An imaginative vision from one Park Cities resident and the creative endowments of two area artists will soon result in a timeless memento for Highland Park citizens and business leaders. 

Dava Thomas is the mastermind behind the Highland Park Centennial Art Project, an original “folk art”-style map depicting the most impressionable businesses in town. When Thomas conceived the idea for the map in November 2011, her goal was to capture the essence of the township with a method that had not yet been used and to commemorate Highland Park's centennial year through art.

“I thought it would be interesting to have a keepsake, a “snapshot in time” for the city,” she said. 

Previously the publisher of The Texas Wedding Guide, a prestigious publication for everything-nuptials, Thomas has been known around the community for combining her two loves - art and publishing. In late 2009, Thomas sold the Guide to DG Publishing, which was bought by The Dallas Morning News in late 2012, and she wasn’t sure what to do next. *

A resident of Highland Park and Dallas native since 1993, Thomas is well aware of the proverbial level of engagement in her town.

“The people who live here are really and truly invested in their community,” she said. “They didn’t happen to be here; they intended to be here.”

After selling off the enterprise she’d been involved with for nearly two decades, Thomas interviewed several artists willing to work on the project. Knowing she wanted everyone involved with the undertaking local, Thomas happened upon a referral to Benjamin Vincent, a Highland Park-based artist celebrated for his caricatures, during one of her classes at the Creative Arts Center of Dallas. 

It was then that Thomas hired Vincent and artist Richard Dominguez to start work on the Highland Park folk art-style map, and Thomas had inadvertently begun another business venture: starting a company called Texas Art Maps.

Thomas first had to determine whether business owners would jump on board with her idea to create the map and distribute it. “After I did my "beta testing" of interviewing about 20 local business owners and getting an "atta girl,” I formed an LLC with copyright for the project through a local legal firm,” she said. 

Vincent, who has illustrated children’s books for Jay McGraw, Dr. Phil McGraw’s son, shares his studio (one half of a circa-1912 home-turned-duplex that once housed George Dealey’s daughter) with Dominguez, a comic book artist and storyboard illustrator who helped both Vincent and Thomas conceptualize the look of the Highland Park map. They knew they had to create something memorable and, of course, creative.

The first step in the process was to determine what exactly would be on the map. In order to do that, Thomas meandered door-to-door to businesses around town starting last January to propose that they purchase space on the artwork.

Thomas said that the businesses, churches, schools, and non-profits that bought a coveted home on the map were not looking to promote their brands but rather to ensure that their logos would turn up on the artwork so that the coming generations knew the impact they made on Highland Park.

“No websites or phone [numbers] will be published… no advertising” appears on the map, Thomas said. Simply, the business logos and names in the form of storefronts, cars, vans, balloons, kites, and small planes carrying banners make appearances on the folk art-style art (Legacy Bank, Central Market, Allie Beth Allman & Associates, and needless to say, the Highland Park Town Hall are a few of the approximately 90 participants).

“The guys couldn’t draw the map until we knew every business that would be on it,” Thomas said. Every time Vincent and Dominguez set to work, Thomas would return with news that another business or institution wanted to be included on the piece of art.

“There were over 20 drafts before we got to the final version,” she said. What resulted is a brightly colored, quirky illustration of Highland Park. 

Thomas discussed the challenges of explaining her vision to others and finding participants. 

“Being able to communicate this by phone or email was nearly impossible. I had to go door-to-door,” she said – something she hadn’t done since the early days of her Texas Wedding Guide career (an entirely-grassroots affair, at least in the beginning stages). Thomas was often referred by Highland Park business managers to owners located everywhere from London to Atlanta to New York.

She also said that there are some names on the map that “might not be in the brick and mortar of Highland Park” but have no doubt made waves in the community over time, thus earning them a spot.

Thomas said she enjoyed speaking with representatives from Highland Park businesses and learning new factoids about the town.

“The rewards [I’ve gotten] have been stories from people who are invested in the community,” she said.

Dominguez did much of the drawing on the map, but the map didn’t have the “folk art feel” originally, Vincent said. Initially, he said they sketched a grid with houses and businesses that had a rather boring look.

“Now it’s much more whimsy,” Vincent said. “It’s not just a map; it’s a feeling.” Dominguez added that the final version of the map is much more realized, with a distinct imagination.

Purchasing a space on the map ran business owners between $495 and $595, depending on how they wanted their logos illustrated. Contributors are also promised ten to 25 copies to sell for $25-$35, give away to clients, or donate to non-profit organizations or schools for 2013 fundraising endeavors.

Now that the final version of the map is complete, Thomas, Vincent, and Dominguez hope to go to print by the end of the month. Even the printer and paper provider are Highland Park residents; Thomas enlisted Clampitt Paper and Ethridge Printing for those tasks.

“It was important to me to include only locals to sell, produce, publish, and distribute this project,” she said. 

Any extra copies after the printing (there will be only one) will be donated to the Park Cities Centennial Home Tour, happening in April, and a “limited edition” batch of 5,000 maps will feature autographs from the artists, but only for the first 1,000.

Thomas is currently in the process of figuring out the most special way to present the Town Hall with its own map to be displayed for years to come. In the meantime, her labor of love is all but finished. The only thing left is to hear and see the reaction of Highland Park residents.

“I just wanted to do something fun. Just fun and light-hearted,” she said.

*Correction: A previous version read that Thomas sold Texas Wedding Guide directly to The Dallas Morning News. In fact, she sold TWG to DG Publishing in 2009, and DG Publishing was very recently bought by the DMN. 

To see a sample of the Highland Park Centennial Art Project, visit the Texas Art Maps Facebook page here.