On Sunday, August 23, Trails West!® brings back the Community Worship Service.

The festival opens on Sunday, at 11 a.m. for just a $2 wristband, which can be purchased at the gates, or from local churches. If you already have a Trails West!® button or t-shirt that will also get you in.

Shannen White, Trails West!® co-chair, feels “Trails West!® is one of the many reason why we love St. Joseph. Let’s band together and make St. Joseph an even stronger community. We are a city with passion, talent and heart. We all have a heart for the city.”

Scott Hawkins, Teaching Pastor at the Edge, opens the main stage Sunday at 1 p.m., followed by the Mid City Excellence Praise Dancers and the Word of Faith Community Praise Christian Fellowship. The Praise Dancers will be front and center and invite you to participate and worship with them.

Following the dancers, Reverend Bryan Gregory, Senior Pastor at Brookdale Presbyterian Church, will speak on “Seeking the good of the City” going along with the Trails West!® festival theme, “heART for the City.”

After the community worship service, Christian band Sanctus Real takes the main stage. Sanctus Real is a multiple Grammy-nominated Christian rock band who has topped the Christian Billboard charts for almost 20 years. Festival attendees will recognize songs like “Beautiful Day,” “Everything About You,” “The Fight Song,” “Forgiven,” “We Need Each Other” and “Lead Me.”

Json Myers says its fun for him to exhibit art works with someone else where the works get along. Typically, he says, his works “bully the other paintings.”

That shouldn’t be a problem in his latest exhibition, because he’s sharing wall space with his mom.

“Two Red Roys; mother & son mid-career retrospective,” opens for a special preview tonight at 6pm at the International Trucking Service Extra Fine Art Gallery (803 Francis).

Json Roy Myers and Roye Jan Myers blur the lines and defy the traditional barriers in art, challenging pre-conceived notions about terms like “sculpture” and “painting,” just as Myers’ gallery blurs, challenges and defies traditional notions about downtown St Joseph.

Myers is bullish on downtown. The promotional flier for the event places the gallery at 803 Francis, St. Joseph, MO in the Downtown Arts District.

We spoke with both artists during installation of the exhibition.

Mr Myers says he became enamored of “the tools, and the agression and the innovation” in sculpture and brings to bear some of those ideas in his paintings. As it turns out, his mom, Roye Jan Myers, has been doing much the same thing for Json’s entire life.

“I physically kind of destroyed the “prissy medium” of painting,” Myers says. “I made three-dimensional, I made wood, I burned into them, I made them kind of strong, physical structures, as opposed to delicate.”

“And she’s doing that on canvas and on paper, using just color. And, using some dimensionality, she also breaks the two-dimensional plane of the painting in a lot of her works.”

Mom says she’s excited about the exhibition.

“We have always thought that our attitudes toward paintings are similar,” Ms Myers said in an interview.

“He lives in St Joseph and I live in Dallas and he didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, “and it just kind of works together. It’s fun.”

“I was brought up with some of these paintings,” says Json. “Some of these paintings are four or five years older than me. Some of them are freshly wet today.”

And yet this marks the first time the artistic family pair have shown their work together.

“I’ve been in all these group exhibits and had all these opportunities to show,” says Mr Myers, “and almost every time I’m in one, I get my own wall, I get ostracized. My paintings are bullies, they’re aggressive, they pick on the other paintings.”

“I can’t bully her paintings. Mine and hers mix in together and they completely make sense.”

Besides, he says “you can’t bully your mom. She’ll ground me.”

A judge on Friday refused to allow cameras in the courtroom during the proceedings for a 16-year-old being tried as an adult for the alleged murder of his grandparents.

Buchanan County Associate Circuit Judge Keith Marquart sustained an objection lodged by the defendant to the camera request, and agreed to prohibit the recording or photographing of the defendant.

Judge Marquart scheduled the case for a status review hearing and preliminary hearing docket call August 21.

He rejected any changes to Mr Johnson’s bail status.  The judge overruled a motion by the state to deny bond, and denied another motion filed by the defense to reduce the defendant’s bail.   Mr Johnson remains in custody under $250,000 bail.

Johnson was certified to be tried as an adult on August 12. A short time later prosecutors filed two counts of first degree murder. They also filed alternative counts of second degree murder for each of the two alleged homicides.

The charges stem from the fatal shooting of Johnson’s grandparents James and Beverly Johnson at the home they shared with the defendant on Hurlingen Road in eastern Buchanan County.

The victims were found during the early-morning hours of July 4.

The Livingston County Sheriff’s Office is asking for assistance to identify a person of interest in a stolen vehicle investigation.

The Office said on August 05 the LCSO recovered a vehicle stolen from the State of Iowa on private property just north of Chillicothe City limits.

Subsequent investigation yielded evidence which led back to a Trenton business that was able to provide this photo of the unknown person entering their store. Authorities are attempting to identify this person of interest.

The department said there is concern that whomever was involved with this Iowa vehicle may have been involved with additional stolen vehicle(s) in north Missouri.

Anyone with information is asked to call the LCSO at 660-646-0515 or 24-hour dispatch at 660-646-2121.