9th Ever Nog-off
December 13
Plus opening reception for two new exhibits: Dream and Imagery Entailed: Kerrick Hartman and LaToya Hobbs and A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in America
Thomas Hankins making crystal ornaments and jewelry
Dream and Imagery Entailed

Trinity Gallery for Arkansas Artists
Stuttgart artist Kerrick Hartman focuses on stone, wood and metal sculpture using the Arkansas landscape as inspiration for his work. He says, “To take a stone or other lifeless, stationary material and convey a sense of spiraling, undulating motion to an object is at its core a testimonial of hope and celebration of life’s design.”
North Little Rock native LaToya Hobbs, printmaker and painter, works with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty and spirituality. Her work is an investigation of how past influences, expectations and preferences resonate with women of color in the 21st century and are expressed through the canvases of our bodies.
46th Annual Christmas Frolic

From sack races to stilts, from fiddling to frolicking, this favorite seasonal event charms one and all with old fashioned fun. Bring the whole family out and enjoy live music, crafts, carols, pioneer games and our famous hot cider and ginger cake.
A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in America

A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in America will trace the history of this country’s most famous knife from just before its birth in a rough melee on a sandbar above Natchez, Mississippi in 1827, to the skilled craftsmen who keep the classic blade alive to this day in the form of hand crafted reproductions and modernized versions.
The exhibit of more than 200 knives includes knife designs associated with Alamo martyr James Bowie and his less famous brother Rezin, as well as bowie knives once owned by such historic figures as Davy Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt, General Winfield Scott and John Fox “Bowie Knife” Potter. The role of the bowie knife in the Antebellum era is explored along with the Civil War and the opening of the west, and there’s a special focus on the role bowie knives played in the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Bowie Knife Symposium on Friday
12:30 Mark Zalesky, Guest Curator and Editor of Knife World
“Samuel Bell, The Tiffany of Texas and Tennessee”
1:30 Bill Worthen, Historic Arkansas Museum Director
“James Black and the Bowie Knife”
2:30 Josh Phillips, Co-Author of Confederate Bowie Knives
“Identifying Counterfeit Bowie Knives”
3:30 Garry Zalesky, ABKA Life Member and lender to the exhibit
“Folding Bowie and Folding Dirk Knives”
Bowie Knife Opening Weekend Activities

With Master Bladesmith Lin Rhea
Catch Jack Edmondson’s portrayal of Jim Bowie.
10 am – The Iron Mistress
12 pm – The Sandbar Duel documentary for Natchez TV
12:30 – The Adventures of Jim Bowie
1:00 – Dirty Work: Arkansas’s Knife Heritage from Bowie to Rambo
1:30 – The Iron Mistress
3:30 – The Sandbar Duel documentary for Natchez TV