Lu Feazle-Hurt

​​​​​​Lu  started her formal art instruction in 1968 at the age of 8 and immediately sold her first oil of a donkey with flower baskets for $35.00. She took her profit and did what we all do....she bought more art supplies and in 1972 switched her medium to watercolors. In 1978 she worked as a representative and demonstrator for art product manufacturers, provided interior and landscape design services and was the Lead Judge in the first Southwest Airlines Employee Art Show. She started her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in 1979 at Sam Houston State University and worked as a national representative for another craft company. She ultimately moved to Austin, Texas where she worked for the Schafer Company, a crystal manufacturer. . She immediately set about improving the business by pulling together an product catalog, completing 42 new crystal designs and copywriting many figurines. All 42 were accepted for production. She then designed the first mall kiosks for Sears where they could sell crystal figurines. 

  In 1981, at the age of 21, Lu  helped start Tolefinder magazine  She sold advertising, designed covers, sold circulation and set type. Even though her parents had always discouraged her from becoming an artist (they preferred she stay in the business side of art because she wasn’t talented enough to make it as a full time artist), she knew that it was always her art that got her through both the good times and the bad. One of her professors and mentors, Dr. Harry Ayshen, taught her about art leasing, copyrighting and the concept of painting something every day and doing a self-portrait every year so that you know who you are and where you’re going. Finally, in 1983, she graduated from the BFA program At Sam Houston State with a double major in painting and sculpture and moved back to Houston to work as the new Co-Director for the Inner Loop Revitalization Project where they turned empty warehouses into art studios and art event spaces. She started the first art leasing business in Houston, opened a commercial interior design shop doing residential murals and historical restorations of residential districts.