The Arkansas Arts Council, a division of Arkansas Heritage, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 Governor’s Arts Awards. 

Since 1991, the annual awards program has recognized individuals and businesses for their outstanding contributions to the arts in Arkansas. Recipients are nominated by the public, then selected by an independent panel of arts professionals. 

“Artists contribute so much to our state, both economically and creatively. The Governor’s Arts Awards recognizes Arkansans who have made significant contributions to maintaining, growing and enhancing the arts in our state,” said Stacy Hurst, secretary of the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism. “It is a pleasure to see such diversity in the list of winners this year—from corporate creatives to music makers and visual artists to patrons of the arts.”

Ed Clifford

The Arts Community Development Award goes to Ed Clifford of Springdale, Arkansas. Clifford is a civic leader and early visionary for using the arts as a source of economic development and community building in Northwest Arkansas. After retiring from Walmart in 2001, he served as the President and CEO of the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce from 2001 to 2012. During the growth of Northwest Arkansas at this time, Clifford, who included the arts in everyday conversations in business and development strategies, was a powerful force.

As a cultural leader, he connected organizations, artists and ideas culminating in successful programs, services, and businesses. Clifford has served on the boards of the Arkansas Arts Council, Arkansans for the Arts, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Northwest Arkansas Council and The Scott Family Amazeum. He has been an advocate for many arts organizations across the state and has provided extraordinary civic leadership and creative vision in Northwest Arkansas for more than 20 years. Clifford is the president and CEO of The Jones Trust and The Jones Center for Families in Springdale. 

The Arts in Education Award goes to Dr. Timothy Crist of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Crist is professor of Music Theory and Composition at Arkansas State University (A-State) where he teaches composition, electronic music, theory, classical guitar and directs the A-State New Music Ensemble and Guitar Ensembles. He developed the first ever A-State Guitar Orchestra, which has grown to over 80 members.

Crist also developed the Music Outreach Program that offers free music classes to homeschooling families, public-school children and military veterans and their families in Northeast Arkansas. The program includes classes in guitar, bass, ukulele, composition, electronic music and piano, and is supported by fundraising events and by public contributions. His work in establishing guitar programs in public schools in the state was recognized by the Guitar Foundation of America as one of the only of its kind in Arkansas.

Crist served as director of the A-State Lecture-Concert Series from 2010 to 2020. The series serves ASU, the surrounding communities, and area schools by bringing world class performers including string, saxophone and guitar quartets, Tuvan throat singers, brass quintets, Baroque ensembles, early music specialists, and Persian, Chinese, and Japanese music performers among others. He also directed the Fowler Series which offers some of the finest artistic performance in the region and continues to connect series artists to local schools for in-school performances. He is writing a book about implementing music composition in STEM schools to provide a sophisticated learning environment for the study of music and its interdisciplinary connections. Crist earned music degrees from Brevard College and the University of Georgia. He received a National Endowment for the Arts 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship for music composition for his work “Eleven” for wind ensemble and flute with electronics. 

Cranford Co.

The Corporate Sponsorship of the Arts award goes to an Arkansas for-profit business that has made significant contribution in support of the arts in this state. This year’s recipient is Cranford Co. of Little Rock.

Cranford Co. is an award-winning advertising, marketing, digital and social communications firm based in the capitol city. Founded by brothers Jay, Ross and Chris Cranford in 2014, they work with a range of clients from coast to coast.

The firm has been providing support to nonprofit arts organizations in central Arkansas since opening. They have provided financial support, as well as pro-bono design and video production services to Ballet Arkansas, The Arkansas Repertory Theatre, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. In addition, Cranford Co. has become involved in a creative way by providing filmed footage that served as scenery for Ballet Arkansas’s multimedia productions of “Dracula”, “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Great Gatsby.”

Cranford Co. also provides performance and reception space for other arts organizations including the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the City of Little Rock’s Arts + Culture Commission.    

Perrion Y. Hurd

Perrion Y. Hurd is a master printmaker, public art muralist and teaching artist is the recipient for the Individual Artist Award for 2022. His subject matter revolves around his love of music and geometric shapes with strong lines and bold colors that reflect the influence of the Memphis Beale Street and New Orleans culture. Hurd’s eight signature large-scale murals are prominently displayed on the exterior of the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in downtown Little Rock. His skill as a muralist has also been commissioned by the historic Argenta Arts District in North Little Rock.

He is the official artist of the Arkansas River Blues Society where his bold jazz-and-blues-influenced graphic designs are used on posters, t-shirts and outdoor murals. As a skilled printmaker, he is a featured lecturer and demonstrator at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.

In 2021 his work was selected by the Hot Springs Arts Alliance to be featured in an outdoor art exhibit along the Hot Springs Creek Greenway Trail.    

Jimmy Bell with Scottish Heritage Program at Lyon College

The Scottish Heritage Program at Lyon College in Batesville is the 2022 recipient for the Judges Recognition Award.

This program is designed to teach, preserve, and celebrate the Scottish arts and traditions in America. The program offers students the option of a Bachelor of Arts in Music degree with an emphasis on bagpipe or Scottish-style drumming or a Scottish Arts minor degree with a focus on the traditions of bagpiping, drumming, or Highland dancing.

Another component of the program is the Lyon College Pipe Band led by Jimmy Bell, a world-class piper. The Lyon College Pipe Band is comprised of students, faculty, and staff of Lyon College, as well as musicians from the region. The pipe band is an integral part of campus life traditions observed at Lyon College. The band is also a vital public relations arm of the college. The ensemble travels all over the U.S. and abroad to participate in competition events, including the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The final component of the Scottish Heritage Program is the annual Arkansas Scottish Festival, which was established in 1979. The festival features demonstrations, information and performances by pipe bands and solo pipers, Highland dancers, Celtic music performers, drummers, athletes and representatives from Scottish clans. The Arkansas Scottish Festival is known as one of the premier Scottish festivals in the southern United States. The three-day event annually attracts up to 10,000 visitors, which nearly doubles the population of Batesville, and provides a boon to local businesses.   

Sharon Heflin

Sharon Heflin has been a patron of the arts in Central Arkansas for more than 50 years, and is the recipient of the Patron Award. Heflin is the accounts payable manager at her family businesses of Legacy Termite and Pest Control and Bird & Bear Companies. She has served on the boards of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Argenta Community Theater and the Thea Foundation and is a founding board member of the ACANSA arts festival.

In addition, she is a regular contributing patron to River City Men’s Chorus, Opera in the Rock, Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, The Muses Creative Artistry Project, The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and many other nonprofit organizations.  

Linda Williams Palmer

The Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022 is going to Linda Williams Palmer of Hot Springs. This award goes to an artist or group whose contributions to the arts over a lifetime has fostered significant recognition, or an art patron whose lifetime of dedication to the development and support of the arts will sustain the arts beyond his/her lifetime.

Linda Williams Palmer is a colored-pencil artist, painter and former gallery owner in Hot Springs. Palmer’s most notable artistic project is her documentation of Arkansas’s Champion Trees. These trees are recognized by the Arkansas Forestry Commission as the largest of each species.

Palmer produced 18 large-scale and 18 smaller pencil drawings for a traveling art exhibition. The five-year project interprets each tree according to the season of observation, location, historic context and human connection. The drawings are viewed as part botanical illustration and part portraiture.

The exhibition, “Arkansas Champion Trees: An Artist's Journey, Drawings by Linda W. Palmer of Hot Springs”, has traveled to 29 venues. Palmer also created a companion book, “Champion Trees of Arkansas”, published by The University of Arkansas Press and now in its second printing. In addition, a 60-minute, award-winning documentary was produced by Arkansas Education Television Network and showcased Palmer’s drawings of the champion trees.

Palmer has been a dedicated supporter of the arts. She served on the Arts Advisory Board for the City of Hot Springs, and the Arkansas Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts. As a working artist for over 40 years, Palmer’s artwork is included in many private, university, art center and corporate collections.  

The recipients will be honored at a ceremony in March 2022.