WATCH: Local artist's pop art creations brighten up local eatery

Jan Sullivan Booker, aka JSully, at Brick House Grill. - Photo by Zoey Lawless of The Sentinel-Record
Jan Sullivan Booker, aka JSully, at Brick House Grill. - Photo by Zoey Lawless of The Sentinel-Record

If you have eaten at Brick House Grill downtown in the last five years, you have seen the pop art creations of Jan Sullivan Booker, aka JSully, ranging from film and music celebrity portraits to Razorback parodies to her popular Oaklawn silk and Guardian Angel series.

Booker's unique and colorful paintings can be seen hanging on all the walls upstairs and down and even in the ladies bathroom of the restaurant, located at 801 Central Ave. in Spencer's corner, where the bartenders, waiters and waitresses serve as her "sales staff and closers," Booker said, laughing. "They take care of me."

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A native of Nashville, in Howard County, Booker taught English there for over 20 years and went on to be assistant principal at Nashville Junior High for two years and principal at Nashville High School for four years while her husband, Doug, was principal at Mineral Springs.

After 32 years in education there, she said she and her husband "had always loved Hot Springs" so they purchased a lake home here about 15 years ago and began looking for jobs in the area. While her husband would serve as principal at Mountain Pine for eight years, Booker said she spent one year as curriculum coordinator for the Hot Springs School District and "got to the point I was just ready to retire."

Booker said her mother's death from a stroke at 59 "left such an impression on me" and inspired her to "make the most of the life you have. I wanted to retire as soon as I could afford it and got to the point I could do it."

She said she has always loved art having come from a "very creative" mother whose philosophy was "anything worth doing is worth overdoing. So we both go at things 100%." She never had art classes growing up because "they didn't have those in my day," so she "never had a chance to see what I had to offer."

She said she was "always a doodler" and "more crafty than a painter," and took it upon herself to introduce her students in Nashville to art, obtaining a grant for materials and books. Then she had each of her students do an art project every year where they chose an artist and learned everything they could about them.

"That little school down there has a great art supply now," Booker said. "They have a huge collection of art posters."

After she retired to Hot Springs and suddenly had free time, Booker decided "This is my time if I'm going to pursue some kind of art as a hobby." She started out helping her best friend, Terre Tollett, who is also an artist, with her artwork.

"Really, for a number of years, I sort of represented her," she said, noting she got Tollett's art displayed at KJ's Grill in Hot Springs, which at the time was owned by her friends, Mike and Kelly Loy, and then "started dabbling" with her own art, initially focusing on paintings of celebrities.

"I've always liked celebrities so that's the first thing I tried to paint. I work from photos. I'm working on a commission piece of Maya Angelou right now for a couple in Arkadelphia and I will go through the internet looking until I find the photo that inspires me," she said. "My style is pop art, more or less like color blocking. Not a lot of blending, just putting shades of color, sort of like (Andy) Warhol did. That pop art style."

While people often want paintings of their pets, children or grandchildren and Booker used to do those, she said, "I sort of shy away from that now because I stay very busy with this down here. I love doing celebrities. It's sort of my thing, my niche so to speak."

Booker first began displaying her art at KJ's Grill, but eventually the Loys sold the restaurant. She said the Loys had originally owned Brick House Grill and "a lot of the people here are pretty much the same staff as when they had it."

She went into Brick House for lunch one day and the manager asked her if she could hang some of her art there. "It was so ironic," she said. "The new owners of KJ's had just called me to come pick up my art. They were going in a different direction. So I had all these paintings ready to go."

Scott Cates, the new owner, who used to work for the Loys, "has been really good to me," Booker said. "After five years of putting up paintings now, I have the place filled. The waitresses and waiters are like my sales staff and the bartenders are the closers."

She said Cates will even let someone buying a painting put their purchase on a credit card and then pay her later. "It's been a great deal. It's been awesome for me, but Scott and the others tell me people are constantly talking about the artwork. Plus he doesn't have to do anything. I arrange them and keep them stocked."

Booker was recently inspired to do an entire series of country music performers after seeing the documentary by Ken Burns on the history of country music, creating portraits of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline and her personal favorite, Linda Ronstadt, among others.

"It's just whatever inspires me and I'll do a whole series of them," she said.

Her family is big fans of the Razorbacks since her husband, daughter and son-in-law all graduated from University of Arkansas in Fayetteville so she created a whole series of Razorback parodies of art classics.

"I don't know why I decided to do a parody series," she said. "It just came to me." She said the most popular one is a recreation of the American Gothic by Grant Wood, with razorbacks in place of the farm couple. "I have sold a lot of those," she said. "I sell one and paint another one. When one sells, I just reproduce it."

She does the same with her celebrity portraits, noting, "I have painted Elvis so many times. A lot of times people like a particular photo and that one will sell more than the others. I'm painting Stevie Nicks right now. She's big. She sells a lot. I sold one not long ago so I'm painting another one."

Booker does a lot of "tribute portraits' of celebrities who have died, including Kobe Bryant, Prince and Frank Broyles. "People I looked up to and admired I am inspired to paint after their deaths," she said.

"If I work really steady, I can do one in a week. If I worked harder and had a deadline, I could do it in less," she said. "In the last stages, there are some little detailed things that take time."

She also has her "Guardian Angel" series which are "more like modern folk art. I paint in a loose style. I actually paint with my fingertip. They're primitive compared to my other stuff, but they're so much fun for me to do."

The "Guardian Angel" series is mostly on display in the ladies restroom, she said, with "the whole restroom covered in angels. They're cheaper and smaller. Tourists come here and want a little memento and will buy one to take back to their daughter or granddaughter or something like that."

Booker is also known for her paintings inspired by Oaklawn. While she has done paintings of some of the famous horses that have come through the racetrack, her specialty is paintings of the unique silks worn by the jockeys who rode the horses.

"These are horses that are very special to Arkansans, like they won the Arkansas Derby, and came through Oaklawn. I paint horses some, but they are not my favorite. But I sell a lot of the silks portraits. People will have their favorite horse and want that particular silk. They aren't as time-consuming as the portraits."

One recent sale Booker is very proud of, she said, noting a portrait she did of actor Morgan Freeman was purchased by a friend of his and is now hanging in the Ground Zero bar Freeman owns in Mississippi.

"It's right there when you first walk in," she said. "That's really cool."

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