Culture in Art

I excitedly drove through the beautiful campus at the Central Oregon Community Colleges conference with mountain views as a gorgeous backdrop. I was going to be 1. Launching my new book 2. Share my art and engage with the community and 3. Doing a class at their annual event; the topic in 2023 was “Creativity, Curiosity and Relationships at the Heart of Early Learning.”

I arrived around 8 to drop off the display materials for my booth and paint supplies for a class I would be doing later that day.  After unpacking, I invested the day to set up my booth first and freshly unpacked my first order of my first ever printed book: “Look at What’s Inside.” Afterward, I delivered my art supplies to the classroom where I was going to be hosting 30 different teachers for a Paint with the Artist workshop. I was setting up, cleaning up, and then participating in a panel discussion and didn’t stop until 5 pm, so I wasn’t even able to visit my booth once on Friday to interact with the guests. Exhausted after missing any type of meal, I drove home for a quick meal and rest. I fell asleep shortly after arriving home from sheer exhaustion. On Saturday, I woke up refreshed and excited to talk with educators at the conference and contribute to the canvas. I made my first official book sale and invited guests to contribute what “culture in art” meant to them.

A few months later, in July, I attended another First Friday at Outside In, a retail shop in downtown Bend where I was invited back for the 3rd time, and this time, just like the first…I brought the canvas. Since there were a few contributions to it and the canvas still looked like it needed more, I invited more of the community to contribute. It’s always fun to watch people know EXACTLY what they are going to write and watch others consider what they are going to write. The prompt catches some in exact places of “yes, there is something I’m working on right now that fits exactly what this is” to others that need more time for reflection. That’s why I love interacting with the community and having a deep intention in each word contributed to the canvas.

After that event, I wanted to do one more event and attended my first-ever Second Saturday in Sunriver. Cascade Sotheby’s hosted me and we set up outside on a beautiful summer evening. I enjoyed meeting all ages of artists and one very large family, I believe they had 7 or 8 kids and were very inquisitive about the art and shared the process with their Mom and enjoyed seeing the words and images the kids added to it. It was fun explaining the process to the kids and sharing more details about it.

I began painting this on August 26, 2023. As I started the process, and read over the words and at times will recall that exact exchange as to why that word meant something to that person. Afterward, as I write in my book, it’s time to “Stop thinking and pick a color and go.”  In many of my paintings, I add a lot of paint directly to the canvas, and the words of this painting are deeply encapsulated.  As I was reflecting on the words, listening to the music I was listening to, and enjoying watching the colors pop, I got to a great place of texture and decided to add a lot of white, directly in the center. Since this was “Culture in Art” I feel the white in the center represents the newness of a blank canvas (a new day, a new chapter in your life) of which everything flows. We are co-creating the culture and I am a bit biased and feel that the arts are essential to us finding the similarities we all have together. After I got to the end, and looked at the unique colors, I let it dry and was going to add another treatment, and when I went to take the canvas down to paint it, I looked at it and decided it was NOW finished. I talk about 3 stages of a done and this one came under the category “it’s not done…oh wait, it is done.”

Enjoy “Culture in Art.”