Denton Artists Work with Local Businesses in New Denton Halloween Artist Mentorship Program!
About DHAMP
DHAMP is a mentorship program designed to build relationships between fellow artists, local businesses, and community members while contributing to one of Denton's most visible and celebrated public events. Emerging artists (Mentees) are paired with professional artists (Mentors) experienced in public art to form artist teams. Together, these teams will collaborate with participating businesses in the Denton Downtown Square to design public artworks displayed during the month of October 2026.
Paper Chair Statement (Why DHAMP, What is DHAMP, What is Paper Chair)
Founded in 2025 by Joshua Steven Bryant and Delaney Smith-Vaughn, Paper Chair Studios is a nonprofit organization based in Denton, Texas, working to strengthen the visual arts community across North Texas.
Paper Chair Studios is an artist-led organization. The founders and board of directors are practicing artists and educators who feel firsthand the lack of studio space, funding, and visibility for artists in Denton. Each member believes that investing in the arts doesn't just improve artists' lives; it benefits our community economically and strengthens the physical and mental well-being of our town. Our city is rich in creatives, but it needs more scaffolding and support for them to thrive. Paper Chair Studios is committed to advocating for the arts and connecting artists to essential resources across North Texas.
DHAMP (Denton Halloween Artist Mentorship Program) pairs 5 artist teams with 5 local businesses to create unique public art for Denton's 2026 Thirty One Days of Halloween programming. DHAMP provides funding and support for local artists to make public artwork, pairing professional mentors with emerging artists. Mentors give back to the art community and mentees gain hands-on experience with public art best practices.
Outside of DHAMP, Paper Chair Studios hosts many other programs. The organization hosts the Back Door Residency, a residency program at Greater Denton Arts Council that artists can have a studio space to make their artwork and meet our community. Each spring, Paper Chair hosts Monster Art Rally, a one-day live art making event that invites over 50 artists to make and sell artwork while inviting our community to collect affordable art. In 2027, Paper Chair will partner with Greater Denton Artist Council to facilitate Artist INC, an eight week cutting-edge professional development program that empowers artists to take control of their careers and create opportunities they’ve only imagined.
ARTIST'S STATEMENTS
Frankenstones
Aileen Khuu & Christopher Blay - The Brown Thumb, 215 N Cedar St
Frankenstones is a strange geology art installation among the houseplants and matcha at The Brown Thumb. Made of paper pulp and synthetic materials such as styrofoam and plastics, Frankenstones is inspired by plastiglomerates, the hybrid stones that form when melted plastic fuses with sand, sediment, and rock. Frankenstones haunt visitors in a visual splendor, inviting them to imagine a future where plastic is unavoidable. The installation considers rock not only as a geological form but as a carrier of time, history, and meaning, and treats each specimen as a point of reflection on how plastic has invaded our lives as we continue to produce waste. Every stone is a small warning about the future we are quietly fossilizing.
Christopher Blay, an artist, writer, and curator based in Fort Worth, leads the artist team as mentor. His mentee, Aileen Khuu, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas who works primarily with paper pulp. Blay is a contributing writer for Art in America, and his most recent exhibition was on view at Ballroom Marfa in spring 2025. Blay curated The Fire This Time at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2025, and his public art sculpture The East Rosedale Monument Project is installed at 920 East Rosedale in Fort Worth. Khuu earned a B.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of North Texas in 2025 and has quickly become an important part of the DFW art community. She recently joined Cohort 6 of The Cedars Union and Cohort 2 of the McDermott Fellows at Dallas Museum of Art, and continues to exhibit across the metroplex as an emerging artist.
Família
Sid Dominguez & Dan Black - Barnhart's Barbershop, 110 W Oak St
Família transforms Barnhart's Barbershop into a lively scene of ghostly proportions. Sid Dominguez and Dan Black scale Sid's drawings up into life size figures that portray the Barnhart family alongside Dan and Sid themselves, all rendered as skeletons. Visitors interact with a living drawing pulled off the page and onto the sidewalk. Join the celebration of Mexican identity and heritage turning the whole street into the family portrait.
Barnhart’s mentor, Dan Black, has worked as a visual artist in North Texas for over fifteen years. His mentee, Sid Dominguez, is a 25-year-old Latina artist based in Denton and currently a senior in UNT's College of Visual Arts and Design. Black creates murals, sculptures, and paintings for local businesses and exhibitions in galleries across the state of Texas. His favorite thing about art is the way it helps us explore our surroundings and each other. Dominguez’s body of work explores masculinity, tenderness, and storytelling through illustrations of her skeleton persona. Dominguez’s skeletal self acts as a catalyst for vulnerability, becoming a window for others to view how he feels about himself and the world around her.
I Saw the Harvest Glow
Chynna Blue, Kristin Wyly, and Morgan & Eric Grasham - Harvest House, 331 E Hickory St
I Saw the Harvest Glow invites visitors to explore a haunted, larger-than life CRT television, home to oozy, curious creatures. Step inside the TV to take a photo and get the fright of your life when you realize YOU are frozen in the static!
Morgan and Eric Grasham, artists known for their installations at Meow Wolf, lead the Harvest House artist team as mentors. Their mentees, Chynna Blue and Kristin Wyly, both landed in Denton in 2009 and have been collaborating on creative projects there ever since.
The Grashams combine traditional sculpture methods with digital and industrial fabrication to build durable, interactive, multisensory experiences. Their science-fiction-informed work emphasizes authoring the future by embracing otherness and speculative living. Blue came to UNT for watercolor and now builds puppets for music videos and celebrations. She is Event Coordinator at Harvest House where she hand-fabricates custom decor. Wyly is a costumer, visual artist, SFX artist, and amateur monster maker who studied costume design and construction at UNT. She has worked with Metropolis Productions since 2022 and designed and built the costumes for the original ballet Nightmare Before the Nutcracker.
Toxic Bloom
Olli Miller & Jacob Phillips - The Bearded Monk, 112 E McKinney St
Toxic Bloom begins with a buried story. Hidden in the courtyard behind The Bearded Monk rests an abandoned time capsule, meant to preserve a piece of Denton's history and forgotten before it was ever opened. Weather and neglect have fractured its concrete shell, and a fluorescent substance has seeped into the soil. The dormant catalyst has awoken underground. Carnivorous flowers now tower from planters, inviting guests to observe their dangerous beauty. Don’t get too close, or their glow will pull you in and you’ll become forever entangled in their grasp.
Jacob Phillips leads the artist team at Bearded Monk as mentor, and Ollie Miller is his mentee. Phillips is an interdisciplinary artist whose creative journey transports viewers into an imaginary Southern landscape, offering a perspective shaped by the experiences of queer identity. He earned an MFA in Sculpture from the University of North Texas in 2021 and a BFA in Sculpture from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2017, and now holds the position of Sculpture Visual Arts Technician and Adjunct Professor at UNT. Miller makes work that challenges the thresholds of social anthropology, exposing the harm placed on those who don't fit the molds society considers respectable. Centered on the marginalization of women, trans, and queer people, Miller's work protests those constructs and the traumas they have created. After their brother's passing, they began grouping grief, religious trauma, and liberation into work intent on displaying growth, change, and revolution.
The Witching Hour
Aurora Arellano & Brooke Chaney - Miss Angeline's, 125 Oak St
When the clock strikes midnight and last call is announced, Miss Angeline emerges as Halloween's most charming spirit. Taking its cue from her life as a late-1800s saloon owner, The Witching Hour converts Miss Angeline’s into a ghastly celebration staged in hand-painted, life-size wooden cutouts, painted windows, and photo-op scenes drawn from Victorian and other vintage Halloween traditions. A fortune teller awaits to warn you of future horrors, a jack-o'-lantern scarecrow keeps watch on the steps, and a spectral woman waits in velvet. Beware of the wide-jawed black dog baring its teeth. You may find yourself floating into the past, never to return.
MOM (Brooke Chaney), a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, leads the team at Miss Angeline’s as mentor. Her mentee, Aurora Arellano, is a portrait artist born and raised in Texas and based in Denton. With a B.F.A in Fibers from the University of North Texas, Chaney draws deeply on a background in textile surface design. Screen printing, vector drawing, and heat transfer vinyl inform Chaney’s approach to painting. MOM has created work for numerous national brands, participates annually in local events such as Mural Fest in the Tin District, and co-founded the award-winning art education studio TRADE Oak Cliff. Since 2020 Arellano has been a professional watercolor artist, creating unique window and sign paintings for local businesses. She received her B.F.A in Studio Art from the University of North Texas, with a Concentration in Watercolor.
