You’ve Got to See the New Coloring Book that Celebrates Texas Musicians

Sara Hickman grew up in Houston when her family moved from North Carolina. Growing up in Texas, she attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and graduated from North Texas State University (now known as the University of North Texas) in 1986 with a BA in painting. After that, Hickman moved to Dallas to become a recording artist, and in 1995, she moved to Austin, in the Texas Hill Country. She’s long been known for her Texas music contributions and has even served as Texas State Musician for a term. Now she’s continuing to celebrate the contributions this state has made in music in a whole new way, through the publishing of a coloring book.

“An Eclectic Array of Texas Musicians” is a coloring book that Hickman wrote and illustrated. She’s said that this is only volume one, since she wasn’t able to include everyone she wanted to. “I retired from music three years ago,” she told texasstandard.org. “I was thinking, ‘What else can I do?’” Opting to return to her visual artistic roots, she determined to create a coloring book, which also included word games, activities, and a chart of Texas troubadours. “I wanted this to be a book that people could sit around with family and friends, put their phones away and just be Zen, and immerse themselves in the wonder of Texas music,” Hickman explained to texasstandard.org.

Photo: Instagram/sarasings

Hickman included such Texas musical contributors as Selena, Buddy Holly, and Erykah Badu, among others. She first took to Facebook with a request for people to identify their favorite Texas musician, and received thousands of responses, making the narrowing of the list quite difficult. So, she set out to make sheets by genre, which helped to organize the artists by their type of music. Hickman didn’t want it to just be popular musicians. For example, Kelly Clarkson didn’t make into volume one, but Hickman says she’ll be in the next volume.

“In the front of the coloring book, the first thing I wrote was, ‘Music doesn’t come from somewhere; it comes from someone. So please support music creators by paying for music and attending live shows,’” Hickman told texasstandard.org. Proceeds from Sara Hickman’s “An Eclectic Array of Texas Musicians” coloring book will go towards the Sanford Community Center in Palacios, Texas, for which she is a Volunteer-Executive Director.