Arts in the Sunset debuts AJ Swope Performance Plaza with a celebration

The Arts in the Sunset and Friends of AJ Swope celebrated the inaugural performance and event Friday night at the newly finished AJ Swope Performance Plaza at Arts in the Sunset in Amarillo.

Zac Wilkerson, singer-songwriter formerly of Amarillo and a close friend of the late AJ Swope ,performed for the crowd at the event. Swope, who died in 2013, was a former broadcaster at KVII-TV and executive director of Class 4 Winds which had a profound impact on the wind energy growth in the Texas Panhandle. He was also a songwriter and musician.

The new outdoor performance venue was built to celebrate his love of music and Amarillo’s music community, of which Swope was a great supporter.

Craig Vaughn, a member of Friends of AJ Swope's board of directors, spoke about the venue in a news release.

“AJ was always open to talking to and helping out the next artist trying to make a name for himself,” Vaughn said. “Having a stage on which Amarillo's up-and-coming artists can hone their craft in front of a live audience is a very important piece of their careers. AJ truly cared about Amarillo's local and live music scene and this stage will guarantee that his passion for it will live on.”

The executive director of Arts in the Sunset, Rachel Flores also spoke about the opening of the venue.

“The Arts in the Sunset staff and board are humbled and honored to be able to memorialize AJ Swope in this way,” Flores said. “Having a performance plaza of this caliber allows us to broaden the scope of our programming to include the performing arts, which further supports the arts community as a whole in Amarillo. AJ was a man with extraordinary talents and a fierce love for his community, and we hope that by bearing his name, this Plaza too will come to know and share the extraordinary.”

Wendy Swope, AJ’s wife and a board member for Friends of AJ Swope, spoke about how it felt to have this first performance at a venue honoring her late husband.

“It is overwhelming; the last time all of these people were together was 10 years ago and we were at his funeral,” Swope said. “To be able to bring people from so many different backgrounds together gain to truly celebrate AJ and put smiles on our faces with everything that he brought into our lives. It has been amazing and everything with AJ is always bittersweet for sure. There is always a sad component to it but tonight we are celebrating.”

Swope said AJ would have been humbled by this honor.

“I do not think he would feel that he deserved it,” she said. “I am not sure he understood how much he touched people on this earth before he left. This is a true testament to the legacy he left just by knowing people and being himself.

She said one of the reasons they honored her husband with a performance plaza was that his main passion was music. He had started playing music in high school and later started a band that played all over the Tri-State Region.

“Music was his love language; it was how he told his stories and connected to people,” Swope said. “So, to be able to bring a performance plaza where other people can do that, I think he would think it was pretty amazing.”

According to Swope, when the Sunset Center started to do its remodel to create its arts mecca, a key missing component was a musical performance area.

“When they partnered with our nonprofit, we were able to help them bring the music component into the rest of the arts component, which really helped make a full arts mecca component to the Sunset in the Arts which included the arts and music," she said.

Swope said the group has received amazing support from the community from both people who knew AJ Swope and those who knew of him.

“To watch people come in here tonight and see this for the first time is really cool,” Swope said. “It is quite unique, just like he was. I just would like to thank all of our friends, family and community members who believed in this project supported us and who came out tonight to support us. It was awesome to see.”

The Friends of AJ Swope is also engaging in fundraising efforts to construct the Texas Panhandle First Responders Memorial in downtown Amarillo. For more information or to donate, go to friendsofajswope.org.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Arts in the Sunset spotlights its new AJ Swope Performance Plaza