The first Tuesday of each month, Tales from the South features one person sharing their life story. They call it Tin Roof Project.  The January featuree is artist Carole Katchen.  The program will be Tuesday, January 7.

Music is by Brad Williams and blues guitarist Mark Simpson.

A native of Colorado, by the time Carole Katchen was 21, she was already an established freelance magazine writer.  The first children’s book she wrote and illustrated, I Was a Lonely Teen-Ager, was published in 1965.  It sold over 700,000 copies.  By 1969 she had decided that she wanted to become an artist.  She studied art at West Valley College in Northern California and received their Outstanding Achievement in Art Award.

As her career as an artist developed, she would often take hitchhiking trips across the continent to get inspiration for her artwork.  By the end of the 1970s, she was able to support herself full time as an artist.  In the mid 1980s, she moved to Los Angeles and started to focus more on pastel and less on oil painting.  She continued to receive national recognition and continued writing.  By the end of the 1980s, she had published six art instruction books which had been translated into several languages.

In 1995, she relocated to Hot Springs where she continued to paint, teach and encourage others.  In 2000, she began to produce bronze sculptures of the chefs and society figures from some of her most famous (and whimsical) paintings.  She has returned to television production creating the program “Symphony Sam.”  Katchen has also continued to travel extensively having spent several weeks in Asia recently teaching art and being honored for her contributions.

“Tales from the South” is a showcase of writers reading their own true stories. While the show itself is unrehearsed, the literary memoirs have been worked on for weeks leading up to the readings. Stories range from funny to touching, from everyday occurrences to life-altering tragedies.

The program takes place at Starving Artist Café.  Dinner is served from 5pm to 6:30pm, the show starts at 7pm.  Admission is $7.50, not including dinner.

You MUST purchase your ticket before the show

Previous episodes of “Tales from the South” air on KUAR Public Radio on Thursdays at 7pm.