Austin College

Austin College is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of Texas. Established in 1849, Austin Collect is just north of Dallas, sitting on a 100 acre environmentally green campus in Sherman Texas. Austin College is a recognized leader in higher education for innovative programs, a strong faculty, and dedicated students. Since it’s founding by the Brazos Presbytery, Austin College has been associated with the Presbyterian Church. The covenant relationship the College maintains today with the Presbyterian Church provides a distinctive flavor to the life of the College.

2018 Service of Lessons & Carols Opens the Holidays

BJ Kirkpatrick Austin College, Christmas Event, News 11/23/201807/23/2025Things to do in Sherman Texas

Austin College invites the community to welcome the holidays with the Service of Lessons and Carols on November 30, at 5 p.m. in Wynne Chapel on campus. The event is free and open to the campus and community.

The College’s Religious Life program and the Department of Music will present a program of choral and orchestral selections from Handel’s “Messiah,” along with readings of Old Testament messianic prophesies and New Testament advent and Christmas scripture.

Readers will include President Steven P. O’Day, Beth Gill, vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty; Jim Hebda, assistant professor of biochemistry, and John Williams, college chaplain and director of church relations. Along with the A Capella Choir, several Austin College students will serve as readers and members of the orchestra.

Following the service, the campus Christmas tree-lighting ceremony will take place outside Wynne Chapel on Windsor Mall.

Austin College, a private national liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas, is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and cultivates an inclusive atmosphere that supports students’ faith journeys regardless of religious tradition. Founded in 1849, the College is the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original name and charter.

“Subliminal Surprises” Art Exhibit Opens Nov 5th at Austin College

BJ Kirkpatrick Austin College, News 10/28/201807/23/2025Things to do in Sherman Texas

Artists Combine Jewelry and Found Objects in Upcoming Austin College Exhibit

SHERMAN, Texas–Austin College alumnae artists Martina Noble of Sherman and Amy Veatch of Raleigh, North Carolina, explore how adornment and collection reveal and reflect the story of people’s lives in their upcoming exhibit, “Subliminal Surprises,” opening November 5 at Austin College.

The exhibit runs November 5 through December 14 in Ida Green Communication Center’s Ida Green Gallery. An artist reception is scheduled for Saturday, November 10, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the gallery in connection with Austin College’s Homecoming and Family Weekend. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. The gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

In the exhibit, “Subliminal Surprises,” jewelry and other found and saved objects explore the markers people leave behind as they link the present with the experiences of the past, the artists say. In the exhibit, the artists present a series of assemblage pieces, each featuring an item of jewelry, surround the jewelry with a suite of other objects, found or saved, that create a context which whispers, sings, or silently points up something of the artists’ thought process, Noble said. The jewelry, she explained, tells a story as it is included with other treasures, such as a small snake skeleton, a piece of wallpaper from an old house, and biology slides from a closed laboratory.

“Through various objects, treasures, and traces of other stories, other times, the pieces delineate the meandering arc of a lifetime, and its many intersections with other lives,” Veatch said. “This show explores the topography of time, beauty, and sublimity. It looks at what we hold as precious, ordinary, and extraordinary. It asks what do we see, what do we keep, what do we leave behind? And what surprises arise as we plumb these layers of experience?”

In their artists’ notes, Veatch and Noble explain, “This context shows how jewelry and other objects, such as wallpaper, fill some need to adorn our lives and explain ourselves. We investigate the idea that a house is decorated or adorned, and life happens all around the adornment: nesting, birth, daily drudgery, celebrations, sadness, innovation, learning, illness, death, and the myriad decisions of a lifetime. We adorn ourselves with jewelry and keepsakes from our past, our family, our present day; and we adorn our houses with ‘jewelry’ of a sort with decorative elements and furnishings. We live our lives in this mix of declaration of self, family, culture, and society … all marked with the adornment that reveals our journey.”

About the Artists

Amy Veatch, Austin College Class of 1985

Amy Veatch has set a personal goal to notice and find worth in materials or objects that are used in everyday life and mix materials to create art that reflects life and its relationships. She makes jewelry from precious and non-ferrous metal sheet, tube and wire, found objects and stones, incorporating all of her interests in two-dimensional and three-dimensional artistic expression.

Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Veatch said she loved experimenting and creating art in many forms and found inspiration in the jewelry made by Native American and Mexican artists. She still loves the natural materials used in that jewelry and how it reflects landscape and architectural shapes.

As an art major at Austin College, she concentrated on painting, drawing, and sculpture, and began to incorporate metals into her work. After moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, she enrolled in a jewelry program and expanded her art. Her recent work includes an award-winning mural for Raleigh Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources at the city’s Peach Road Park.

Veatch lives and works in North Carolina, where she teaches jewelry and art for the City of Raleigh and North Carolina State Crafts Center.

Martina Noble, 1985 Austin College graduate Martina Buesing

Martina Noble, the daughter of a Naval architect, grew up on the shipyards of the port town of Hamburg, Germany. Avid sailors, her family spent summer weekends on the Elbe River and the Baltic and the North seas. During the winters, they worked on their boat. Noble’s fascination with metal and the ocean sparked there. “Life on the water is simple, beautiful, and stark: sparkling sunlight and ferocious storms,” she said.

Jewelry is an ancient, intimate art form—worn on the body, making a statement, she said. Using, silver, gold, gemstones and found materials, Noble searches simple lines for “the essence of a shape or a concept: a rolling wave, a smile. At their essence life, people, and ideas intersect and celebrate commonality.”

Noble holds a Graduate Jeweler Diploma from the Revere Academy in San Francisco, a master’s degree in international relations and economics from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Relations at Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Austin College. She lives and works out of an old fire station in Sherman.

Austin College, a private national liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas, has earned a reputation for excellence in academic preparation, international study, pre-professional foundations, leadership development, committed faculty, and hands-on, adventurous learning opportunities. One of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives, Austin College boasts a welcoming community that embraces diversity and individuality, with more than 40 percent of students representing ethnic minorities. A residential student body of approximately 1,275 students and a faculty of more than 100 allow a 13:1 student-faculty ratio and personalized attention. The college is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and cultivates an inclusive atmosphere that supports students’ faith journeys regardless of religious tradition. Founded in 1849, the college is the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original name and charter.

Austin College Presents Lively Day of the Dead Production Día de Muertos

BJ Kirkpatrick Austin College, Entertainment, News 10/21/201807/23/2025

Brilliant colors, vibrant dance, artful words, and a dose of humor will bring Día de Muertos alive for one night at Austin College on Monday, November 5, at 5 p.m. as the Austin College Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies presents “Day of the Dead – La Catrina Mexica y Nezahualcóyotl” in Hoxie Thompson Auditorium of Sherman Hall. The performance, presented mostly in Spanish with an English introduction, is very visual so can be enjoyed regardless of language, organizers explain. The event is free and open to the public; auditorium doors open at 4:30 p.m. Sherman Hall is located on Grand Avenue.

Artists and actors Erik De Luna and Román Iván Gómez will bring to life the dance, poetry, philosophy, and rites of central Mexico one century before the arrival of the Spanish. This performance will feature a pre-Hispanic personification of death (la Catrina prehispánica) and the 15^th-century poet king Nezahualcóyotl.

“Erik De Luna is an amazing artist who not only has a keen original aesthetic but also a performer’s ability to sense an audience,” said Dr. Julie Hempel, director of the Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies. “The show that he is bringing to Austin College is based on the theme he is presenting this year in Querétaro, Mexico. He is working with seasoned actor Román Iván Gómez who will portray the Pre-Hispanic poet Nezahualcóyotl. The performance will be mostly in Spanish, but it is also full of visuals, dance, and rituals, so it will be entertaining to a wide audience. It is a rare chance to see how ancient Mexicans celebrated Day of the Dead.”

Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, is a Latin American holiday of celebration and festival that honors the dead and the belief that on this day, the dead join the living in celebration.Though held a few days after the American Halloween, the holidays are not related, and Day of the Dead is not considered a scary or sad event. Skeletons and skulls that are the familiar symbols of the day are nearly always festively decorated and portrayed as enjoying life.

Erik De Luna began his artistic career with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. While studying at the Autonomous University of Querétaro in Mexico, he joined the university theater group “Los Cómicos de la Legua.” Through acting, he discovered a passion for performance and costume design in addition to drawing and the visual arts. He has continued to write, direct, and perform shows at the university theater for the past 19 years, most notably shows centering on Day of the Dead. In 2003, Erik designed a lotería game featuring images to match the more than 50 names that Mexicans use to personify death. Since then, he has portrayed the Catrina (a traditional death figure) and continued to draw, paint, and design costumes for more than 100 Catrinas. He has appeared on the cover of National Geographic Traveler as the“Catrina Monarca” and as an invited artist during the premiere of the movie Coco in Morelia, Mexico. In the past two years, he has performed throughout Mexico and internationally in Shanghai, Madrid, and Vienna

Román Iván Gómez, an architect by training, has acted with “Los Cómicos de la Legua” at the Autonomous University of Querétaro theater for almost 13 years. Most recently, he appeared in the all-male production of La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Other productions include: Bajo tierra, Salón Calavera, Milagritos a la orden, La tradicional pastorela navideña, Yerma, and Los gritos mudos de las voces muertas.These last three works are musicals directed by Maestro Alejandro Celia.

The Austin College Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies promotes collaborative learning between students of the college and faculty members, with special emphasis on the historical, cultural, social, economic, and political issues facing Texas and Mexico.

Austin College, a private national liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas, has earned a reputation for excellence in academic preparation, international study, pre-professional foundations, leadership development, committed faculty, and hands-on, adventurous learning opportunities. One of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives, Austin College boasts a welcoming community that embraces diversity and individuality, with more than 40 percent of students representing ethnic minorities. A residential student body of approximately 1,275 students and a faculty of more than 100 allow a 13:1 student-faculty ratio and personalized attention. The College is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and cultivates an inclusive atmosphere that supports students’ faith journeys regardless of religious tradition. Founded in 1849, the College is the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original name and charter.