By Lucinda Breeding / Arts & Entertainment Editor

In their own way, all four winners of the 2004 Community Arts Recognition Award are connected.

Jim Johnson, a retired University of North Texas art professor and artist, was on the board of the Greater Denton Arts Council at Jo Ann Wheeler’s first meeting. Sharon Warwick, a Texas Woman’s University professor and artist said she remembered when Jim and Jo Ann Wheeler’s printing business, WheelerPress, used to donate scraps of paper to an elementary school where she worked.

Johnson will receive the CARA award — given to an individual who has advanced the arts through his own work or activities — on Feb. 27 at Festival Hall in the Center for the Visual Arts. Warwick joins him at the lectern to accept the award given to the educator who has advanced the arts through teaching and nurturing the next generation of artists and art consumers. The Wheelers will take the award for promoting growth and patronage of the arts through their business.

The arts council initiated the annual award to recognize Denton people who make the arts more important in Denton. For years, it often recognized one recipient. Recently, the council began honoring an individual for overall contributions, an arts educator and a local business for their efforts.

The recipients said they were all humbled to get the award.

"This has been a really good year for me," Johnson said. "I ended 2002 with a pretty bad car wreck going to Arizona. Before I found out about this, I found out I’d been named to get the Patriot’s Medal for the Sons of the American Revolution, the Texas Society."

Johnson, who was a president of the arts council when the agency was looking for and found the Center for the Visual Arts, spent a lot of his professional life in the classroom. He taught in public secondary schools for seven years. He then taught drawing and art education for 27 years at UNT.

He never stopped working on his own art during those years, exhibiting in more than 30 shows. He’s known locally as a watercolorist, but many are familiar with his sketches.

"You don’t work for the recognition," he said. "You work at what you do because you love it."

Several years ago, Johnson painted the details of the set of "Mame" for Denton Community Theatre, and he’s done quite a few posters and programs for the company.

He’s always agitated for the arts in Denton, Johnson said. The cause of art was always at the top of his list, and he realized, when the council was struggling to afford a permanent space, that art is most important when times are hard.

"I was president of GDAC during the lean years. It’s nice to know that you didn’t get discouraged, and that you kept on keeping on. I remember I went to [Denton businessman and arts supporter] Paul Voertman and he said: ‘don’t give up. Maybe this is your purpose, to keep going when things get difficult.’"

Now, Johnson said, he can see that one day, the council might outgrow the arts center.

Warwick, who has taught at TWU for 6 years and is now heading up the art education program there, said she was shocked when she first heard she’d receive the award.

"I thought I was going to come over [to the Center for the Visual Arts] to talk about something for the exhibition committee."

Warwick has been on the council’s exhibition committee for years, she said.

Warwick has taught art to kindergarteners to graduate students. She was working as a middle school art teacher in Hurst-Euless-Bedford when the Texas Art Educators Association named her the art teacher of the year in ——. Right now, she has 20 undergraduates in the TWU art education program and 10 graduate students. Earlier in her career, when she taught at Krum High School, she taught English, speech and drama and arts.

"That was a busy day," she said. "But Krum was a great experience."

Like Johnson, Warwick has never let the nine-to-five daily grind keep her from making art. She’s an artist who dabbles in a plethora of media, with a lot of critical praise aimed at her ceramics. Her teaching has meant her studio life has been a little slower than that of a full-time studio artist.

"I don’t feel I’ve had to give up anything," Warwick said. "I’ve enjoyed my teaching experience as much as I’ve enjoyed my creative experience. I think it’s the joy of art making that has kept my students making art."

Teaching is an important part of art making, she said, because she’s training students for something that’s more important than many people know.

"All of the students in my class will go on to consume art," she said. "One hundred percent of those students will consume artists. In 28 years I think I’ve seen about 10,000 students," she said.

Warwick also wins the Bob Estes Award, a cash prize given to the winner of the education community arts award. Warwick worked for Estes long ago, when she was teaching at Borman Elementary School. To this day, Borman is recognized as the campus that began Denton’s tradition of integrating visual and performing arts into the school curriculum.

Jo Ann Wheeler said she was called to a board meeting where the award was announced.

"I was speechless and I think that surprised them," she said.

WheelerPress is Denton County’s longest running family-owned printing and publishing company. Terrill Wheeler, Jim’s father, bought the company, then McNitzy Printing Company, in 1950. The company was founded in 1908. Jim is the president of the company, and his son-in-law, Kraig Springer, is currently running the business.

"We have always been close to GDAC," Jim Wheeler said. "Printing itself is a craft, but it is also an art. But we’ve been involved with GDAC for a while."

"It was back in the ’70s that Laura Kendrick approached you and asked you to be on the board," Jo Ann Wheeler said.

"I told her I couldn’t because I didn’t have time, but Jo Ann would," Jim Wheeler.

She did have the time, and still makes time for the council.

Jim Wheeler is a Denton native who grew up around his father’s pressroom. He remembers hand setting type and tweaking his skills as technology made its march through publishing and printing.

Jo Ann Wheeler, now the president of the Arts Guild of Denton, came to Denton from West Texas after her first husband, who was in the Air Force, died in a crash. She brought her two daughters to Denton and went back to school at TWU. A friend told her she should meet Jim Wheeler.

"I finally called the business and asked for Mr. Wheeler," she said.

She extended a social invitation to him and got a bit of a shock.

"He said: ‘Well, that sounds nice, but I think you want to talk to my son,’" she recalled.

She earned a degree in child development and even worked a year in her field after graduation. After that, though, she started working in the print shop. She’s worked in just about every position there. It was a good move, she said. She and Jim married and he adopted her daughters, Susan Springer and Terri Wheeler.

Jim Wheeler said Denton has always been a creative town. He remembers when the Campus Theatre opened in 1949 as a cinema. He remembers the first movie it showed, "I was a Male War Bride" starring Carey Grant and Denton native Ann Sheridan.

Jo Ann Wheeler was the president of the arts council when it bought the Campus Theatre.

"I wrote the check," she said.

The Wheelers have donated more than time to Denton’s arts scene. WheelerPress has donated money and services to member organizations of the council and other arts groups. WheelerPress printed posters for performing arts groups, posters illustrated by Jim Johnson, in fact.

Jim Wheeler said it’s been a privilege to be a part of something that has grown and changed.

"To me, it was pleasing to see the arts become coordinated for a single purpose," he said of the council becoming the pulse point of performing and visual arts. "It gave a lot of people in the arts community a chance to connect."

Neither of them has taken on the creative process beyond printing.

"Well, Martha Robbins always said I was her first failure," Jim Wheeler said. Robbins was a beloved Denton painter and teacher who taught many beginners in her studio.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached by calling 940-566-6877.

CARA AWARDS

What: The Community Arts Recognition Award

Who: The greater Denton Arts Council recognizes Jim Johnson, Sharon Warwick and Jim & Jo Ann Wheeler.

Where: The Center for the Visual Arts, 400 E. Hickory St.

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 27

How much: Tickets are $20. Reservation deadline is Feb. 24. Call 940-382-2787.

CARA tix are $20, reservation deadline is Feb. 24.