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• Art of the sale

  By RHONDA OWEN The image of the “starving artist” as a tortured soul who chooses to live in poverty to maintain the integrity of his artistic vision has long existed in popular culture. This perception visits upon the artist a bohemian lifestyle of eccentricity and excess during a lifetime of obscurity. And, of course, as […]

• Pride of Place

  Arkansan filmmakers who left the state are coming home—and they’re finding their state is much more than just a setting BY RHONDA OWEN Quiet on the set. Roll camera. Roll sound. The camera’s eye focuses on a man with slicked-back hair and tattooed forearms plucking razor-sharp twangs from an electric guitar as he sings, “It’s gonna rain, […]

• Nuts about coconut oil

  BY RHONDA OWEN My love affair with coconut goes back to my childhood when my father would crack open a fresh coconut with a hammer and separate the dense “meat” from the shell to give all of us a sweet, chewy treat. I can still feel the way the fresh coconut squeaked against my teeth. […]

• Urban oasis: Bernice Garden

  BY RHONDA OWEN LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — During President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, some forward-thinking person scratched the word “hope” into cement poured for the foundation of the Bernice Garden in downtown Little Rock. Today, it seems only fitting that such a sentiment is the sole defacement in the tiny, blooming oasis in an area […]

• Family’s farming roots run five generations deep

  This story, published in August 2012 in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was awarded First Place in the freelance writing category in the Arkansas Press Association’s 2013 contest. BY RHONDA OWEN GRADY, Ark. — Fifth-generation farmer Jody Hardin calls his family’s heritage “the glue we can’t unglue.”  Hardins have lived in Grady and farmed the fertile alluvial […]