For more than half a century, Austin artist Don Collins crisscrossed 
Texas looking for traces of the past. Most often he has found them 
in a variety of old buildings. Drawings of these places, thirteen a 
year, appeared for three decades in popular calendars issued in 
Austin by the Miller Blueprint Company. The publications themselves 
have become collectors' items.

    In order to prepare his annual calendars, Don frequented less-
traveled byways and often forgotten places. When he discovered that 
he had begun retracing his routes, he bought a stack of Texas county 
road maps. The artist marked the courses that he had taken so that 
he would be sure to see new country on each subsequent foray: "I 
would seek out roads that followed the path of least resistance, often 
up a creek. I would follow them and usually find an old structure." In 
time he expanded his geographical range to more distant areas of the 
state: "I wanted to go there and see what it's like."

    In this book Collins has chosen seventy from more than three 
hundred works of art that he created for the Miller Blueprint 
calendars. The carefully detailed renderings record buildings from 
farmhouses to industrial plants, from shanties to mansions. Through 
these pages viewers tour the state both visually and through the 
artist's own recollections about the remarkable range of places he 
has recorded with pencil and paper.


_________________________________________________________

A native of Parker County, DON COLLINS served in the U.S. Army 
during the Korean War, attended classes at several Texas universities, 
and in 1956 entered an informal partnership with Austin printer Jack 
Wilson. Operating from a business they called The Art Studio, the 
two men designed and produced graphic arts materials for customers 
that ranged from real estate agents to book publishers. All this time 
Don inclined toward drawing old architectural works. Several large 
commissions from printers stimulated a long-time interest in rural 
scenes and architecture. He lives in Austin and Arlington. T. LINDSAY 
BAKER holds the W.K. Gordon Chair in Texas Industrial History at 
Tarleton State University. He is the author of more than twenty books 
on the history of Texas and the American West.


Of Related Interest



EARLY TEXAS ARCHITECTURE

978-0-87565-223-8 CLOTH

$34.95

EL PASO IN PICTURES

978-0-87565-350-1 CLOTH

$29.95