One step into our office and you know you’re in an agency rooted in the tradition of art. Paintings, sculptures, and mixed media artworks greet you from the moment you step in the door – many of them created by hot shots in the Dallas art scene, including our very own agency partner and chief creative officer, Ken Womack.
This hyper-creative atmosphere was no accident. Ken rotates his art collection and his own artworks throughout the office to inspire the team.
In Ken’s own words, “My environment is critical to how creative I am. So I surround myself with the coolest stuff possible. Advertising is where art and commerce meet, and there’s so much to be gained from creative thinking. We’re artistic people and I want us to be inspired to do better work.”
Many of the artworks you’ll see on our walls were made by Ken’s network of friends in the artist community. “Almost all the art in our office is from people I know personally,” he says, “As I’m part of the local Dallas art community. I paint and I show and attend gallery openings all the time. Many of the artists I know – we connected through Color Me Empowered – a nonprofit for schoolchildren.”
Take a peek into the artworks of our office and their stories below.
National Champions
Arthur James, 2006
Mixed media sculpture
32" x 14"
This was a gift to Ken Womack from Those 3 Reps as a thanks for working together for many years. It celebrates the Texas Longhorns football national championship win over USC (41-38) and references the winning QB, Vince Young. It also references Bobby Layne, an NFL Hall of Fame QB and Longhorn signal-caller from 1944-1947. The roses are a reference to where the championship game was played: the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Arthur James (AKA Artman) is a Dallas-based artist, sculptor and illustrator
Wings Timeline
Debbie Klein, 2010
Chicle print on plexiglass
30" x 5"
Debbie Klein is a Dallas artist, graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Parsons School of Design. This was a 50th birthday gift to Ken Womack from his former wife, Maureen Womack, also an artist.
Cowboy Resting
Jon Flaming, 2019
Oil on canvas
16" x 20"
Jon Flaming is as gifted a designer as he is a fine artist. You have seen his logo designs and illustration everywhere, even if you weren’t aware of it (Clampitt Paper dude, Watermark Church). Jon is a visual storyteller, and he captures the rich heritage of the state of Texas in a way like no other.
Bloom
Lauren Lewchuk, 2019
Acrylic & alcohol ink in metal
10" x 16"
Lauren Lewchuk is an Arlington, Texas-based designer, illustrator and fine artist. Her work is characterized by painstaking layers and detail, which she achieves with fine-point alcohol ink pens. She prefers metal surfaces whose smoothness and reflective qualities allow the colors to pop.
Candy Koala
Alec DeJesus, 2019
Acrylic on reclaimed wood
12" x 10"
Born in Chicago and raised in Peoria, artist Alec DeJesus turned to art as a means of escaping a rough upbringing. Focusing on enveloping a very real message of “strength and pride through perseverance” in his vibrant paintings, he has taken that message to various places around the country by creating largescale murals, lecturing at schools, and curating and showing in galleries locally and nationally.
Tillman Street Project: Photo Album
Lisa Bachman, 2018
Digital print mounted on plexiglass
48" x 60" (X2)
Lisa Bachman is a Dallas-based photographic documentarian and historian. The images for the Tillman Street (Detroit) project were captured from a discarded family album she found in an urban section of the city. The photos therein are damaged and degraded, giving the photographic output a haunting appearance. The images are emblematic of the urban decay of the Detroit area, which Lisa and her husband (photographer and fine artist) Ray Hand have attempted to reverse through their personal humanitarian efforts.
Untitled
Mariell Guzman, 2019
Guache and watercolor on paper
14" x 5"
Mariell Guzman is an artist, designer and muralist based in Fort Worth. Her work is know for its wild colors and imaginative floral elements. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.
Blue & Green Squiggle
Mariel Pohlman, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 20"
Mariel Pohlman is an illustrator, artist and muralist based in Dallas. Her work is noted for its whimsical, upbeat subject matter. This self-taught artist abandoned her accounting career to pursue art after a 6-month backpack trip to Asia, where she just started “filling up sketch pads”. Mariel currently works full-time painting murals, and her artwork can be seen all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Her clients include Heineken, Lyft, Wal-Mart, Alto, and more. In addition, she has been featured by D Magazine, the Dallas Observer, and The Dallas Morning News.
Muddy
Tom D and Melissa Duimstra, 2006
Metal and acrylic on wood panel
8" x 12"
This piece captures the life and music of blues singer-songwriter, Muddy Waters.
My Father’s Life
Ray Hand, 2019
Acrylic on assembled wood panels
144" x 12"
This piece was commissioned by Ken Womack specifically for the MindHandle lobby to represent the storytelling nature the agency embraces. Ray’s direction was “tell a visual story 12 feet long and one foot high”. No other input was given. Ray’s creation captures his father’s long life in three parts: early years, middle age, and later life.
Radio Nurse #1
Sam Gummelt, 1999
Mixed media on wood
20" x 11"
Sam Gummelt is a Texas modernist, whose pieces range from large abstract constructions to encaustic work on found objects like pizza boxes. He holds an MFA from SMU, and his work has been exhibited around the US in major galleries and museums, and alongside modern artistic icons such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Sam lives in East Dallas. He can Ken are in a coffee group together.
8 Ball
Ken Womack, 2019
Acrylic paint on reclaimed wood
34" diameter
8 Ball was painted on the top part of a large cable spool, found in the recycling area of an apartment building. The other pieces of the spool were used for other pieces of art.
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Ken Womack, 2019
Acrylic paint on reclaimed plywood
34" diameter
The brushstrokes and execution of Chocolate Chip Cookie are loose and impressionistic, inspired by Van Gogh’s painting style, one of Ken’s major influences.
Mix Tape: Circa 1983
Ken Womack, 2019
Mixed media sculpture
48" x 30" x 4"
Mix Tape represents the time of Ken Womack’s college years, where music played an integral part of the vibrant scene in Austin, Texas. The playlist is a compilation of classic music from that year (considered the apex of the “mix tape era”, before CDs became mainstream), the artist’s favorites, as well as those of his friends and contemporaries. The tape stock dangling from the bottom of the piece is emblematic of the confusion of youth and the ever-present sense of unpredictability that marked that time in Ken’s life.
With art, it’s always personal.
As Ken puts it, “We’ve all been in businesses with crappy prints on the walls. But original art is a personal thing. There’s a connection you make with a piece of art—it’s a living artifact of someone’s creativity. There’s soul in the art piece. You can’t get that from a print.”
Come by our office sometime and experience the full “magnetude” of these pieces for yourself.
