County.

Registration is posted at roughly $27 to $47. The event page says refunds are issued only as an art kit or as credit toward a future class, and that attendance is limited to registered guests.

The price falls in the range this sort of class has carried closer to home. Gainesville's city calendar listed a Paint Pour Vase Class on Feb. 7 at $40 a person, with all materials provided and no prior experience needed, according to the city listing. Painting with a Twist says on its official page for the Sherman studio that the location is closed for business. The same chain's McKinney page shows painting events in early September running from $29 to $45.

Federal figures give some measure of the audience for hands-on instruction. The National Endowment for the Arts, in a 2022 state-level analysis, groups Texas with the states where arts participation runs above the national rate. The agency's national survey found that about half of American adults made or performed some kind of art in 2022, and that roughly one in eight took an arts class or lesson during the previous year. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that arts and cultural activity accounted for about 4 percent of national output in 2023, and that it grew more than twice as fast that year as the overall economy.

Cooke County keeps its own standing organization in that line of work. The Cooke County Arts Council says it was created in Gainesville in 1980, and it awards a $1,000 scholarship each year to a graduating Cooke County senior interested in the arts.