Paintings by Creston artist Alison Masters lead to audio-visual gallery
Musician/composer Gary Deatherage, painter Alison Masters and video/film artist Richard Reeves.
Alison Masters made watercolour and pencil sketches each evening after a day of walking during a two-month trek with her husband, Dave Drennan, along the famed pilgrimage path from Seville to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
She had no idea at the time that those sketches would eventually lead to a multimedia collaboration with two other Creston artists.
“We walked 1,000 kilometres from Seville to Finisterre (the coastal town near Santiago de Compostela),” Masters said. ”Every day after we finished walking, I painted from anywhere from 15 to about 45 minutes. I would just find a little scene and I’d used my watercolours and my pencils. By the end of the trip, I had filled two sketchbooks, so that was about 100 pages of sketches.”
Back in the studio behind her Ninth Avenue North home, Masters found inspiration to approach her art in a different way than she usually has.
“When we got home I had all these sketches and I’ve never before been able to turn sketches into paintings,” she aid. “What I’ve always done is gone out on-site with really big boards and painted what I was looking at.
“So, I just started with some of my favourite little sketches and I decided that as a working title I would call them Travel Posters. It just seemed like they were headed in a direction of how you would want to advertise a place if you wanted people to go there — they are kind of happy. I could just see them as advertising posters.
“After about 10 months of painting I had 34 paintings. They were mostly the same size — 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet — and some of them were painted over and over. I’d paint on a board and I wouldn’t like what I’d done so I’d flip it over and I wouldn’t like what I’d done so I’d flip it over again. So some of the paintings have paintings underneath that show through.”
Having 34 complete paintings is one thing, though. Finding a suitable way to display them is another.
“I had 34 paintings and I was starting to show them a little bit in my studio. People would come through and say, ‘I want that painting,’ and I’d say, ‘You can’t have it.’ Do you remember that?” she asked one of the people in the room.
“What I was realizing was that I really wanted to see them all together before I released them into the world. Each painting was so dependent on the other paintings. I would learn from one painting to try something else and there was just a real thread from one to the other.
“I wanted to show them in Creston and I wanted to show them together, but I couldn’t think of any place where I could show 34 large paintings all at once. I started thinking, ‘Well you could sort of make your own gallery.’
“I started thinking of projections. If nothing else we have lots of buildings here. Wouldn’t that be a cool thing to do, project them onto a wall outdoors?”
She applied to Columbia Basin Trust for a grant after calling animation and video artist Richard Reeves to see if he would be interested in creating a digital presentation of the paintings.
“I sort of knew Richard from another art exhibit and asked him, ‘Do you want to be a part of this?’ He said yes, but I don’t even know if he knew who I was!”
The grant was approved, and in September Reeves went to work with his camera.
“He took a set of pictures and he was so meticulous,” Masters recalled. “Then he came back and said, ‘I don’t like these pictures and we’re going to do this again.’ ”
Reeves went to work in his own studio, with only the vaguest of instructions.
“What I always said to Richard was, ‘I want my paintings to be shown in the most beautiful gallery in the whole world.’”
The English-born Reeves created a 43-minute silent presentation. The resulting DVD showed each picture for just over minute. Audiences would see a close-up of a small portion of a painting and then the camera would pan to other portions before moving back to show the work in full. The result was a meditative tour of Masters’ memories of those evenings on the Camino de Santiago, each spent in a small Spanish town or village. The paintings are shown in chronological order.
Reeves has a long history in the animation world and locally has shown short films he has made by scratching images onto film strips. The process is meticulous and time-consuming, made more complicated when he also scratches on the edge of the filmstrip to create sounds to accompany the images. He has traveled the world, teaching workshops and working on projects in Europe, South America and Australia.
For Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery, Reeves used his digital expertise to make a computer-generated film.
“I really enjoyed exploring ways to show audiences paintings within each painting, working to bring out the vivid colours that Alison used,” Reeves said.
The resulting video got positive responses when it was projected onto an exterior wall, on a chilly night, at Adam Robertson Elementary School. Later, it would be shown at Prince Charles Theatre before a Friends of the Cinema movie presentation.
Setting the video to music had occurred to Masters, but she was hesitant, not wanting “canned or stereotypical Spanish music.”
Enter a mutual friend, who suggested to musician Gary Deatherage that he might consider writing some music for the pictures. He had only seen Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery once.
“I was inspired by it because there is something different,” he said. “I didn’t look at a painting and think, ‘I’m going to do this with it.’ I thought more of a theme.”
He wrote eight short pieces of music without Masters’ knowledge.
“Gary phoned me about two weeks after he saw the video and said. ‘I’ve composed eight pieces of music for Travel Posters. Do you want to hear them?’ I said, ‘What?’
“I went over to Gary’s studio and we started immediately matching the music to images. Then Gary composed some more music and Richard and I went back there and we did that four times and matched 34 pieces of music perfectly to 34 paintings.”
Deatherage is a retired psychologist who spends much of his time in his backyard music studio, Fort Cosmos Studios, which he shares with his son, Jason. A prolific writer of words and music, he used “every guitar and instrument in the studio.”
“I wanted a Spanish feel but not to overdo the Spanish guitar thing. This was one of the few projects I’ve had where I could do anything I wanted to,” he said. “My inspiration was to use a different instrument to give each piece a different sound.”
Not that it was without challenges.
“Writing short, one-minute pieces was quite different for me,” he said. “With any other song I’ve ever written I could go as long as I wanted to go.”
Putting the music together with the pictures was a three-way collaboration. The musical pieces weren’t necessarily written for a specific painting, so Masters, Reeves and Deatherage would listen to the music and then find an appropriate match.
As visual artists, Masters and Reeves both say they see colours when they listen to music.
“Alison would listen and say, ‘That’s a street,’ or ‘That’s a sky, so it goes with this painting,’ ” Deatherage said. “And it wasn’t just her, Richard was the same way.”
With the audio-visual version of Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery complete, Gary and Jason burned DVDs and designed a cover and liner notes.
For her part, Masters’ two-month trek along the Spanish-Portuguese border has continued throughout her own painting process, Reeves’ work on the video presentation and Deatherage’s musical contribution.
She said the unanticipated collaboration has proven to be inspiring, a sentiment echoed by Reeves and Deatherage. They are already working on a second project, with a third now in the discussion stage.
“This has been an amazing adventure,” Masters said with a wide smile.
Creston Valley Advance
She had no idea at the time that those sketches would eventually lead to a multimedia collaboration with two other Creston artists.
“We walked 1,000 kilometres from Seville to Finisterre (the coastal town near Santiago de Compostela),” Masters said. ”Every day after we finished walking, I painted from anywhere from 15 to about 45 minutes. I would just find a little scene and I’d used my watercolours and my pencils. By the end of the trip, I had filled two sketchbooks, so that was about 100 pages of sketches.”
Back in the studio behind her Ninth Avenue North home, Masters found inspiration to approach her art in a different way than she usually has.
“When we got home I had all these sketches and I’ve never before been able to turn sketches into paintings,” she aid. “What I’ve always done is gone out on-site with really big boards and painted what I was looking at.
“So, I just started with some of my favourite little sketches and I decided that as a working title I would call them Travel Posters. It just seemed like they were headed in a direction of how you would want to advertise a place if you wanted people to go there — they are kind of happy. I could just see them as advertising posters.
“After about 10 months of painting I had 34 paintings. They were mostly the same size — 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet — and some of them were painted over and over. I’d paint on a board and I wouldn’t like what I’d done so I’d flip it over and I wouldn’t like what I’d done so I’d flip it over again. So some of the paintings have paintings underneath that show through.”
Having 34 complete paintings is one thing, though. Finding a suitable way to display them is another.
“I had 34 paintings and I was starting to show them a little bit in my studio. People would come through and say, ‘I want that painting,’ and I’d say, ‘You can’t have it.’ Do you remember that?” she asked one of the people in the room.
“What I was realizing was that I really wanted to see them all together before I released them into the world. Each painting was so dependent on the other paintings. I would learn from one painting to try something else and there was just a real thread from one to the other.
“I wanted to show them in Creston and I wanted to show them together, but I couldn’t think of any place where I could show 34 large paintings all at once. I started thinking, ‘Well you could sort of make your own gallery.’
“I started thinking of projections. If nothing else we have lots of buildings here. Wouldn’t that be a cool thing to do, project them onto a wall outdoors?”
She applied to Columbia Basin Trust for a grant after calling animation and video artist Richard Reeves to see if he would be interested in creating a digital presentation of the paintings.
“I sort of knew Richard from another art exhibit and asked him, ‘Do you want to be a part of this?’ He said yes, but I don’t even know if he knew who I was!”
The grant was approved, and in September Reeves went to work with his camera.
“He took a set of pictures and he was so meticulous,” Masters recalled. “Then he came back and said, ‘I don’t like these pictures and we’re going to do this again.’ ”
Reeves went to work in his own studio, with only the vaguest of instructions.
“What I always said to Richard was, ‘I want my paintings to be shown in the most beautiful gallery in the whole world.’”
The English-born Reeves created a 43-minute silent presentation. The resulting DVD showed each picture for just over minute. Audiences would see a close-up of a small portion of a painting and then the camera would pan to other portions before moving back to show the work in full. The result was a meditative tour of Masters’ memories of those evenings on the Camino de Santiago, each spent in a small Spanish town or village. The paintings are shown in chronological order.
Reeves has a long history in the animation world and locally has shown short films he has made by scratching images onto film strips. The process is meticulous and time-consuming, made more complicated when he also scratches on the edge of the filmstrip to create sounds to accompany the images. He has traveled the world, teaching workshops and working on projects in Europe, South America and Australia.
For Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery, Reeves used his digital expertise to make a computer-generated film.
“I really enjoyed exploring ways to show audiences paintings within each painting, working to bring out the vivid colours that Alison used,” Reeves said.
The resulting video got positive responses when it was projected onto an exterior wall, on a chilly night, at Adam Robertson Elementary School. Later, it would be shown at Prince Charles Theatre before a Friends of the Cinema movie presentation.
Setting the video to music had occurred to Masters, but she was hesitant, not wanting “canned or stereotypical Spanish music.”
Enter a mutual friend, who suggested to musician Gary Deatherage that he might consider writing some music for the pictures. He had only seen Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery once.
“I was inspired by it because there is something different,” he said. “I didn’t look at a painting and think, ‘I’m going to do this with it.’ I thought more of a theme.”
He wrote eight short pieces of music without Masters’ knowledge.
“Gary phoned me about two weeks after he saw the video and said. ‘I’ve composed eight pieces of music for Travel Posters. Do you want to hear them?’ I said, ‘What?’
“I went over to Gary’s studio and we started immediately matching the music to images. Then Gary composed some more music and Richard and I went back there and we did that four times and matched 34 pieces of music perfectly to 34 paintings.”
Deatherage is a retired psychologist who spends much of his time in his backyard music studio, Fort Cosmos Studios, which he shares with his son, Jason. A prolific writer of words and music, he used “every guitar and instrument in the studio.”
“I wanted a Spanish feel but not to overdo the Spanish guitar thing. This was one of the few projects I’ve had where I could do anything I wanted to,” he said. “My inspiration was to use a different instrument to give each piece a different sound.”
Not that it was without challenges.
“Writing short, one-minute pieces was quite different for me,” he said. “With any other song I’ve ever written I could go as long as I wanted to go.”
Putting the music together with the pictures was a three-way collaboration. The musical pieces weren’t necessarily written for a specific painting, so Masters, Reeves and Deatherage would listen to the music and then find an appropriate match.
As visual artists, Masters and Reeves both say they see colours when they listen to music.
“Alison would listen and say, ‘That’s a street,’ or ‘That’s a sky, so it goes with this painting,’ ” Deatherage said. “And it wasn’t just her, Richard was the same way.”
With the audio-visual version of Travel Posters @ the Night Gallery complete, Gary and Jason burned DVDs and designed a cover and liner notes.
For her part, Masters’ two-month trek along the Spanish-Portuguese border has continued throughout her own painting process, Reeves’ work on the video presentation and Deatherage’s musical contribution.
She said the unanticipated collaboration has proven to be inspiring, a sentiment echoed by Reeves and Deatherage. They are already working on a second project, with a third now in the discussion stage.
“This has been an amazing adventure,” Masters said with a wide smile.
Creston Valley Advance
Wynndel artist opens galvanized gallery
When artist Sandy Kunze was profiled in the Advance in 2004, a photograph showed her standing on a kitchen chair, straining to reach the top of a huge, heavily textured painting of an iron that was near completion.
The article explained that Kunze worked in her Wynndel dining room, but hoped that her husband, Dirk, would begin work on a studio later in the year. Now, in 2011, it would seem fair to observe that she has come full circle, completed a seven-year stretch of working in her own dedicated workspace, and then given it up to turn it into a gallery that is now open to the public.
“I’ve moved my studio into the basement of our house,” Kunze said, laughing at the raised eyebrows she gets when explaining herself. “We don’t have as many kids at home anymore.”
True to his word, Dirk built the large, double car garage-sized studio to the east of their home and for years Kunze revelled in the space, working on paintings and become increasingly adept at a potter’s wheel. A pottery kiln was acquired to bisque her pieces, most of which are finished out of doors to produce the raku finishes she favours.
While parental duties may have eased as her four boys grew steadily into young men, Kunze hasn’t spent the last seven years hidden away in her studio. She’s been active in Wynndel community activities and played a large role in helping her pottery group, the Wynndel Mudders, lease space from the community hall and turn it into a group studio. She has spearheaded events to showcase Mudders’ work, involving other artists and artisans to participate, as well. And she has continued to play a vital role in putting together art exhibitions in Creston, using her unerring artist’s eye to display the varied works of dozens of artists who work in a variety of mediums.
Two years ago, she had much of the Creston Valley talking about a calendar she put together as a fundraiser for the Options for Sexual Health clinic. Somehow she convinced more than a dozen unsuspecting males to pose wearing aprons she had created, most of which had women’s underwear sewn into them. The calendar was a hit among buyers as well as friends of the models, who still enjoy ribbing their heretofore macho buddies.
Why a gallery? Why now?
“There isn’t a local gallery where I can show all my work because a lot of the paintings are pretty big (some are as high as eight feet),” she said. “And having a gallery in our yard lets me work on my projects or in the garden until I hear someone arrive.”
Kunze has called her retail outlet Galvanized Art Gallery.
“It’s a veritable jungle of post-modern-retro-expressionism, and you might just want to pack a lunch for this art safari…this one of a kind shopping adventure,” the gallery’s rack card reads.
The word galvanized has several meanings, not surprisingly, the most apt of which is “to startle into action; to stimulate.”
But it is also associated with a process that makes metal resistant to corrosion, and galvanized sheet metal is evident both inside and outside the gallery. Two water features use galvanized metal to add interest to the seating areas on the lawns and decks that surround the building. Inside a large semi-circular countertop serves as a customer service area and holds displays, too. The counter is covered in galvanized sheet metal, one of the many creative construction features built by Dirk.
Sandy has a whimsical view of life and the gallery’s exterior is filled with curiosities. A flowerbed has a couple of paintings — her rejects — of chickens, because the families brood of chickens likes to peck in the dirt there. Beside the stairs that lead to the entrance are twisted mounds of bisqued clay that she saves from her pottery-making sessions. Four cymbals are attached to the exterior wall — she has plans to make them into a gong set that visitors can ring when she doesn’t hear them arrive.
Inside, the walls are filled with paintings, roughly sorted into phases from her Alberta College of Art days in Calgary (where she specialized in printmaking), her heavily textured depictions of household objects and now, muted depictions of greenhouse interiors, vineyards and still lifes with wine bottles.
One window is covered with material she made by stitching together lengths of film and another has a dozen underwear/aprons hanging to provide shade from the late afternoon sun. Shelves and plinths (some constructed with galvanized sheet metal) hold bowls, plates, vases and other utile pottery art. On the floor lies a stretched out pottery pig, perhaps four feet in length.
Galvanized Art Gallery, like the artist whose works fill it to the ceiling, is full of delightful surprises. It is open through September on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and whenever the open sign is displayed. Watch for the signs on the south side of Highway 3A, just east of the turnoff to Wynndel Box and Lumber, at house number 5057. Call 250-866-5728 for more information.
Creston Valley Advance
The article explained that Kunze worked in her Wynndel dining room, but hoped that her husband, Dirk, would begin work on a studio later in the year. Now, in 2011, it would seem fair to observe that she has come full circle, completed a seven-year stretch of working in her own dedicated workspace, and then given it up to turn it into a gallery that is now open to the public.
“I’ve moved my studio into the basement of our house,” Kunze said, laughing at the raised eyebrows she gets when explaining herself. “We don’t have as many kids at home anymore.”
True to his word, Dirk built the large, double car garage-sized studio to the east of their home and for years Kunze revelled in the space, working on paintings and become increasingly adept at a potter’s wheel. A pottery kiln was acquired to bisque her pieces, most of which are finished out of doors to produce the raku finishes she favours.
While parental duties may have eased as her four boys grew steadily into young men, Kunze hasn’t spent the last seven years hidden away in her studio. She’s been active in Wynndel community activities and played a large role in helping her pottery group, the Wynndel Mudders, lease space from the community hall and turn it into a group studio. She has spearheaded events to showcase Mudders’ work, involving other artists and artisans to participate, as well. And she has continued to play a vital role in putting together art exhibitions in Creston, using her unerring artist’s eye to display the varied works of dozens of artists who work in a variety of mediums.
Two years ago, she had much of the Creston Valley talking about a calendar she put together as a fundraiser for the Options for Sexual Health clinic. Somehow she convinced more than a dozen unsuspecting males to pose wearing aprons she had created, most of which had women’s underwear sewn into them. The calendar was a hit among buyers as well as friends of the models, who still enjoy ribbing their heretofore macho buddies.
Why a gallery? Why now?
“There isn’t a local gallery where I can show all my work because a lot of the paintings are pretty big (some are as high as eight feet),” she said. “And having a gallery in our yard lets me work on my projects or in the garden until I hear someone arrive.”
Kunze has called her retail outlet Galvanized Art Gallery.
“It’s a veritable jungle of post-modern-retro-expressionism, and you might just want to pack a lunch for this art safari…this one of a kind shopping adventure,” the gallery’s rack card reads.
The word galvanized has several meanings, not surprisingly, the most apt of which is “to startle into action; to stimulate.”
But it is also associated with a process that makes metal resistant to corrosion, and galvanized sheet metal is evident both inside and outside the gallery. Two water features use galvanized metal to add interest to the seating areas on the lawns and decks that surround the building. Inside a large semi-circular countertop serves as a customer service area and holds displays, too. The counter is covered in galvanized sheet metal, one of the many creative construction features built by Dirk.
Sandy has a whimsical view of life and the gallery’s exterior is filled with curiosities. A flowerbed has a couple of paintings — her rejects — of chickens, because the families brood of chickens likes to peck in the dirt there. Beside the stairs that lead to the entrance are twisted mounds of bisqued clay that she saves from her pottery-making sessions. Four cymbals are attached to the exterior wall — she has plans to make them into a gong set that visitors can ring when she doesn’t hear them arrive.
Inside, the walls are filled with paintings, roughly sorted into phases from her Alberta College of Art days in Calgary (where she specialized in printmaking), her heavily textured depictions of household objects and now, muted depictions of greenhouse interiors, vineyards and still lifes with wine bottles.
One window is covered with material she made by stitching together lengths of film and another has a dozen underwear/aprons hanging to provide shade from the late afternoon sun. Shelves and plinths (some constructed with galvanized sheet metal) hold bowls, plates, vases and other utile pottery art. On the floor lies a stretched out pottery pig, perhaps four feet in length.
Galvanized Art Gallery, like the artist whose works fill it to the ceiling, is full of delightful surprises. It is open through September on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and whenever the open sign is displayed. Watch for the signs on the south side of Highway 3A, just east of the turnoff to Wynndel Box and Lumber, at house number 5057. Call 250-866-5728 for more information.
Creston Valley Advance
West Creston pastel artist brings objects to life in brilliant colour
At first glance, the colour pastel works of Carol Schloss are easily mistaken for photographs. Further inspection reveals them to be the creations of a highly accomplished artist, one of only 600 signature members of the Pastel Society of America worldwide.
Like so many artists, Schloss’s time is torn between art and many other interests. Our visit begins with a tour around the West Creston acreage that she and her husband, Pete, purchased five ago.
On the property, the couple who spent most of their life together in Philadelphia grow fruit and vegetables for their own use, and others for medicinal use. A patch of elderberries has been started, part of their commitment to the West Kootenay Herb Producers Co-operative. A half-dozen chickens are kept for egg laying and an old barn was, until recently, home to goats, whose milk Carol used to make cheese.
A tiny creek winds through the property, providing fresh water for the house and irrigation, and adding that special ambience that only running water can provide. It’s a bucolic life for people who have largely been city folk. But it obviously suits them well.
She was artistic as a child, and was often accused by her young schoolmates of tracing her drawings.
“I was always interested in art,” she recalls. “I don’t think there was ever any doubt in my mind that art is what I wanted to do in my
Her parents were always supportive. Her dad, a banker, had been a sign painter when he returned home after the Second World War.
“Dad always supported my interest in art. I remember him getting me a commission to do an artist’s rendering of a bank building. He never put up any roadblocks.”
She is a believer that practice makes perfect, referring to the concept that 10,000 hours are required to become expert in any skill.
“I’m sure I’ve got that,” she laughs.
For all the effort she’s given to her passion, she admits that talent plays a large role in success.
“It’s a talent I feel an obligation to,” she says. “And if you are given a talent you have an obligation to give back. I feel a responsibility to my art and a drive to be creative. It’s there with most artists, I think.”
Art, she says, influences how she sees and acts.
“I have always arranged my clothes on the clothesline according to colour,” she admits. “And presentation is very important on the dinner plate when I cook — I want it to look nice, too.”
Schloss graduated from a three-year commercial art class at a technical high school with top honours, then enrolled in a five-year bachelor of arts degree program in graphic design at the Cleveland Institute of Art, minoring in photography. She went on to work as a graphic designer and art director for studios in Philadelphia, honing her skills, layout and design.
Thanks to her well-grounded training in fine arts, she added other skills to her repertoire — illustration, typography, calligraphy, photography and perspective renderings were all used in her professional life.
When Carol and Pete moved to Cody, Wyo. — “just on the other side of Yellowstone, near the Tetons” — she produced catalogues for a local company. Then she took a pastel class that inspired her to shift her emphasis back to the fine arts after decades in the commercial side. She has rarely put her pastels back in the box since.
How did the couple make the move from life in Pennsylvania and Wyoming to Canada? Pete, who owned computer businesses, was tiring of American politics. They camped a lot on their travels and fell in love with British Columbia. Five years ago they made the move northward.
“We are now proudly Canadian citizens — dual citizens, actually,” she smiles.
Her enthusiasm for pastels centres around their bright, vibrant colours, but also their forgiveness.
“If you don’t like something you can just brush it off and start again.”
Because pastels, like chalk, are by nature dusty, they can be a bit tricky to frame. Her preference is to mat her pictures in a way that any dust that drops from the surface collects behind the mat, so that it doesn’t show. And the pictures need to be glass covered to protect the delicate surface.
Schloss’s favourite subjects tend to be ordinary — everyday subjects like clothes hanging on a line, cowboys and horses at an auction, ranch scenes, landscapes and portraits. Under her deft hand, the subjects become fascinating, drawing the viewer into a world just slightly more beautiful than it might otherwise be.
With her educational and professional background, she also enjoys teaching. She has taught classes in pastels, drawing, sketchbook and field trips, and basic design in Wyoming and South Dakota, and in Creston and Riondel.
Her artist’s statement gives some insight into the way this very accomplished artist approaches her work:
“Creating art, it seems to me, is a transformative process. Draw an ordinary object and it somehow becomes extraordinary. Paint a mundane scene with a song in your heart, and it becomes a beautiful thing. This wonderful alchemy allows an artist to create a totally new and unique image from the ordinary stuff of life. A recipe that requires a lot of tending and hard work filtered through eyes, hands, heart and brain, will transform a feeling, a glimpse, an experience, into something of substance. This is pure magic, a constant source of inspiration, and what keeps me coming back.
“I approach my work with optimism and a sense of purpose; to learn, to grow, to challenge myself. I will push limits, try new techniques, break a few rules, scrape a few knees.
“The animating force of my work is colour. Drawing provides the bones and framework of an image, and even the energy, but a flicker, a movement, a sense of life, it seems, is breathed in with colour. To enhance colour, I play with values and complements, area and line, layering and underpainting, to approximate reality in an impressionistic way, a shorthand for letting your eye and distance fill in the details. Firm drawing skills and a fine sensibility for colours are the foundation of my work. Pastels, being a coloured drawing media, combine beautifully to this end. I am thankful that after a decade with this media and a lifetime of working with designers’/artist’s eyes, I have the skills and confidence to forge ahead to keep creating beautiful things. It’s pure magic.”
“I have a good time with things when I paint, but it is work,” Schloss says. “I put in a good day — maybe not eight hours, but five or six, for sure.”
Her basement studio is filled with northern light, finished pictures and supplies. But for the most part she works upstairs in a corner of the living room. A digital photo frame is clipped on to her easel, so she can use one of her photographs as a reference. It’s a sign of an artist who moves with times, using digital images where she once used photographs, taking advantage of the immediacy of the digital world.
“Artists never retire,” she says. “That’s how you keep healthy.”
Creston Valley Advance
Like so many artists, Schloss’s time is torn between art and many other interests. Our visit begins with a tour around the West Creston acreage that she and her husband, Pete, purchased five ago.
On the property, the couple who spent most of their life together in Philadelphia grow fruit and vegetables for their own use, and others for medicinal use. A patch of elderberries has been started, part of their commitment to the West Kootenay Herb Producers Co-operative. A half-dozen chickens are kept for egg laying and an old barn was, until recently, home to goats, whose milk Carol used to make cheese.
A tiny creek winds through the property, providing fresh water for the house and irrigation, and adding that special ambience that only running water can provide. It’s a bucolic life for people who have largely been city folk. But it obviously suits them well.
She was artistic as a child, and was often accused by her young schoolmates of tracing her drawings.
“I was always interested in art,” she recalls. “I don’t think there was ever any doubt in my mind that art is what I wanted to do in my
Her parents were always supportive. Her dad, a banker, had been a sign painter when he returned home after the Second World War.
“Dad always supported my interest in art. I remember him getting me a commission to do an artist’s rendering of a bank building. He never put up any roadblocks.”
She is a believer that practice makes perfect, referring to the concept that 10,000 hours are required to become expert in any skill.
“I’m sure I’ve got that,” she laughs.
For all the effort she’s given to her passion, she admits that talent plays a large role in success.
“It’s a talent I feel an obligation to,” she says. “And if you are given a talent you have an obligation to give back. I feel a responsibility to my art and a drive to be creative. It’s there with most artists, I think.”
Art, she says, influences how she sees and acts.
“I have always arranged my clothes on the clothesline according to colour,” she admits. “And presentation is very important on the dinner plate when I cook — I want it to look nice, too.”
Schloss graduated from a three-year commercial art class at a technical high school with top honours, then enrolled in a five-year bachelor of arts degree program in graphic design at the Cleveland Institute of Art, minoring in photography. She went on to work as a graphic designer and art director for studios in Philadelphia, honing her skills, layout and design.
Thanks to her well-grounded training in fine arts, she added other skills to her repertoire — illustration, typography, calligraphy, photography and perspective renderings were all used in her professional life.
When Carol and Pete moved to Cody, Wyo. — “just on the other side of Yellowstone, near the Tetons” — she produced catalogues for a local company. Then she took a pastel class that inspired her to shift her emphasis back to the fine arts after decades in the commercial side. She has rarely put her pastels back in the box since.
How did the couple make the move from life in Pennsylvania and Wyoming to Canada? Pete, who owned computer businesses, was tiring of American politics. They camped a lot on their travels and fell in love with British Columbia. Five years ago they made the move northward.
“We are now proudly Canadian citizens — dual citizens, actually,” she smiles.
Her enthusiasm for pastels centres around their bright, vibrant colours, but also their forgiveness.
“If you don’t like something you can just brush it off and start again.”
Because pastels, like chalk, are by nature dusty, they can be a bit tricky to frame. Her preference is to mat her pictures in a way that any dust that drops from the surface collects behind the mat, so that it doesn’t show. And the pictures need to be glass covered to protect the delicate surface.
Schloss’s favourite subjects tend to be ordinary — everyday subjects like clothes hanging on a line, cowboys and horses at an auction, ranch scenes, landscapes and portraits. Under her deft hand, the subjects become fascinating, drawing the viewer into a world just slightly more beautiful than it might otherwise be.
With her educational and professional background, she also enjoys teaching. She has taught classes in pastels, drawing, sketchbook and field trips, and basic design in Wyoming and South Dakota, and in Creston and Riondel.
Her artist’s statement gives some insight into the way this very accomplished artist approaches her work:
“Creating art, it seems to me, is a transformative process. Draw an ordinary object and it somehow becomes extraordinary. Paint a mundane scene with a song in your heart, and it becomes a beautiful thing. This wonderful alchemy allows an artist to create a totally new and unique image from the ordinary stuff of life. A recipe that requires a lot of tending and hard work filtered through eyes, hands, heart and brain, will transform a feeling, a glimpse, an experience, into something of substance. This is pure magic, a constant source of inspiration, and what keeps me coming back.
“I approach my work with optimism and a sense of purpose; to learn, to grow, to challenge myself. I will push limits, try new techniques, break a few rules, scrape a few knees.
“The animating force of my work is colour. Drawing provides the bones and framework of an image, and even the energy, but a flicker, a movement, a sense of life, it seems, is breathed in with colour. To enhance colour, I play with values and complements, area and line, layering and underpainting, to approximate reality in an impressionistic way, a shorthand for letting your eye and distance fill in the details. Firm drawing skills and a fine sensibility for colours are the foundation of my work. Pastels, being a coloured drawing media, combine beautifully to this end. I am thankful that after a decade with this media and a lifetime of working with designers’/artist’s eyes, I have the skills and confidence to forge ahead to keep creating beautiful things. It’s pure magic.”
“I have a good time with things when I paint, but it is work,” Schloss says. “I put in a good day — maybe not eight hours, but five or six, for sure.”
Her basement studio is filled with northern light, finished pictures and supplies. But for the most part she works upstairs in a corner of the living room. A digital photo frame is clipped on to her easel, so she can use one of her photographs as a reference. It’s a sign of an artist who moves with times, using digital images where she once used photographs, taking advantage of the immediacy of the digital world.
“Artists never retire,” she says. “That’s how you keep healthy.”
Creston Valley Advance
Next generation takes over pottery business at Creston's Pridham Studio
After 11 years in Victoria, Micah and Jeremiah Wassink had had enough of city life. They had got what they wanted out of it — education, careers, experience — but it wasn’t, well, let’s say, feeding their souls.
Then, in 2011, they seriously began to explore an opportunity that had been on the table for a couple of years. Nancy and David Pridham, Micah’s parents, had fallen in love with Mexico’s Baja California, and their house and business were up for sale. Now, more than a year later, Micah and Jeremiah have settled back into their hometown and they couldn’t be happier.
“I spent many years working at craft fairs with my mom and hanging out in the gallery,” Micah says. “When I was in high school I worked with her, doing clay work and pottery painting.”
It was while attending Prince Charles Secondary School that Micah met Jeremiah Wassink. She was active in school and community theatre and, a few years later, the young couple headed for Vancouver Island so she could study theatre at the University of Victoria.
“I loved it,” she says.
Her original intention was to focus on acting, but within a month of starting classes, she knew her real passion was in design. After graduating, she worked in the film industry.
“I worked in the costume department when I got involved in the film scene,” she says. “On-set costume work kept me busy.”
She also got involved with the Pacific Opera Victoria.
“That was a great experience. I loved the people and the atmosphere.”
While Micah was establishing herself in wardrobe and costume design, Jeremiah, who also had artistic interests, entered the welding trade.
“My first really good job involved making ornamental gates and fencing, but it was a little different because we worked entirely in aluminum,” he recalls.
Aluminum stands up to the damp, salty atmosphere of an ocean-side environment, but it’s a tricky and demanding metal to work with.
“I really liked the hands-on aspect of welding.”
But the artist in him eventually began pulling Jeremiah toward a more creative life.
“I had always liked drawing. Originally I had planned on going into graphic design before my focus shifted to welding.”
He was thinking about going back to school to study art when he and Micah began to talk about purchasing her mom and dad’s home and business.
“We sat down and went over the numbers and began to see how we could make it work,” he says. “Then we went to the bank and figured out how to make it a reality.”
Purchasing Pridham Studio offered Jeremiah and Micah the chance to come back home to Creston, perfect timing because they wanted to start a family and didn’t want to raise kids in the city.
“We were ready to settle down and this gave us that opportunity,” Jeremiah says.
“I grew up in this house, so it was a little strange for a couple of months,” Micah smiles. “It was a bit interesting at first, wondering how it would be working with my mom as we began the transition to take over the business, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t be an issue.”
Jeremiah says learning a new trade was just what he was looking for.
“As I got deeper into the welding trade I began to realize I didn’t want to go deeper into it. I got tired of working in an industrial setting.”
When they returned to Creston last summer, they set to work learning a business that Nancy and David had built up into a successful enterprise. Micah naturally fell into painting the designs on the pottery that Jeremiah was soon turning out — mugs, plates, bowls and the like — useful and decorative items that have found a strong appeal among buyers throughout B.C., and in Alberta and Idaho, too.
Nancy’s hand-painted designs, many created especially for a specific environment — black bears for the Banff area, for instance, or the orange bridge in Nelson — meant that Micah and Jeremiah had an established market to start out with.
“People are expecting something and you have to produce,” Jeremiah says. “We were fortunate to have purchased such a well-established business. David and Nancy went through a lot of trial and error to get production up to a certain level and the losses are quite low.”
Customers arriving at Pridham Studio, a converted garage attached to the house, are used to a quiet, reflective atmosphere as they wander among the pottery shelves and displays. Their visit often extends into the backyard, where the Wassinks have continued the Pridham tradition of gardening, growing much of their own food in the secluded space.
“We’ve been eating out of it for months,” says Jeremiah.
While Micah describes the business takeover as “quite seamless” — “All of our galleries are quite thrilled to get the same products they have always received” — it involved a lot of intense focus and training. A typical day starts at 6 a.m. to fire up the kilns and keeping the studio open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A motion sensor alerts the pair to arrival of customers when they are busy working in the adjacent studio.
While Pridham Studio pottery can be found in galleries from Whistler to Banff and south into Sandpoint, the Kootenays are a large part of the business. Retail sales remain strong in Nelson, Kaslo, Invermere, Trail, Fernie, Golden, Rossland, Grand Forks and Christina Lake.
“And we know there is room to grow, especially into Calgary and other Alberta markets, as well as the Okanagan.”
Owning a business “definitely makes you want to push that much harder,” Jeremiah admits.
They have become regulars at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market each Saturday and are just beginning to find time to put their own stamp on the business. Micah has created some new designs and Jeremiah has introduced some new shapes, like spoon rests and goblets.
They recently teamed up with Brandy Dyer at Creative Fix to produce a line of pottery using designs Dyer originally created for Town of Creston street banners.
“I love partnering with other businesses and Nancy helped me work on the banner designs, so this is a perfect match, working with Pridham Studio,” Dyer said when she introduced the new items into her store.
Jeremiah is working on teapot designs these days, trying to find just the right balance between form and function.
“A teapot has to look good, function properly and feel good in the hand,” he says. “There is a lot of experimentation involved and I love the challenge. And this winter we want to experiment with small runs of unique shapes — that should be fun!”
Winter promises to be fun in other ways, too. Micah and Jeremiah are expecting their first child in January. It is such a momentous event that Nancy and David will make a mid-winter journey back to Creston from their Galeria Bahia to be part of the occasion.
“It’s exciting for us to be among a younger generation that is coming back to Creston,” Micah says.
“We are part of a younger crowd with their families, people who want to enjoy what this valley has to offer,” Jeremiah echoes. “Creston is a beautiful place and we feel like we have a great future here.”
“And we have no plans to go anywhere else,” Micah adds
Then, in 2011, they seriously began to explore an opportunity that had been on the table for a couple of years. Nancy and David Pridham, Micah’s parents, had fallen in love with Mexico’s Baja California, and their house and business were up for sale. Now, more than a year later, Micah and Jeremiah have settled back into their hometown and they couldn’t be happier.
“I spent many years working at craft fairs with my mom and hanging out in the gallery,” Micah says. “When I was in high school I worked with her, doing clay work and pottery painting.”
It was while attending Prince Charles Secondary School that Micah met Jeremiah Wassink. She was active in school and community theatre and, a few years later, the young couple headed for Vancouver Island so she could study theatre at the University of Victoria.
“I loved it,” she says.
Her original intention was to focus on acting, but within a month of starting classes, she knew her real passion was in design. After graduating, she worked in the film industry.
“I worked in the costume department when I got involved in the film scene,” she says. “On-set costume work kept me busy.”
She also got involved with the Pacific Opera Victoria.
“That was a great experience. I loved the people and the atmosphere.”
While Micah was establishing herself in wardrobe and costume design, Jeremiah, who also had artistic interests, entered the welding trade.
“My first really good job involved making ornamental gates and fencing, but it was a little different because we worked entirely in aluminum,” he recalls.
Aluminum stands up to the damp, salty atmosphere of an ocean-side environment, but it’s a tricky and demanding metal to work with.
“I really liked the hands-on aspect of welding.”
But the artist in him eventually began pulling Jeremiah toward a more creative life.
“I had always liked drawing. Originally I had planned on going into graphic design before my focus shifted to welding.”
He was thinking about going back to school to study art when he and Micah began to talk about purchasing her mom and dad’s home and business.
“We sat down and went over the numbers and began to see how we could make it work,” he says. “Then we went to the bank and figured out how to make it a reality.”
Purchasing Pridham Studio offered Jeremiah and Micah the chance to come back home to Creston, perfect timing because they wanted to start a family and didn’t want to raise kids in the city.
“We were ready to settle down and this gave us that opportunity,” Jeremiah says.
“I grew up in this house, so it was a little strange for a couple of months,” Micah smiles. “It was a bit interesting at first, wondering how it would be working with my mom as we began the transition to take over the business, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t be an issue.”
Jeremiah says learning a new trade was just what he was looking for.
“As I got deeper into the welding trade I began to realize I didn’t want to go deeper into it. I got tired of working in an industrial setting.”
When they returned to Creston last summer, they set to work learning a business that Nancy and David had built up into a successful enterprise. Micah naturally fell into painting the designs on the pottery that Jeremiah was soon turning out — mugs, plates, bowls and the like — useful and decorative items that have found a strong appeal among buyers throughout B.C., and in Alberta and Idaho, too.
Nancy’s hand-painted designs, many created especially for a specific environment — black bears for the Banff area, for instance, or the orange bridge in Nelson — meant that Micah and Jeremiah had an established market to start out with.
“People are expecting something and you have to produce,” Jeremiah says. “We were fortunate to have purchased such a well-established business. David and Nancy went through a lot of trial and error to get production up to a certain level and the losses are quite low.”
Customers arriving at Pridham Studio, a converted garage attached to the house, are used to a quiet, reflective atmosphere as they wander among the pottery shelves and displays. Their visit often extends into the backyard, where the Wassinks have continued the Pridham tradition of gardening, growing much of their own food in the secluded space.
“We’ve been eating out of it for months,” says Jeremiah.
While Micah describes the business takeover as “quite seamless” — “All of our galleries are quite thrilled to get the same products they have always received” — it involved a lot of intense focus and training. A typical day starts at 6 a.m. to fire up the kilns and keeping the studio open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A motion sensor alerts the pair to arrival of customers when they are busy working in the adjacent studio.
While Pridham Studio pottery can be found in galleries from Whistler to Banff and south into Sandpoint, the Kootenays are a large part of the business. Retail sales remain strong in Nelson, Kaslo, Invermere, Trail, Fernie, Golden, Rossland, Grand Forks and Christina Lake.
“And we know there is room to grow, especially into Calgary and other Alberta markets, as well as the Okanagan.”
Owning a business “definitely makes you want to push that much harder,” Jeremiah admits.
They have become regulars at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market each Saturday and are just beginning to find time to put their own stamp on the business. Micah has created some new designs and Jeremiah has introduced some new shapes, like spoon rests and goblets.
They recently teamed up with Brandy Dyer at Creative Fix to produce a line of pottery using designs Dyer originally created for Town of Creston street banners.
“I love partnering with other businesses and Nancy helped me work on the banner designs, so this is a perfect match, working with Pridham Studio,” Dyer said when she introduced the new items into her store.
Jeremiah is working on teapot designs these days, trying to find just the right balance between form and function.
“A teapot has to look good, function properly and feel good in the hand,” he says. “There is a lot of experimentation involved and I love the challenge. And this winter we want to experiment with small runs of unique shapes — that should be fun!”
Winter promises to be fun in other ways, too. Micah and Jeremiah are expecting their first child in January. It is such a momentous event that Nancy and David will make a mid-winter journey back to Creston from their Galeria Bahia to be part of the occasion.
“It’s exciting for us to be among a younger generation that is coming back to Creston,” Micah says.
“We are part of a younger crowd with their families, people who want to enjoy what this valley has to offer,” Jeremiah echoes. “Creston is a beautiful place and we feel like we have a great future here.”
“And we have no plans to go anywhere else,” Micah adds
Sand sculptor brings 'performance art' to Creston
Paul Dawkins didn’t start with a plan to spend much of his adult life making sculptures in sand.
“I like to tell people that the very beginning was when I was three years old, in a crib, reaching out between the bars for sand to mix,” he laughs.
The truth, though, is that he was an animation school student in San Diego, hanging out on a beach in San Blas, Mexico, north of Puerto Vallarta, and he “was bored silly.”
Let’s get on the beach and build something, he thought. Soon he was constructing a 20-foot dragon with coconuts for eyes.
“And I drew a wall of people, many of whom were asking questions.”
He liked the attention — “It’s performance art, really” — and soon he was learning more about sand as a medium. He started, like kids playing on the beach, using only his hands to pile up the sand, wet it and start making shapes.
It was in California in 1977 that Dawkins saw carvers packing sand into wood boxes.
“I was amazed at what they were doing,” he recalls.
For the last few weeks Dawkins has been working on a sand carving at the corner of highways 3 and 3A, a prime traffic spot provided by the Ramada Hotel and Conference Centre. It’s set under a rain-protected shelter and a common comment he has been faced with is, “I thought you were doing a sand sculpture — that looks like a wood sculpture.”
The “wood sculpture” was a weird stack of different sized plywood frames in which Dawkins was preparing sand to carve. Layers of sand are watered and tamped within each box as he gradually builds up a sculpting base that becomes more like sandstone than sand. A finished sculpture can be sprayed with a white glue and water mix that can help it last for months, he says.
Dawkins turned that early experience in San Blas into a career, becoming the world’s (as far as he knows) first full-time professional sand sculptor. Over the next four decades, he would go on to travel to 92 countries, often winning sand sculpting competitions and teaching the craft wherever he could.
“I got the idea to go to shopping malls and fairs, any pubic venue that has a lot of people.”
He patterned his career after musicians, who tour from city to city, performing.
“In the early days I would travel and stay in hostels,” he says. “In competitions, I would work alone, competing against teams of up to ten people. …
“I’m a really fast shoveler,” he laughs. “I always started out with the biggest pile of sand!”
The last 39 years haven’t been all sand, travel and bikinis for Dawkins, though. He’s also helped to pioneer snow-sculpting competitions and done ice carvings, too.
He credits his experience as a stop-action film animator and artistic background for the attention his carvings bring him. His creations are always designed to tell a story and give the appearance of movement.
Sand sculpting also brings out the competitor in him. In the early 1980s, he was part of a team of Californians that won a couple of team world championships and consistently finished in the medals in competitions. They eventually decided to become an all-California team and cut him loose.
“So later on I started another team and we beat them,” he laughs.
Canadians and Americans have traditionally been at the forefront of the sand sculpting competitive world, but European and, now, Chinese competitors have risen to the challenge.
Dawkins cites one of his most memorable experiences — of the 92 countries he has competed in 16 of them — as a 10-day competition in China that drew 10 million viewers over the course of the event.
“The Super Bowl wouldn’t compare as an event. It was a sea of people for the entire time.”
Dawkins didn’t abandon his early interest in film animation. He came to Creston in part to escape the experience of 10 years in Toronto, where he built up a company of 20 employees, creating special effects, props and TV character costumes.
“It really got too big for me. I felt like I was losing my edge as an artist, so now I’ve gone back to the roots of where I started.”
He talks of trying to settle down, but admits the lure of travel is a strong one.
“The best education is travelling, I think. It is very mind-opening.”
Dawkins believes art is an important component in economic development and has seen his performance art grow into a major attraction that draws tourists and motivates other artists to get involved.
As he works on what he describes as “my most detailed project yet” on the Ramada Hotel lot (with plans to add to his list of world records), Dawkins gets the chance to interact with visitors and encourage locals to pick up a carving tool and get involved. Sculpting gives him time to think, too. Travels in Third World, developing countries, have inspired him to work on ways to create low-cost, small-scale housing, using his artistic talents to make tiny homes attractive, as well as functional.
But that, he says, is a story for another day. Warm, sunny weather is time for Dawkins to immerse himself in a creative outlet that he describes as being equal parts fine, commercial and performing art.
The mounds of packed sand are ready to be transformed into complex, finely detailed stories that reflect his interest in communities and history, all with a whimsical bent that will allow return visitors to discover new details each time they view his creations.
Creston Valley Advance
“I like to tell people that the very beginning was when I was three years old, in a crib, reaching out between the bars for sand to mix,” he laughs.
The truth, though, is that he was an animation school student in San Diego, hanging out on a beach in San Blas, Mexico, north of Puerto Vallarta, and he “was bored silly.”
Let’s get on the beach and build something, he thought. Soon he was constructing a 20-foot dragon with coconuts for eyes.
“And I drew a wall of people, many of whom were asking questions.”
He liked the attention — “It’s performance art, really” — and soon he was learning more about sand as a medium. He started, like kids playing on the beach, using only his hands to pile up the sand, wet it and start making shapes.
It was in California in 1977 that Dawkins saw carvers packing sand into wood boxes.
“I was amazed at what they were doing,” he recalls.
For the last few weeks Dawkins has been working on a sand carving at the corner of highways 3 and 3A, a prime traffic spot provided by the Ramada Hotel and Conference Centre. It’s set under a rain-protected shelter and a common comment he has been faced with is, “I thought you were doing a sand sculpture — that looks like a wood sculpture.”
The “wood sculpture” was a weird stack of different sized plywood frames in which Dawkins was preparing sand to carve. Layers of sand are watered and tamped within each box as he gradually builds up a sculpting base that becomes more like sandstone than sand. A finished sculpture can be sprayed with a white glue and water mix that can help it last for months, he says.
Dawkins turned that early experience in San Blas into a career, becoming the world’s (as far as he knows) first full-time professional sand sculptor. Over the next four decades, he would go on to travel to 92 countries, often winning sand sculpting competitions and teaching the craft wherever he could.
“I got the idea to go to shopping malls and fairs, any pubic venue that has a lot of people.”
He patterned his career after musicians, who tour from city to city, performing.
“In the early days I would travel and stay in hostels,” he says. “In competitions, I would work alone, competing against teams of up to ten people. …
“I’m a really fast shoveler,” he laughs. “I always started out with the biggest pile of sand!”
The last 39 years haven’t been all sand, travel and bikinis for Dawkins, though. He’s also helped to pioneer snow-sculpting competitions and done ice carvings, too.
He credits his experience as a stop-action film animator and artistic background for the attention his carvings bring him. His creations are always designed to tell a story and give the appearance of movement.
Sand sculpting also brings out the competitor in him. In the early 1980s, he was part of a team of Californians that won a couple of team world championships and consistently finished in the medals in competitions. They eventually decided to become an all-California team and cut him loose.
“So later on I started another team and we beat them,” he laughs.
Canadians and Americans have traditionally been at the forefront of the sand sculpting competitive world, but European and, now, Chinese competitors have risen to the challenge.
Dawkins cites one of his most memorable experiences — of the 92 countries he has competed in 16 of them — as a 10-day competition in China that drew 10 million viewers over the course of the event.
“The Super Bowl wouldn’t compare as an event. It was a sea of people for the entire time.”
Dawkins didn’t abandon his early interest in film animation. He came to Creston in part to escape the experience of 10 years in Toronto, where he built up a company of 20 employees, creating special effects, props and TV character costumes.
“It really got too big for me. I felt like I was losing my edge as an artist, so now I’ve gone back to the roots of where I started.”
He talks of trying to settle down, but admits the lure of travel is a strong one.
“The best education is travelling, I think. It is very mind-opening.”
Dawkins believes art is an important component in economic development and has seen his performance art grow into a major attraction that draws tourists and motivates other artists to get involved.
As he works on what he describes as “my most detailed project yet” on the Ramada Hotel lot (with plans to add to his list of world records), Dawkins gets the chance to interact with visitors and encourage locals to pick up a carving tool and get involved. Sculpting gives him time to think, too. Travels in Third World, developing countries, have inspired him to work on ways to create low-cost, small-scale housing, using his artistic talents to make tiny homes attractive, as well as functional.
But that, he says, is a story for another day. Warm, sunny weather is time for Dawkins to immerse himself in a creative outlet that he describes as being equal parts fine, commercial and performing art.
The mounds of packed sand are ready to be transformed into complex, finely detailed stories that reflect his interest in communities and history, all with a whimsical bent that will allow return visitors to discover new details each time they view his creations.
Creston Valley Advance
New book showcases Creston Valley scenery
Photographer Cheryl Jaggers is in awe of Creston Valley’s beauty and she has used her photographic talent to show others why.
Her newly released coffee table book, aptly titled Creston Valley Beauty, was produced in collaboration with her friend and business colleague, Amber McGregor-Ward.
Jaggers, well-known for her portrait and wedding photography, has worked with McGregor-Ward in the past, doing commercial photography for her friend’s public relations projects. Landscape photography is something that just comes naturally, Jaggers said last week.
“I’ve never really focused my photography on landscapes — it’s just in me,” she said. “I feel completely privileged that I have this opportunity to share the beauty that is around us.”
Jaggers said that the book idea came up about a year and a half ago.
“We realized that Creston didn’t have anything like it and I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t it be me who does it?’ ”
“Cheryl actually sees magic everywhere she looks,” McGregor-Ward said. “She seems to see more than what is just there physically.
“Her photographs show another level of appreciation — an understanding that everything around us has been created. They help us see things on a different level.”
McGregor-Ward wrote the commentary for the book and also solicited comments from a number of area residents. The comments are sprinkled throughout the book, introducing more voices that concur with Jaggers and McGregor-Ward in their admiration for the area’s beauty.
“The Creston Valley enfolds me with a feeling of welcoming,” wrote Jan MacDonald Potyok. “Its diverse beauty, its familiar people, its ever-growing and changing community of artists are both peaceful and creatively stimulating. There is a rare synergy here I’ve never found anywhere else.”
Rachel Beck’s comment strikes a familiar chord.
“The first time that I saw Creston was after a 10-hour drive from the coast. I was tired, sore and eager to end my journey,” she said. “Then I came upon this magical valley and although I had never been here before, I felt I had come home. Fields of yellow dandelions, indigo mountains, and the simmering lights off the Kootenay River created a breath-taking introduction to this amazing community.”
Creston Valley Beauty “lets the viewer see all these scenes and places at one time,” McGregor-Ward commented. “It’s a collection of emotional experiences.”
As hard as she works to get just the right angle and light for many of her photographs, Jaggers said some of her favourites were the easiest to capture. One she is especially fond of shows the Skimmerhorn mountaintops obscured by a shroud of clouds, with a brilliant blue sky above.
“I walked out my door, then turned right back into the house to get my camera,” she said. “It was one of the most spectacular displays of awesomeness I’ve ever seen. …
“In some places that I have photographed I’ve wondered, ‘What can I do with this?’ In others I’m asking, ‘How can I capture this scene to do it justice?’ ”
Early reaction to the book has been gratifying, McGregor-Ward said.
“I’m totally blown away by compliment after compliment.”
Visitors to the Creston Valley Fall Fair got a first public look at the book. It is now available at Black Bear Books, Kingfisher Used Books, the Creston Valley Chamber of Commerce and Pharmasave. McGregor-Ward is selling it from a booth at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market.
“We will have the book in other tourist places in the spring,” she added.
The book will also be available at the popular Christmas craft fair — it makes a perfect gift as it is designed to fit in a standard mailing envelope.
“I wanted to produce Creston Valley Beauty because I believe it’s OK to say we are awesome and it’s OK if we overdo that once in a while,” McGregor-Ward said. “This is our way of declaring that Creston is absolutely beautiful. It’s a tool for us to celebrate who we are and where we live.”
Creston Valley Advance
Her newly released coffee table book, aptly titled Creston Valley Beauty, was produced in collaboration with her friend and business colleague, Amber McGregor-Ward.
Jaggers, well-known for her portrait and wedding photography, has worked with McGregor-Ward in the past, doing commercial photography for her friend’s public relations projects. Landscape photography is something that just comes naturally, Jaggers said last week.
“I’ve never really focused my photography on landscapes — it’s just in me,” she said. “I feel completely privileged that I have this opportunity to share the beauty that is around us.”
Jaggers said that the book idea came up about a year and a half ago.
“We realized that Creston didn’t have anything like it and I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t it be me who does it?’ ”
“Cheryl actually sees magic everywhere she looks,” McGregor-Ward said. “She seems to see more than what is just there physically.
“Her photographs show another level of appreciation — an understanding that everything around us has been created. They help us see things on a different level.”
McGregor-Ward wrote the commentary for the book and also solicited comments from a number of area residents. The comments are sprinkled throughout the book, introducing more voices that concur with Jaggers and McGregor-Ward in their admiration for the area’s beauty.
“The Creston Valley enfolds me with a feeling of welcoming,” wrote Jan MacDonald Potyok. “Its diverse beauty, its familiar people, its ever-growing and changing community of artists are both peaceful and creatively stimulating. There is a rare synergy here I’ve never found anywhere else.”
Rachel Beck’s comment strikes a familiar chord.
“The first time that I saw Creston was after a 10-hour drive from the coast. I was tired, sore and eager to end my journey,” she said. “Then I came upon this magical valley and although I had never been here before, I felt I had come home. Fields of yellow dandelions, indigo mountains, and the simmering lights off the Kootenay River created a breath-taking introduction to this amazing community.”
Creston Valley Beauty “lets the viewer see all these scenes and places at one time,” McGregor-Ward commented. “It’s a collection of emotional experiences.”
As hard as she works to get just the right angle and light for many of her photographs, Jaggers said some of her favourites were the easiest to capture. One she is especially fond of shows the Skimmerhorn mountaintops obscured by a shroud of clouds, with a brilliant blue sky above.
“I walked out my door, then turned right back into the house to get my camera,” she said. “It was one of the most spectacular displays of awesomeness I’ve ever seen. …
“In some places that I have photographed I’ve wondered, ‘What can I do with this?’ In others I’m asking, ‘How can I capture this scene to do it justice?’ ”
Early reaction to the book has been gratifying, McGregor-Ward said.
“I’m totally blown away by compliment after compliment.”
Visitors to the Creston Valley Fall Fair got a first public look at the book. It is now available at Black Bear Books, Kingfisher Used Books, the Creston Valley Chamber of Commerce and Pharmasave. McGregor-Ward is selling it from a booth at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market.
“We will have the book in other tourist places in the spring,” she added.
The book will also be available at the popular Christmas craft fair — it makes a perfect gift as it is designed to fit in a standard mailing envelope.
“I wanted to produce Creston Valley Beauty because I believe it’s OK to say we are awesome and it’s OK if we overdo that once in a while,” McGregor-Ward said. “This is our way of declaring that Creston is absolutely beautiful. It’s a tool for us to celebrate who we are and where we live.”
Creston Valley Advance
Multiple sclerosis fuels Creston artist's inspiration and determination
If it is true that people are more than the sum of their parts, it must also be true that Creston’s Lori Wikdahl is a giant.
A grandmother, Wikdahl has become a driving force in the Creston Valley’s art scene, despite the fact that she only started painting in 2009.
“Other than drawing stick people for my kids I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body,” says Wikdahl (who writes a monthly column, A Cultural Perspective, for the Advance).
Then, in an unexpected twist, she attributes her drive and new-found creativity to illness.
“It’ funny, but I really do owe it all to multiple sclerosis,” she smiles. “I mean I hate having MS, but…”
Her thoughts drift back to 2002 when she was first attacked by the disease. She became bedridden and her life as a healthy, professional woman came to a screeching halt. The ambition and materialism that had once fueled Wikdahl had to be reassessed.
“Life is not a paycheque. Life is not a job. Life is living,” she says. “I owe that knowledge to MS. And I have learned that you can take the disability out of the disease.”
One of her first decisions in her new life was to remain as active as humanly possible. She set a goal — walk the distance of the earth’s circumference, 40,000 km in 10 years.
In 2003, she took one giant step, or hundreds of thousands of small steps, depending on one’s point of view, toward that goal.
“In 287 days, I walked across Canada from Confederation Bridge to English Bay,” she says. “I’m the only woman to do that. I walked through the Rockies in the winter, averaging 22 kilometres a day.”
Health setbacks made it impossible for her to accomplish her original goal in 10 years. She was about 2,000 km short when the calendar indicated that a decade had passed.
“I’ll do it this year, though,” she says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt.
Wikdahl’s first foray into the art world came when she was inspired to paint contemporary native designs on rocks.
“I have always loved native designs and I felt fulfilled with what I was doing,” she says. “But then two years ago, my son turned 30 and he wanted me to make him a painting. But he said he wanted something different, with lots of colours.
“So I did him an Aztec calendar. And I was so enamoured with it that I started thinking, ‘What else can I do?’”
With no artistic background at all, Wikdahl hadn’t painted herself into a corner and she dove into style after style, embracing some and abandoning others, but always learning lots on her journey.
“I’ve done abstract styles and Impressionist styles and Mayan styles,” she says. “I have taught myself Chinese watercolour painting and now I am doing Japanese ink painting — with each new style I take on I learn as much about life as about art.”
Wikdahl studied history in university, even doing a summer stint at Oxford University in England.
“My fascination with history makes me want to learn about everything around the style of art that I am working on at the time,” she says.
So she haunts the public library and the Internet, delving as deeply as she can into each topic.
This past winter has been a tough one, she admits. One of the side effects to her MS is depression.
“It can be hard because the MS and depression drain the energy away from me, and you need energy to be creative.”
Her 11-year-old autistic grandson lives with her and there are times, especially when the days are short and dreary, when he and her dogs take up all of her energy. But even some of the side effects of MS have a positive aspect.
“In the last few months my hands have been shaking really badly,” she says.
But her friend, artist Val van der Poel, gave her some ink pens.
“It’s amazing what you can do with a pen and shaky hands,” Wikdahl smiles. “That’s why I’ve moved into oriental styles. …
“I’m hungry when it comes to art — I want to know all I can. I just want to know ‘How do you do that?’ and I learn from other artists or from books.”
While her preferred “canvas” is a rock, she can’t just pick up a rock and start painting.
“If I try to just put an image on a stone it never works,” she says. “But if I see something on the stone, I can work to bring it out in an image. It’s like the stones talk to me.”
Wikdahl’s artwork will be on sale and display at the Creston Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Creston Valley Advance throughout the summer months.
Creston Valley Advance
A grandmother, Wikdahl has become a driving force in the Creston Valley’s art scene, despite the fact that she only started painting in 2009.
“Other than drawing stick people for my kids I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body,” says Wikdahl (who writes a monthly column, A Cultural Perspective, for the Advance).
Then, in an unexpected twist, she attributes her drive and new-found creativity to illness.
“It’ funny, but I really do owe it all to multiple sclerosis,” she smiles. “I mean I hate having MS, but…”
Her thoughts drift back to 2002 when she was first attacked by the disease. She became bedridden and her life as a healthy, professional woman came to a screeching halt. The ambition and materialism that had once fueled Wikdahl had to be reassessed.
“Life is not a paycheque. Life is not a job. Life is living,” she says. “I owe that knowledge to MS. And I have learned that you can take the disability out of the disease.”
One of her first decisions in her new life was to remain as active as humanly possible. She set a goal — walk the distance of the earth’s circumference, 40,000 km in 10 years.
In 2003, she took one giant step, or hundreds of thousands of small steps, depending on one’s point of view, toward that goal.
“In 287 days, I walked across Canada from Confederation Bridge to English Bay,” she says. “I’m the only woman to do that. I walked through the Rockies in the winter, averaging 22 kilometres a day.”
Health setbacks made it impossible for her to accomplish her original goal in 10 years. She was about 2,000 km short when the calendar indicated that a decade had passed.
“I’ll do it this year, though,” she says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt.
Wikdahl’s first foray into the art world came when she was inspired to paint contemporary native designs on rocks.
“I have always loved native designs and I felt fulfilled with what I was doing,” she says. “But then two years ago, my son turned 30 and he wanted me to make him a painting. But he said he wanted something different, with lots of colours.
“So I did him an Aztec calendar. And I was so enamoured with it that I started thinking, ‘What else can I do?’”
With no artistic background at all, Wikdahl hadn’t painted herself into a corner and she dove into style after style, embracing some and abandoning others, but always learning lots on her journey.
“I’ve done abstract styles and Impressionist styles and Mayan styles,” she says. “I have taught myself Chinese watercolour painting and now I am doing Japanese ink painting — with each new style I take on I learn as much about life as about art.”
Wikdahl studied history in university, even doing a summer stint at Oxford University in England.
“My fascination with history makes me want to learn about everything around the style of art that I am working on at the time,” she says.
So she haunts the public library and the Internet, delving as deeply as she can into each topic.
This past winter has been a tough one, she admits. One of the side effects to her MS is depression.
“It can be hard because the MS and depression drain the energy away from me, and you need energy to be creative.”
Her 11-year-old autistic grandson lives with her and there are times, especially when the days are short and dreary, when he and her dogs take up all of her energy. But even some of the side effects of MS have a positive aspect.
“In the last few months my hands have been shaking really badly,” she says.
But her friend, artist Val van der Poel, gave her some ink pens.
“It’s amazing what you can do with a pen and shaky hands,” Wikdahl smiles. “That’s why I’ve moved into oriental styles. …
“I’m hungry when it comes to art — I want to know all I can. I just want to know ‘How do you do that?’ and I learn from other artists or from books.”
While her preferred “canvas” is a rock, she can’t just pick up a rock and start painting.
“If I try to just put an image on a stone it never works,” she says. “But if I see something on the stone, I can work to bring it out in an image. It’s like the stones talk to me.”
Wikdahl’s artwork will be on sale and display at the Creston Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Creston Valley Advance throughout the summer months.
Creston Valley Advance
Life in Creston Valley brings deeper meaning to watercolour artist’s work
Take a close look at her paintings of still life and flowers and “self taught” is not a descriptor likely to pop into mind. But Erickson waterclour painter Laura Leeder picked up her distinctive painting techniques almost entirely from books and trial and error.
There is a warmth and calmness to her finely detailed works that invites the viewer into a world that seems ever so slightly kinder and more welcoming. And the details keep drawing one’s eye further and further into her compositions.
“I actually set up my still life compositions by taking the objects outside so I can get the strong shadows and light,” she says. “Then I take a bunch of digital shots that I can load onto the computer right away and I can check and see if I’m happy with it or not.”
She then enlarges photographs to the size of the painting she plans and makes an outline of the elements that is eventually transferred to watercolour paper. Those elements are often adjusted as she paints — leaf shapes might be changed and details are added or deleted as she deems necessary. Some works use paint that has mica crystals that reflect the light, adding an almost magical quality to the surface.
“There are a lot of steps involved,” she admits. “I use only transparent watercolours — they’re not opaque so I can put on many, many light layers of colour to create the depth I’m looking for. This technique is known as glazing and through its use I can also achieve rich, luminous color.
“Some of the pencil lines are erased as I go along and others stay — I really don’t mind that. It shows how I work.”
While her finished work looks completely natural, she changes and adjusts the colours of the objects as she works.
“I tend to exaggerate the colours because in the end I want the painting to attract you, not to be a perfect rendition of what I started with. It’s all about the use of colours and their blending.”
Some of Leeder’s most recognizable pieces depict teacups. She painted a series of her favourite objects at the invitation of Creston Museum manager Tammy Hardwick, who organizes a fundraiser tea on the museum’s grounds each year. Originals, reproductions and greeting cards of the images have travelled around the world and even found their way into TeaTime magazine, a U.S. publication.
The teacup theme also helped her to get involved with Debbie Graham’s annual Pink Garden Tea, a cancer fundraiser. A portion of sales made through the tea goes to support local cancer programs and patients, and Leeder’s painting, The Power Of Pink, was created specifically for the tea.
Her paintings are in private collections throughout Canada, Japan and the U.S. Several paintings were purchased by the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and placed in private family care rooms.
Leeder works in an above ground-basement studio in the home she shares with her husband, Ivor, and beloved Yorkshire terrier, Kenya. The view to the south brings the Creston Valley right to her doorstep, reminding her of the gratitude she feels for having relocated from Edmonton.
She has painted for less than 20 years, but she has always had a creative side.
“As a child I created Barbie doll furniture and clothing for myself and my friends.”
A career in business at Edmonton International Airport, where she ran the tax and duty-free shop and bonded warehouse didn’t allow for much artistic expression, but she credits it for helping her to learn “the marketing end of business” that has helped her in what she now considers to be a full-time painting career.
“After a good 18 years I left the job just because it was taking over all of my time. I was tired and I wanted a change.”
She went to work for a Mary Kay cosmetics director, helping her set up a home office and create monthly newsletters. It was in that job that she learned the computer skills that are now an integral asset to both her art designs and the marketing of her work.
“But over the years as I was working I was always looking for a release and that creative side of me kept coming out,” she recalls. “I picked up watercolour painting only because my husband used to be an oil painter. He had this interest in starting up again so I said, ‘Well, I’ll go out and buy you some paints to get you started.’ I had no idea what the cost was and I had no idea whether he was going to do it. So I bought him some cheap watercolour paints and brushes.”
The paints and brushes sat there and eventually Leeder “began picking them up and playing with them. The combination of the paint and the water and movement was so interesting to me. So I started to do more and more of it.”
She was drawn to still life because of her love of gardening, a passion she got from her mother. Gradually she started to become a painter. She learned by experiment and through books. After coming home from long days at work, the last thing she wanted to do was to hop back into the car and fight traffic to take lessons and workshops.
She took one or two workshops, finally, about 10 years ago, but has also taken advantage of the Internet for ideas and instructions.
“Mostly I’ve learned through trial and error, though. Through years of painting and maturity I started to find myself and learn what I really wanted to do.
“When I moved to Creston my paintings took on a deeper meaning. They have become a way to celebrate not only the beauty of the area we live in, but also the objects we use in our daily lives. Many of the objects in my paintings, such as the teacups and vases are vintage and bring their own story into my work. I also include vintage lace and this adds another layer. My love for this valley is shown by including fruit from local orchards along with the produce and flowers grown here.
“I have also started to include pottery made by local artisans. One of my paintings includes a bowl made by local potter Andrea Revoy. The painting I am currently working on includes a raku bowl by a Nelson potter. There are a few other Creston area potters whose work I want to include in my paintings, as well. Not only can I have fun with my paintings but I can help promote the work of other artists.”
“I want people to feel the joy in my work I want to create beautiful art that has meaning to people and that touches their lives in some way.”
Creston Valley Advance
There is a warmth and calmness to her finely detailed works that invites the viewer into a world that seems ever so slightly kinder and more welcoming. And the details keep drawing one’s eye further and further into her compositions.
“I actually set up my still life compositions by taking the objects outside so I can get the strong shadows and light,” she says. “Then I take a bunch of digital shots that I can load onto the computer right away and I can check and see if I’m happy with it or not.”
She then enlarges photographs to the size of the painting she plans and makes an outline of the elements that is eventually transferred to watercolour paper. Those elements are often adjusted as she paints — leaf shapes might be changed and details are added or deleted as she deems necessary. Some works use paint that has mica crystals that reflect the light, adding an almost magical quality to the surface.
“There are a lot of steps involved,” she admits. “I use only transparent watercolours — they’re not opaque so I can put on many, many light layers of colour to create the depth I’m looking for. This technique is known as glazing and through its use I can also achieve rich, luminous color.
“Some of the pencil lines are erased as I go along and others stay — I really don’t mind that. It shows how I work.”
While her finished work looks completely natural, she changes and adjusts the colours of the objects as she works.
“I tend to exaggerate the colours because in the end I want the painting to attract you, not to be a perfect rendition of what I started with. It’s all about the use of colours and their blending.”
Some of Leeder’s most recognizable pieces depict teacups. She painted a series of her favourite objects at the invitation of Creston Museum manager Tammy Hardwick, who organizes a fundraiser tea on the museum’s grounds each year. Originals, reproductions and greeting cards of the images have travelled around the world and even found their way into TeaTime magazine, a U.S. publication.
The teacup theme also helped her to get involved with Debbie Graham’s annual Pink Garden Tea, a cancer fundraiser. A portion of sales made through the tea goes to support local cancer programs and patients, and Leeder’s painting, The Power Of Pink, was created specifically for the tea.
Her paintings are in private collections throughout Canada, Japan and the U.S. Several paintings were purchased by the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and placed in private family care rooms.
Leeder works in an above ground-basement studio in the home she shares with her husband, Ivor, and beloved Yorkshire terrier, Kenya. The view to the south brings the Creston Valley right to her doorstep, reminding her of the gratitude she feels for having relocated from Edmonton.
She has painted for less than 20 years, but she has always had a creative side.
“As a child I created Barbie doll furniture and clothing for myself and my friends.”
A career in business at Edmonton International Airport, where she ran the tax and duty-free shop and bonded warehouse didn’t allow for much artistic expression, but she credits it for helping her to learn “the marketing end of business” that has helped her in what she now considers to be a full-time painting career.
“After a good 18 years I left the job just because it was taking over all of my time. I was tired and I wanted a change.”
She went to work for a Mary Kay cosmetics director, helping her set up a home office and create monthly newsletters. It was in that job that she learned the computer skills that are now an integral asset to both her art designs and the marketing of her work.
“But over the years as I was working I was always looking for a release and that creative side of me kept coming out,” she recalls. “I picked up watercolour painting only because my husband used to be an oil painter. He had this interest in starting up again so I said, ‘Well, I’ll go out and buy you some paints to get you started.’ I had no idea what the cost was and I had no idea whether he was going to do it. So I bought him some cheap watercolour paints and brushes.”
The paints and brushes sat there and eventually Leeder “began picking them up and playing with them. The combination of the paint and the water and movement was so interesting to me. So I started to do more and more of it.”
She was drawn to still life because of her love of gardening, a passion she got from her mother. Gradually she started to become a painter. She learned by experiment and through books. After coming home from long days at work, the last thing she wanted to do was to hop back into the car and fight traffic to take lessons and workshops.
She took one or two workshops, finally, about 10 years ago, but has also taken advantage of the Internet for ideas and instructions.
“Mostly I’ve learned through trial and error, though. Through years of painting and maturity I started to find myself and learn what I really wanted to do.
“When I moved to Creston my paintings took on a deeper meaning. They have become a way to celebrate not only the beauty of the area we live in, but also the objects we use in our daily lives. Many of the objects in my paintings, such as the teacups and vases are vintage and bring their own story into my work. I also include vintage lace and this adds another layer. My love for this valley is shown by including fruit from local orchards along with the produce and flowers grown here.
“I have also started to include pottery made by local artisans. One of my paintings includes a bowl made by local potter Andrea Revoy. The painting I am currently working on includes a raku bowl by a Nelson potter. There are a few other Creston area potters whose work I want to include in my paintings, as well. Not only can I have fun with my paintings but I can help promote the work of other artists.”
“I want people to feel the joy in my work I want to create beautiful art that has meaning to people and that touches their lives in some way.”
Creston Valley Advance
Creston watercolour artist follows passion for art
Eileen Gidman loved her nursing career, one she spent 20 years at. But she’s taken everything she learned from that experience, added a lifelong interest in painting and is now carving out a career in her true passion, art.
Born in Bentley, Alta., the youngest of four siblings, Gidman grew up in Dawson Creek and then came to spend a year with an aunt and uncle who lived in Canyon when she was 16. She completed her high school education at Prince Charles Secondary School, where art teacher John Grigoruk was a well-known figure.
It wasn’t her first education in art, though.
“I took my first adult education course in art when I was about 13,” she recalls. “My mother realized I wasn’t going to be a basketball player even though I was tall so I got enrolled in an art course because that was where my interest was right from the beginning.
“I loved art from day one. It’s not in my family, so I don’t really know why. I have early memories of Grade 2, painting watercolours.”
Her nursing career also was varied. For nine years she also taught the resident care aide program at the College of the Rockies, learning that even an introvert can stand in front of a classroom when she is confident about her subject.
While she was nursing, she took any art classes she could.
“I’ve had a lot of mentors,” she says. “I would say that (artist and former PCSS art teacher) Ute Bachinski has been my strongest role model. More than anything, I have learned to be who I am by watching other people and emulating what I like in them.
“Ute shares everything about art and when I was transitioning from nursing to art she was very strong in helping me be the person I wanted to be.”
Gidman describes herself as a lifelong learner, and credits her husband for giving her the support to follow her passion.
“Whatever has come to me in art has come to me through nursing and everything else I have done in life, including building a log house. I built 50 per cent of my home and that self-reliance and discipline comes through in my art life.
“After about 20 years in my nursing career I started to realize, with encouragement from my husband, Greg, that if I was going pursue an art career I had to do it, as time was ticking.”
She went to Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver to get a certificate in art and has returned several times since.
“That gave me the confidence to change,” she says.
“I think where I am today is I’m more mature and I know who I am. I am not as afraid to share that in the world. My husband has given me a lot of confidence — without him I’d still be painting in the basement. He’s encouraged me to get out there and share myself.
“I’ve done a lot of textile work in the last five years. It’s not traditional type of artwork. I fight the craft/art thing a lot but it’s of great interest to me. It’s who I am and I’m going to do that.”
When she took an interest in working with textiles, there weren’t a lot of opportunities, at least regionally, to take classes. But Elaine and Andy Alfoldy, who have been making cloth and paper batiks for most of their very successful careers, have served both as examples.
Now, she herself is becoming the teacher.
“I’m just starting to share what I have learned over five or six years with others because it was a lot of learning, a hard row to hoe,” she says.
A plein air (outdoor) painting enthusiast, Gidman likes to paint what she sees around her Arrow Creek neighbourhood — scenes, plants and flowers, clothes hanging to dry outdoors (more about that shortly) — and to get out on hikes.
“I had the most wonderful experience this year to go to Cathedral Lakes, out of Keremeos, on a hiking trip,” she says. “I got to paint there in fields of flowers, on the top of mountains. One of the things I’m very, very proud of is that I painted a mountain goat.”
She had been watching the animals and sketching from a distance for a couple of days, and was prepared when she saw a mountain goat coming back from the lake.
“I got maybe a three-minute watercolour sketch of him and I’m so proud of that. I’m so happy. It’s a rarity.”
Back to the clothesline story. She has created paintings she refers to as her Clothesline Series, but not without good reason.
“I have never had a clothes drier in my life. I lived without power for six years. As you mature you can have more of a voice to say, ‘This is who I am, this is what I believe in.’
“Fortis has a clothesline initiative that has been running for four years. I’ve clipped it out of the paper every year and it sits on my fridge.
“This year I sent off an email to them about my Clothesline Series to say I have my work in shows, trying to promote clotheslines usage. They were very interested and tweeted it around and then got back to me after a few months and asked me if I would paint a painting for them. How cool. So I did.”
Fortis has since used the painting as part of an award presentation to help promote conservation efforts.
“Artists throughout history have had a voice to make change and speak for issues. I’ve had some percolating in the back of my mind about Creston for quite a while,” she smiles.
Gidman’s self-confidence and passion for sharing is reflected in the way she approaches her textile art. Some pieces she finishes in frames or quilt-style. Others are intended for the purchaser to use as part of their own creation.
“People can take my work and put it into their own work, into a wall hanging or a quilt. And they are often scared to do so. It’s a big excitement for me when they do. Sometimes they just frame it, which is fine, too.
“Some pieces I’ve cut right into strips so people know it’s okay to make something with them.
“I’ve had people commission me for a particular show they are in of textiles, like maybe a theme. I’ll produce something for them and they will maybe applique on it or something. I’ve had somebody win an award for that combined work. I’m so proud of that.”
Like many artists, Gidman has no illusions of getting rich with her creations. But she is learning to treat art as a vocation that deserves her best marketing efforts.
“I like to sell my work but mostly it’s to share it with others more than the financial rewards.”
To promote her art, she has taken up blogging and is building a following on Facebook. She credits Community Futures for helping small business people learn about social marketing and she now meets monthly with a group of artists who gather to talk, not about art, but about the business of art.
Gidman has shows planned for Cranbrook (Key City Theatre) and Kaslo (Langham Cultural Centre) next year and sells her work at Creston Card and Stationery, markets and at Your Arts Desire in Kaslo.
Pieces are also available via the Internet (www.eileengidman.com) and her blog can be found from a link on the website.
Her advice for artists?
“Have a willingness to grab on and don’t be so focused that you think you know what you’ll be doing for the next five years. You need to be ready to veer off when new opportunities present themselves. You’ve got to be uncomfortable sometimes.
“As I get a little more mature I’m less concerned about getting into that uncomfortable state. It was much easier to go to work and know what was expected of me, but now it’s only self-driven. That’s a big change.”
Creston Valley Advance
Born in Bentley, Alta., the youngest of four siblings, Gidman grew up in Dawson Creek and then came to spend a year with an aunt and uncle who lived in Canyon when she was 16. She completed her high school education at Prince Charles Secondary School, where art teacher John Grigoruk was a well-known figure.
It wasn’t her first education in art, though.
“I took my first adult education course in art when I was about 13,” she recalls. “My mother realized I wasn’t going to be a basketball player even though I was tall so I got enrolled in an art course because that was where my interest was right from the beginning.
“I loved art from day one. It’s not in my family, so I don’t really know why. I have early memories of Grade 2, painting watercolours.”
Her nursing career also was varied. For nine years she also taught the resident care aide program at the College of the Rockies, learning that even an introvert can stand in front of a classroom when she is confident about her subject.
While she was nursing, she took any art classes she could.
“I’ve had a lot of mentors,” she says. “I would say that (artist and former PCSS art teacher) Ute Bachinski has been my strongest role model. More than anything, I have learned to be who I am by watching other people and emulating what I like in them.
“Ute shares everything about art and when I was transitioning from nursing to art she was very strong in helping me be the person I wanted to be.”
Gidman describes herself as a lifelong learner, and credits her husband for giving her the support to follow her passion.
“Whatever has come to me in art has come to me through nursing and everything else I have done in life, including building a log house. I built 50 per cent of my home and that self-reliance and discipline comes through in my art life.
“After about 20 years in my nursing career I started to realize, with encouragement from my husband, Greg, that if I was going pursue an art career I had to do it, as time was ticking.”
She went to Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver to get a certificate in art and has returned several times since.
“That gave me the confidence to change,” she says.
“I think where I am today is I’m more mature and I know who I am. I am not as afraid to share that in the world. My husband has given me a lot of confidence — without him I’d still be painting in the basement. He’s encouraged me to get out there and share myself.
“I’ve done a lot of textile work in the last five years. It’s not traditional type of artwork. I fight the craft/art thing a lot but it’s of great interest to me. It’s who I am and I’m going to do that.”
When she took an interest in working with textiles, there weren’t a lot of opportunities, at least regionally, to take classes. But Elaine and Andy Alfoldy, who have been making cloth and paper batiks for most of their very successful careers, have served both as examples.
Now, she herself is becoming the teacher.
“I’m just starting to share what I have learned over five or six years with others because it was a lot of learning, a hard row to hoe,” she says.
A plein air (outdoor) painting enthusiast, Gidman likes to paint what she sees around her Arrow Creek neighbourhood — scenes, plants and flowers, clothes hanging to dry outdoors (more about that shortly) — and to get out on hikes.
“I had the most wonderful experience this year to go to Cathedral Lakes, out of Keremeos, on a hiking trip,” she says. “I got to paint there in fields of flowers, on the top of mountains. One of the things I’m very, very proud of is that I painted a mountain goat.”
She had been watching the animals and sketching from a distance for a couple of days, and was prepared when she saw a mountain goat coming back from the lake.
“I got maybe a three-minute watercolour sketch of him and I’m so proud of that. I’m so happy. It’s a rarity.”
Back to the clothesline story. She has created paintings she refers to as her Clothesline Series, but not without good reason.
“I have never had a clothes drier in my life. I lived without power for six years. As you mature you can have more of a voice to say, ‘This is who I am, this is what I believe in.’
“Fortis has a clothesline initiative that has been running for four years. I’ve clipped it out of the paper every year and it sits on my fridge.
“This year I sent off an email to them about my Clothesline Series to say I have my work in shows, trying to promote clotheslines usage. They were very interested and tweeted it around and then got back to me after a few months and asked me if I would paint a painting for them. How cool. So I did.”
Fortis has since used the painting as part of an award presentation to help promote conservation efforts.
“Artists throughout history have had a voice to make change and speak for issues. I’ve had some percolating in the back of my mind about Creston for quite a while,” she smiles.
Gidman’s self-confidence and passion for sharing is reflected in the way she approaches her textile art. Some pieces she finishes in frames or quilt-style. Others are intended for the purchaser to use as part of their own creation.
“People can take my work and put it into their own work, into a wall hanging or a quilt. And they are often scared to do so. It’s a big excitement for me when they do. Sometimes they just frame it, which is fine, too.
“Some pieces I’ve cut right into strips so people know it’s okay to make something with them.
“I’ve had people commission me for a particular show they are in of textiles, like maybe a theme. I’ll produce something for them and they will maybe applique on it or something. I’ve had somebody win an award for that combined work. I’m so proud of that.”
Like many artists, Gidman has no illusions of getting rich with her creations. But she is learning to treat art as a vocation that deserves her best marketing efforts.
“I like to sell my work but mostly it’s to share it with others more than the financial rewards.”
To promote her art, she has taken up blogging and is building a following on Facebook. She credits Community Futures for helping small business people learn about social marketing and she now meets monthly with a group of artists who gather to talk, not about art, but about the business of art.
Gidman has shows planned for Cranbrook (Key City Theatre) and Kaslo (Langham Cultural Centre) next year and sells her work at Creston Card and Stationery, markets and at Your Arts Desire in Kaslo.
Pieces are also available via the Internet (www.eileengidman.com) and her blog can be found from a link on the website.
Her advice for artists?
“Have a willingness to grab on and don’t be so focused that you think you know what you’ll be doing for the next five years. You need to be ready to veer off when new opportunities present themselves. You’ve got to be uncomfortable sometimes.
“As I get a little more mature I’m less concerned about getting into that uncomfortable state. It was much easier to go to work and know what was expected of me, but now it’s only self-driven. That’s a big change.”
Creston Valley Advance
Creston bluegrass artist releasing second CD
The multi-talented Elena Yeung has released a new CD called Dandelion, filled with songs she wrote in the last three years.
“One of the tracks didn’t make it on to the first album — it already had a slow waltz — and a couple were written while the The Gravedigger’s Daughter was in production, but I wrote the rest since then,” she said.
Only one song on the entire CD wasn’t written by Yeung. The traditional number, Cindy, is included as an add-on to an instrumental piece called Banjo Vs. Garden.
The name of the latter should serve as a clue to the reader. Yeung is a banjo player (though she doubles on six- and 12-string guitar, too). She was once described — in jest — by another local musician as “my favourite female Asian banjo player in the Creston Valley.”
Dandelion once again reveals Yeung’s talent for writing songs that have a timeless feel to them. When she rehearsed the gospel tune Gonna Build Me a Boat with the Persuasions in New York City, one of the singers said it sounded like the songs he remembered singing in church as a youngster.
“It isn’t something I necessarily set out to do,” she said. “But I like music that has kind of an old feel to it, so that’s what I end up writing.”
Many of the songs take listeners back to their childhood years.
“Dandelion, oh dandelion
Your yellow head’s a burst of sun
Summer’s here and school’s all done
Dandelion, oh dandelion”
And:
“Momma, look down
There’s a little bird fallen to the ground
Look how still he lays
Oh, Momma, will he be okay”
The likeliest explanation for lyrics that look at the world through the eyes of children comes from her day job, where she works with children as an occupational therapist.
Ask Yeung about making Dandelion and the response quickly focuses on her experience in recording Gonna Build Me a Boat.
The story begins with Yeung playing at a 2009 music festival in Dawson City, Yukon, where she met the Persuasions, an a cappella gospel quintet that was formed 48 years ago in Brooklyn. Two of the founding members, Joe Russell and Jimmy Hayes, continue to perform with the group.
“I was kind of hanging out with some of the members, having supper with them and stuff,” she recalls. “I talked about this gospel song I had written and said I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Some of the new members said the Persuasions might be interested in the song but later, when she emailed them about it, she didn’t get a response.
“Then a year ago I had enough songs for the CD but I still didn’t know what to do with the gospel piece.”
On the advice of a friend, she once again sent off an email.
“I got a response the next day.”
The message said that no promises could be made but they would listen to the tune. She sent off a CD and eventually it was returned without having got into the group’s hands. The second mailing proved to be luckier.
“They got it and they liked it,” she said.
Yeung initially thought the group could record their work in New York, then return it to Creston so she could add her voice and have a final editing done.
“But they said, ‘It would be really cool if we could all be in one room together.’ ‘I can’t do that!’ I said.”
Soon, though, she came to realize she was being presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
“And I realized, I couldn’t not do it!”
She made arrangements to fly to New York, but not before her parents chimed in with their own concerns.
“My parents were terrified for me,” she laughed. “They told me not to go outside or do anything other than what was absolutely necessary.”
She met the Persuasions for a quick rehearsal, then had a second meeting with the bass singer and the group’s musical arranger. Two days later, she met the full group, but the rehearsal space they had planned to use was occupied.
“But it was a beautiful spring day and they decided we could go over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn,” she recalled. “So there they were, on a park bench, and they started. Then they told me to get right in the middle of the group to see if they were making the sound I wanted.
“It was a Sunday afternoon and everybody was stopping and listening. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention—it was the best thing that has ever happened in my life. I’m still basking in that day—wow!
“And the guys were so nice and light-hearted. They did it because they loved the song.”
Yeung said she had two choices in making Dandelion.
“I could take what I learned from the first album and turn it into a commercial venture or I could just relax and have fun with it.”
She chose the latter course. She recorded parts of the CD in Vancouver, Idaho and Creston, in addition to the New York session. And she got to work with friends like violinist Karl Sommerfeld, among others. The final mixing was done by Jason Deatherage at Fort Cosmos Studios in Wynndel.
The Gravedigger’s Daughter quickly became a favourite of several CBC Radio personalities and has received plenty of airplay. CBC listeners can expect Dandelion to become just as popular.
This month, with her garden safely harvested and cleaned up for the winter, Yeung took her new music on tour, starting at Gray Creek Hall on Nov. 4, concluding with a CD release concert on Nov. 26 at the Snoring Sasquatch.
In the liner notes for Dandelion, Yeung writes, “Big thanks to the community of Creston, BC for all your enthusiasm, encouragement and support.”
The community of Creston would no doubt reply, “Right back at you, Elena!”
Creston Valley Advance
“One of the tracks didn’t make it on to the first album — it already had a slow waltz — and a couple were written while the The Gravedigger’s Daughter was in production, but I wrote the rest since then,” she said.
Only one song on the entire CD wasn’t written by Yeung. The traditional number, Cindy, is included as an add-on to an instrumental piece called Banjo Vs. Garden.
The name of the latter should serve as a clue to the reader. Yeung is a banjo player (though she doubles on six- and 12-string guitar, too). She was once described — in jest — by another local musician as “my favourite female Asian banjo player in the Creston Valley.”
Dandelion once again reveals Yeung’s talent for writing songs that have a timeless feel to them. When she rehearsed the gospel tune Gonna Build Me a Boat with the Persuasions in New York City, one of the singers said it sounded like the songs he remembered singing in church as a youngster.
“It isn’t something I necessarily set out to do,” she said. “But I like music that has kind of an old feel to it, so that’s what I end up writing.”
Many of the songs take listeners back to their childhood years.
“Dandelion, oh dandelion
Your yellow head’s a burst of sun
Summer’s here and school’s all done
Dandelion, oh dandelion”
And:
“Momma, look down
There’s a little bird fallen to the ground
Look how still he lays
Oh, Momma, will he be okay”
The likeliest explanation for lyrics that look at the world through the eyes of children comes from her day job, where she works with children as an occupational therapist.
Ask Yeung about making Dandelion and the response quickly focuses on her experience in recording Gonna Build Me a Boat.
The story begins with Yeung playing at a 2009 music festival in Dawson City, Yukon, where she met the Persuasions, an a cappella gospel quintet that was formed 48 years ago in Brooklyn. Two of the founding members, Joe Russell and Jimmy Hayes, continue to perform with the group.
“I was kind of hanging out with some of the members, having supper with them and stuff,” she recalls. “I talked about this gospel song I had written and said I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Some of the new members said the Persuasions might be interested in the song but later, when she emailed them about it, she didn’t get a response.
“Then a year ago I had enough songs for the CD but I still didn’t know what to do with the gospel piece.”
On the advice of a friend, she once again sent off an email.
“I got a response the next day.”
The message said that no promises could be made but they would listen to the tune. She sent off a CD and eventually it was returned without having got into the group’s hands. The second mailing proved to be luckier.
“They got it and they liked it,” she said.
Yeung initially thought the group could record their work in New York, then return it to Creston so she could add her voice and have a final editing done.
“But they said, ‘It would be really cool if we could all be in one room together.’ ‘I can’t do that!’ I said.”
Soon, though, she came to realize she was being presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
“And I realized, I couldn’t not do it!”
She made arrangements to fly to New York, but not before her parents chimed in with their own concerns.
“My parents were terrified for me,” she laughed. “They told me not to go outside or do anything other than what was absolutely necessary.”
She met the Persuasions for a quick rehearsal, then had a second meeting with the bass singer and the group’s musical arranger. Two days later, she met the full group, but the rehearsal space they had planned to use was occupied.
“But it was a beautiful spring day and they decided we could go over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn,” she recalled. “So there they were, on a park bench, and they started. Then they told me to get right in the middle of the group to see if they were making the sound I wanted.
“It was a Sunday afternoon and everybody was stopping and listening. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention—it was the best thing that has ever happened in my life. I’m still basking in that day—wow!
“And the guys were so nice and light-hearted. They did it because they loved the song.”
Yeung said she had two choices in making Dandelion.
“I could take what I learned from the first album and turn it into a commercial venture or I could just relax and have fun with it.”
She chose the latter course. She recorded parts of the CD in Vancouver, Idaho and Creston, in addition to the New York session. And she got to work with friends like violinist Karl Sommerfeld, among others. The final mixing was done by Jason Deatherage at Fort Cosmos Studios in Wynndel.
The Gravedigger’s Daughter quickly became a favourite of several CBC Radio personalities and has received plenty of airplay. CBC listeners can expect Dandelion to become just as popular.
This month, with her garden safely harvested and cleaned up for the winter, Yeung took her new music on tour, starting at Gray Creek Hall on Nov. 4, concluding with a CD release concert on Nov. 26 at the Snoring Sasquatch.
In the liner notes for Dandelion, Yeung writes, “Big thanks to the community of Creston, BC for all your enthusiasm, encouragement and support.”
The community of Creston would no doubt reply, “Right back at you, Elena!”
Creston Valley Advance
Creston artists turn old into new with
Puffin Design
Alison Bjorkman came to Creston as an established, accomplished potter. Her husband, Bart, has never thought of himself as an artist, or even having artistic talent. But the two have found a perfect way to match their skills and creativity by “repurposing” old items and creating unique home decor items.
Looking around the Bjorkman residence in Erickson, a surprising number of Puffin Design creations come into focus. A movie tripod floodlight standing in the corner is pretty much unchanged, except for new wiring that allows it to accept a fluorescent light bulb and not emit a jillion degrees of heat. A coffee table features a lovely concrete (more about that later) top that rests on a railway depot baggage cart, complete with heavy steel wheels. An old wooden sugar mold holds coloured glass tumblers, each housing a votive candle. Old steel funnels rewired with retro cloth electrical cord to accommodate light sockets can be raised and lowered by tugging on the cord, which runs through well-worn wooden pulleys or hollow steel brackets.
Each of the one-of-a-kind items is the result of creative shopping (they haunt junk shops whenever they travel), creative — very creative — minds and skilled hands.
“We have this unique combination of skills,” Bart says, which might be the understatement of all time. The one-time armed forces specialist is a commercial and salvage diver, a search and rescue tracker and trainer, the author of a post-9-11 manual on weapons that can elude traditional security screening and a guy who several years ago became obsessed with making concrete sinks and table- and countertops. Alison is a rare artist who has a diploma in business administration and who for many years operated Black Bear Books, the popular book, music and coffee hangout on Canyon Street.
Bart points to a large bowl, explaining that Alison recently made it. Nothing unusual there, until he adds that she used concrete.
“We had just finished a concrete counter and there was leftover material. ‘Why don’t you make a bowl?’ I asked her. ‘You’re a potter.’ ”
Alison set to work and her wide-eyed husband watched in amazement.
“You shouldn’t be able to make concrete into a bowl that’s a quarter-inch thick, but she did,” he laughs.
“Bart tries not to tell me what I can and can’t do in concrete,” she explains. “I haven’t taken all the courses he has, so I just go ahead and start into something.”
With their Puffin Design business, the primary goal is to become a supplier to designers all over the continent.
“These people are always looking for unique items that they can design a room around,” Bart says. “They are amazing people to work with.”
To fulfill the needs demanded by a high-end market, Puffin Design utilizes the talents of others, too. The Bjorkmans have partnered with First Nations carver Michael Price, master welder and blacksmith Andrew Bibby and Kris Balde at Kriskraft Industries to create special bases for tabletops and other pieces that need a “special something” to complete a project.
“Each partner adds their own special twist to a piece,” Bart says.
Because they operate Legend Rock, which makes all the concrete pieces, and Puffin Design, which is intended as the marketing arm for everything they create, Alison says things sometimes get complicated.
“It’s hard to resist adding concrete to everything we make,” she laughs.
That might be something that would suit Bart quite nicely, but he admits their differences in skills and personality are a distinct advantage.
“We each approach things in a different way,” he says. “She sees an old item and says, ‘Well we could do this with that,’ and explains what ‘this’ might be. I tend to design things on paper.”
“He looks for parts to make his design and I look for things that we can make into something else,” Alison elaborates.
Sourcing for their unique pieces has become an enjoyable part of the business.
“We have junk store owners that are actually looking for things that we might be able to use,” Bart says. “I went to one recently and the owner had a whole collection of stuff piled together for us to check out. We bought almost everything.”
If Bart has to be held back from putting concrete into everything they make, Alison has her own weakness.
“I have a thing for boxes on wheels,” she laughs. “I love being able to move things around easily.
Alison has recently taken up upholstery, another skill that allows her to add beauty and utility to Puffin Design creations. And the artist in her makes the hunt for high quality fabrics another thrill.
“I don’t want to play with plain fabric — I want to use great fabrics to make great pieces.”
She points to an old side chair that she cleaned up — without refinishing — then upholstered with a dazzlingly, rich peacock fabric. Bart flips up the lid of a repurposed Bell and Howell camera box — now on wheels, of course — and reveals a matching fabric lining. It’s one the unexpected, quirky details that sets their work apart, raising it to an entirely new, and often unexpected, level.
Using old, sometimes battered, items also means using a great deal of discretion.
“I just bought a new sandblaster and now I’m tempted to sandblast everything in sight,” he laughs. “But you can’t replace a hundred-year-old patina, so you have to think ahead about how something might look in the end.”
The pair takes delight in showing off their new acquisitions. Alison pulls out a pair of big old fishing reels that she envisions becoming lamp parts. In his Alice Siding workshop, Bart points out two old barbershop chairs.
“I don’t know what they are going to be, but they are just so cool!”
Like the showroom quality sinks and countertops that Bart fashions from Fiberglas-strengthened concrete, the Bjorkmans insist they don’t want to just make things that are decorative.
“If we have one similarity in our approaches, it that whatever we make has to be functional,” Alison says. “We don’t do much that is just to be looked at.”
Using old items resonates with the repurposers.
“The whole process is very humbling to me,” Alison says. “It’s like there is a three-generation story. These items were used by our grandparents’ generation, then maybe they went outside to become things we played with. Now I’m seeing that same stuff in antique stores.”
“Each piece has it’s own history,” Bart adds. “It’s nice to become part of that story.”
For more information, visit Puffin Design at puffindesign.ca or phone 250-402-9257. Some Puffin Design creations are displayed at Creative Fix on 10th Avenue North. The Legend Rock studio and showroom is at Bay 6, 1204 Northwest Blvd. or phone 250-428-5076.
Creston Valley Advance
Looking around the Bjorkman residence in Erickson, a surprising number of Puffin Design creations come into focus. A movie tripod floodlight standing in the corner is pretty much unchanged, except for new wiring that allows it to accept a fluorescent light bulb and not emit a jillion degrees of heat. A coffee table features a lovely concrete (more about that later) top that rests on a railway depot baggage cart, complete with heavy steel wheels. An old wooden sugar mold holds coloured glass tumblers, each housing a votive candle. Old steel funnels rewired with retro cloth electrical cord to accommodate light sockets can be raised and lowered by tugging on the cord, which runs through well-worn wooden pulleys or hollow steel brackets.
Each of the one-of-a-kind items is the result of creative shopping (they haunt junk shops whenever they travel), creative — very creative — minds and skilled hands.
“We have this unique combination of skills,” Bart says, which might be the understatement of all time. The one-time armed forces specialist is a commercial and salvage diver, a search and rescue tracker and trainer, the author of a post-9-11 manual on weapons that can elude traditional security screening and a guy who several years ago became obsessed with making concrete sinks and table- and countertops. Alison is a rare artist who has a diploma in business administration and who for many years operated Black Bear Books, the popular book, music and coffee hangout on Canyon Street.
Bart points to a large bowl, explaining that Alison recently made it. Nothing unusual there, until he adds that she used concrete.
“We had just finished a concrete counter and there was leftover material. ‘Why don’t you make a bowl?’ I asked her. ‘You’re a potter.’ ”
Alison set to work and her wide-eyed husband watched in amazement.
“You shouldn’t be able to make concrete into a bowl that’s a quarter-inch thick, but she did,” he laughs.
“Bart tries not to tell me what I can and can’t do in concrete,” she explains. “I haven’t taken all the courses he has, so I just go ahead and start into something.”
With their Puffin Design business, the primary goal is to become a supplier to designers all over the continent.
“These people are always looking for unique items that they can design a room around,” Bart says. “They are amazing people to work with.”
To fulfill the needs demanded by a high-end market, Puffin Design utilizes the talents of others, too. The Bjorkmans have partnered with First Nations carver Michael Price, master welder and blacksmith Andrew Bibby and Kris Balde at Kriskraft Industries to create special bases for tabletops and other pieces that need a “special something” to complete a project.
“Each partner adds their own special twist to a piece,” Bart says.
Because they operate Legend Rock, which makes all the concrete pieces, and Puffin Design, which is intended as the marketing arm for everything they create, Alison says things sometimes get complicated.
“It’s hard to resist adding concrete to everything we make,” she laughs.
That might be something that would suit Bart quite nicely, but he admits their differences in skills and personality are a distinct advantage.
“We each approach things in a different way,” he says. “She sees an old item and says, ‘Well we could do this with that,’ and explains what ‘this’ might be. I tend to design things on paper.”
“He looks for parts to make his design and I look for things that we can make into something else,” Alison elaborates.
Sourcing for their unique pieces has become an enjoyable part of the business.
“We have junk store owners that are actually looking for things that we might be able to use,” Bart says. “I went to one recently and the owner had a whole collection of stuff piled together for us to check out. We bought almost everything.”
If Bart has to be held back from putting concrete into everything they make, Alison has her own weakness.
“I have a thing for boxes on wheels,” she laughs. “I love being able to move things around easily.
Alison has recently taken up upholstery, another skill that allows her to add beauty and utility to Puffin Design creations. And the artist in her makes the hunt for high quality fabrics another thrill.
“I don’t want to play with plain fabric — I want to use great fabrics to make great pieces.”
She points to an old side chair that she cleaned up — without refinishing — then upholstered with a dazzlingly, rich peacock fabric. Bart flips up the lid of a repurposed Bell and Howell camera box — now on wheels, of course — and reveals a matching fabric lining. It’s one the unexpected, quirky details that sets their work apart, raising it to an entirely new, and often unexpected, level.
Using old, sometimes battered, items also means using a great deal of discretion.
“I just bought a new sandblaster and now I’m tempted to sandblast everything in sight,” he laughs. “But you can’t replace a hundred-year-old patina, so you have to think ahead about how something might look in the end.”
The pair takes delight in showing off their new acquisitions. Alison pulls out a pair of big old fishing reels that she envisions becoming lamp parts. In his Alice Siding workshop, Bart points out two old barbershop chairs.
“I don’t know what they are going to be, but they are just so cool!”
Like the showroom quality sinks and countertops that Bart fashions from Fiberglas-strengthened concrete, the Bjorkmans insist they don’t want to just make things that are decorative.
“If we have one similarity in our approaches, it that whatever we make has to be functional,” Alison says. “We don’t do much that is just to be looked at.”
Using old items resonates with the repurposers.
“The whole process is very humbling to me,” Alison says. “It’s like there is a three-generation story. These items were used by our grandparents’ generation, then maybe they went outside to become things we played with. Now I’m seeing that same stuff in antique stores.”
“Each piece has it’s own history,” Bart adds. “It’s nice to become part of that story.”
For more information, visit Puffin Design at puffindesign.ca or phone 250-402-9257. Some Puffin Design creations are displayed at Creative Fix on 10th Avenue North. The Legend Rock studio and showroom is at Bay 6, 1204 Northwest Blvd. or phone 250-428-5076.
Creston Valley Advance
Creston artist creates a world of colour
In the six years since Win Dinn and her husband John moved to the Creston Valley, she has been a gallery owner, an artist and a teacher. And she has become known for her fascination — no, let’s call it obsession — with colour.
Looking through Dinn’s paintings and multi-media creations, scrolling through her Internet blog and perusing her Facebook posts, it quickly becomes apparent that she sees, and appreciates, colour in a distinct and highly developed way.
The human eye has three different types of cones, or photoreceptors, that allow us to distinguish red, blue and green colour wavelengths. Pigeons and butterflies are pentachromats — they can distinguish five colours. But the queens of colour vision are the stomatopods, including the peacock mantis shrimp, which have 16 different photoreceptor pigments that allow them to see a range of colours that puts humans to shame. Think of Dinn as the human equivalent of the peacock mantis shrimp.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t especially artistic as a child.
“I didn’t get into doing art until I started colouring mandalas as an adult,” she says.
Colouring mandalas? It was a therapeutic approach to working through a family tragedy, one that eventually led her to designing mandalas and then painting them.
Definitions of the word mandala usually include references to designs, usually circular, that symbolize the universe or express a personal striving for unity of the self.
“The mandala is a classic concept that shows up in cultures throughout history,” Dinn says. “The shape and design is meditative and invites focus — they are a very therapeutic form. I start painting them intuitively, then became fascinated when I found that they appear in every area of the planet and have their base in nature.
“The planet holds such things as sacred — there is definitely something there.”
She and John came to Creston from Canmore, where both had been active in the arts community, creatively and organizationally. There is a sense of order and purpose to everything the couple does, perhaps as a result of the careers — she was an office manager and John worked as a draftsman in the structural steel industry. He paints and does photography.
When retirement age appeared on the horizon, the couple visited the Okanagan, where they have family. But another family member recommended that they drive through Creston before returning home.
“We fell in love with the area and within about a month we had bought a house,” Dinn says. “The Creston Valley seemed quieter — we liked the lack of craziness that surrounds the Okanagan, which has grown so quickly. We loved the fruit trees and found the people to be very friendly. That there was already a strong arts community was clearly very important to us, too.”
Like many who choose a different area to retire in, they could hardly wait to make the move.
“It was just awful,” she laughs. “We came much earlier than we had planned — there was an almost unbearable pull.”
Knowing that she was unlikely to find work in Creston, she underwent a yearlong planning process that led to the opening of Painted Turtle Gallery in downtown Creston. The gallery was an instant hit with artists, local residents and visitors. It was filled with art in many media, with the emphasis on Kootenay artists.
“It was a fabulous experience and I am so thankful that we actually did it,” she says. “I learned a ton, from a business owner’s point of view and I loved the social aspect of it.”
What appeared to be a fixture on Canyon Street couldn’t survive a sudden downturn in the economy, though.
“I was doing everything right and we just got kicked by the economy. I hear how much the gallery is missed every time I go downtown.”
When one door closes, another often opens, though, and she has used her time to focus on her own creativity and to offer a series of a workshops, too.
Dinn first painted with acrylics and for a while focused on pastels. In recent years, though, she has fallen in love with making multimedia pieces, which might include photographs, as well as objects and paint. They allow her tremendous freedom to explore the use of colour and to use found objects that inspire her on a daily basis. In fact, she collects little objects of interest and when she is looking for a source of inspiration they often give her just what she needs to get started.
“Mixed media allows me to incorporate everything I’ve learned in all different areas. It keeps my interest really engaged.
“Everything is collage fodder. The most mundane thing, like a nut and bolt, can start series of paintings — I’ve even used computer parts.”
“Very strong colours are always inspiring. I take a lot of inspiration from nature, including drawing and pressing leaves.”
On her blog (www.windinnart.blogspot.ca), Dinn recently posted a pastel she did a few years back. Rodgriguez Island Gecko features a blue gecko against blue and orange design that appears to be an extreme close-up of the gecko’s skin. It is from a series she called Vanished from the Pattern. She then goes on to introduce another series, Fading from the Pattern, which uses several photos to explain the process she used to create Hung Out to Dry, which includes a National Geographic photo of a lion against a backdrop of red mountains, with a subtle lion paw print imposed on the surface.
“I find there are subjects and/or issues that will just not leave me alone, and I suspect the destruction of our environment will continue as a theme throughout my artistic life,” she writes.
Asked what direction she would like to take her creative spirit and colour-obsessed eye in the coming years, Dinn’s first thoughts turn to teaching.
“I’d like to be doing workshops across Western Canada and the Northwest United States,” she said, “as well as creating and showing my own work. My art is as much about teaching as it is about painting.”
Dinn’s work is currently on display at Creston Framing and Cherrybrook Farms in Erickson, as well as Fisher Peak Gallery in Cranbrook.
Creston Valley Advance
Looking through Dinn’s paintings and multi-media creations, scrolling through her Internet blog and perusing her Facebook posts, it quickly becomes apparent that she sees, and appreciates, colour in a distinct and highly developed way.
The human eye has three different types of cones, or photoreceptors, that allow us to distinguish red, blue and green colour wavelengths. Pigeons and butterflies are pentachromats — they can distinguish five colours. But the queens of colour vision are the stomatopods, including the peacock mantis shrimp, which have 16 different photoreceptor pigments that allow them to see a range of colours that puts humans to shame. Think of Dinn as the human equivalent of the peacock mantis shrimp.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t especially artistic as a child.
“I didn’t get into doing art until I started colouring mandalas as an adult,” she says.
Colouring mandalas? It was a therapeutic approach to working through a family tragedy, one that eventually led her to designing mandalas and then painting them.
Definitions of the word mandala usually include references to designs, usually circular, that symbolize the universe or express a personal striving for unity of the self.
“The mandala is a classic concept that shows up in cultures throughout history,” Dinn says. “The shape and design is meditative and invites focus — they are a very therapeutic form. I start painting them intuitively, then became fascinated when I found that they appear in every area of the planet and have their base in nature.
“The planet holds such things as sacred — there is definitely something there.”
She and John came to Creston from Canmore, where both had been active in the arts community, creatively and organizationally. There is a sense of order and purpose to everything the couple does, perhaps as a result of the careers — she was an office manager and John worked as a draftsman in the structural steel industry. He paints and does photography.
When retirement age appeared on the horizon, the couple visited the Okanagan, where they have family. But another family member recommended that they drive through Creston before returning home.
“We fell in love with the area and within about a month we had bought a house,” Dinn says. “The Creston Valley seemed quieter — we liked the lack of craziness that surrounds the Okanagan, which has grown so quickly. We loved the fruit trees and found the people to be very friendly. That there was already a strong arts community was clearly very important to us, too.”
Like many who choose a different area to retire in, they could hardly wait to make the move.
“It was just awful,” she laughs. “We came much earlier than we had planned — there was an almost unbearable pull.”
Knowing that she was unlikely to find work in Creston, she underwent a yearlong planning process that led to the opening of Painted Turtle Gallery in downtown Creston. The gallery was an instant hit with artists, local residents and visitors. It was filled with art in many media, with the emphasis on Kootenay artists.
“It was a fabulous experience and I am so thankful that we actually did it,” she says. “I learned a ton, from a business owner’s point of view and I loved the social aspect of it.”
What appeared to be a fixture on Canyon Street couldn’t survive a sudden downturn in the economy, though.
“I was doing everything right and we just got kicked by the economy. I hear how much the gallery is missed every time I go downtown.”
When one door closes, another often opens, though, and she has used her time to focus on her own creativity and to offer a series of a workshops, too.
Dinn first painted with acrylics and for a while focused on pastels. In recent years, though, she has fallen in love with making multimedia pieces, which might include photographs, as well as objects and paint. They allow her tremendous freedom to explore the use of colour and to use found objects that inspire her on a daily basis. In fact, she collects little objects of interest and when she is looking for a source of inspiration they often give her just what she needs to get started.
“Mixed media allows me to incorporate everything I’ve learned in all different areas. It keeps my interest really engaged.
“Everything is collage fodder. The most mundane thing, like a nut and bolt, can start series of paintings — I’ve even used computer parts.”
“Very strong colours are always inspiring. I take a lot of inspiration from nature, including drawing and pressing leaves.”
On her blog (www.windinnart.blogspot.ca), Dinn recently posted a pastel she did a few years back. Rodgriguez Island Gecko features a blue gecko against blue and orange design that appears to be an extreme close-up of the gecko’s skin. It is from a series she called Vanished from the Pattern. She then goes on to introduce another series, Fading from the Pattern, which uses several photos to explain the process she used to create Hung Out to Dry, which includes a National Geographic photo of a lion against a backdrop of red mountains, with a subtle lion paw print imposed on the surface.
“I find there are subjects and/or issues that will just not leave me alone, and I suspect the destruction of our environment will continue as a theme throughout my artistic life,” she writes.
Asked what direction she would like to take her creative spirit and colour-obsessed eye in the coming years, Dinn’s first thoughts turn to teaching.
“I’d like to be doing workshops across Western Canada and the Northwest United States,” she said, “as well as creating and showing my own work. My art is as much about teaching as it is about painting.”
Dinn’s work is currently on display at Creston Framing and Cherrybrook Farms in Erickson, as well as Fisher Peak Gallery in Cranbrook.
Creston Valley Advance
Canyon textile artist inspired by nature
Bea von Allmen designs and sews eye-popping, classic-looking women’s clothing, makes elegant jewelry and sells produce grown on her Canyon farm. But it is her raku-fired bird heads, mounted on steel rods and adorned with gorgeous fabrics, that capture the imagination of her many admirers.
“I don’t like making people’s faces,” is her simple explanation of why she has become so enamoured with creating upright, human-like characters with long-beaked faces.
She and her husband, Ernst, moved to the Creston Valley 10 years ago from their home country of Switzerland. They longed for the space offered by the Canadian countryside and the chance to own property that would allow them to produce their own food and pursue their own creative passions. The Creston Valley, with its temperate climate, rich soil and close proximity to Kootenay Lake, was an easy choice once they saw fruit trees growing when they arrived from the east.
In Switzerland, von Allmen did clay work for 25 years, mainly for jewelry. She also worked with Ernst, who had an oriental rug business.
“But we always wanted to own a farm,” she said. “We wanted to grow our own food and have a better lifestyle. This valley had all the things that were on our wish list.”
The von Allmen farm is a warm and welcoming site. Located at 4341 Muzzy Road, it is a model of tidiness. Rows of firewood are stacked in an open shed, sorted according to species and log size. The completely renovated house boasts a clay workshop that becomes von Allmen’s studio and another basement studio where she sews. A spotless chicken coop is home to surprisingly content birds. Out back is a huge shop in which Ernst keeps busy with his many hobbies and projects. Last week, a long line of braced steel fence corner posts was in production. All were made with recycled steel, awaiting several coats of paint before Ernst undertakes a 1,300-foot fencing project that will allow the couple to pursue their next dream, landscaping the area around the house and protecting their gardens from the area’s abundant wildlife.
Creston has a four-season climate and the von Allmens revel in it, adjusting their activities to the weather. What serves as her gallery during the summer will revert to her clay studio in the winter, when she is more drawn to the physical activity of making and firing clay. When she isn’t working in the garden during the spring and summer months, she repairs to her above ground basement sewing studio, which is replete with framed old pages from a sewing magazine, open shelves of impeccably arranged bolts of cloth and a pair of comfy upholstered chairs brought from Switzerland.
“I don’t like to work in a messy space,” von Allmen said, pointing out the obvious. “Wherever I’m working I want to make it feel like a living space. So I always have chairs and art and maybe even an espresso machine in that space.”
In the winter, she said, “My clay shop is my sanctuary. To be creative I have to dig into my inner self, either in a workshop or out in nature.”
Visitors to the Creston Valley Farmers Market will be familiar with von Allmen’s elegant clothing displays and neatly arranged produce. But her clay bird and cat characters are reserved for display in galleries, including her own and Eileen Hirota’s (the pieces were a popular attraction in the now-closed Painted Turtle Gallery on Canyon Street).
“I dream of a fantasy or theme and then I work towards it,” she said in an effort to explain her latest series that features characters from an imaginary oriental marketplace. This year she has created several dozen pieces, including an alchemist, a silk trader, a jewel salesman, an oil sheikh, a prince, a bride-to-be and… well, you get the idea.
“I have had a lifelong passion for markets,” von Allmen explained. “In the old days, everyone looked forward to market day. Back then, markets were a necessity. They were the only place that people could sell, buy and trade. Vendors from near and far would meet a colourful mix of farmers, traders, salesmen, musicians, entertainers and buyers. Even the odd thief would sneak in!”
The oriental marketplace experience was inspired in part by a trip to Turkey when Ernst was still in the rug trade. And her fascination by markets extends into her participation in the local farmers market. She speaks of markets with passion and doesn’t measure her success in them in terms of sales.
“With markets you have to be patient as an artist and don’t expect to make sales,” she said. “Advertising fees is what I call the space rental. You have to give customers time to identify with your work and they want to get to know you, so continuity is the key. I started my artistic career by going to markets 30 years ago and I have had offers to exhibit in shows and galleries ever since.”
Von Allmen refers to her business as Cloth and Clay Art and describes her bird and cat figures as whimsical. One member of a recent group that toured her gallery described her work as “perfect”, a word she disagrees with. Sort of.
“I like things perfect but when it comes to the last little detail of perfection I can’t do it, so maybe my things are 95 per cent perfect,” she laughed. “Perfection kills creativity.”
While her interest in birds is explained in part by a dislike of making faces from clay, there are other factors at play, too.
“The first bird I made was in a raku workshop in a secluded community in the Swiss mountains,” she said. “It had a population of about 50 and you could only get to it by cable car or a two-hour hike. I felt kind of trapped when I was there, so I created a bird with big wings. If you are standing on a cliff and you have wings, you are free. Birds have freedom.”
And, while von Allmen’s raku-fired characters have distinctive bird-like beaks, they also have human characteristics.
“Their eyes are like a human being’s and they stand upright,” she pointed out. “And I like tall, slim figures, so I make the cats like that, too.”
The materials she selects for the clay characters’ clothing comes from the same vast collection of fabric that she uses for her women’s clothing line.
“I have been collecting fabric for most of my life,” she said, pulling a bolt of antique black brocade from a floor-to-ceiling shelf on which fabrics are arranged by colour. “And I’m not a fan of modern… whatever it is. I don’t like pinks and purples — you won’t find any girlie colours in my house! I prefer more muted, natural tones. Then I add a bit of glitter like gold or copper to catch the eye.”
In all her work, von Allmen finds inspiration in nature. Fabrics are all made from natural fibres in earth tones and they often feature subtle leaf or feather designs. Her creations, obviously, reflect her own personality and interests.
On Sundays, June through September, Bea and Ernst von Allmen invite the public to their farm for a visit to Bea’s gallery between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The gallery is also open by appointment by calling 250-428-0119.
This fall, the artist plans to become more computer savvy by taking a course that will enable her to create her own web site and perhaps even begin online sales. And she ends the conversation on a sun-filled weekday morning with another piece of tantalizing news.
“This winter I’m going to work on something different that I’ve been thinking about for years,” she smiled. “But I can’t talk about it until I know it will work.”
Yet another reason to continue returning to the gallery, studios and home of one of the Creston Valley’s most innovative creators. And one of the nicest.
Creston Valley Advance
“I don’t like making people’s faces,” is her simple explanation of why she has become so enamoured with creating upright, human-like characters with long-beaked faces.
She and her husband, Ernst, moved to the Creston Valley 10 years ago from their home country of Switzerland. They longed for the space offered by the Canadian countryside and the chance to own property that would allow them to produce their own food and pursue their own creative passions. The Creston Valley, with its temperate climate, rich soil and close proximity to Kootenay Lake, was an easy choice once they saw fruit trees growing when they arrived from the east.
In Switzerland, von Allmen did clay work for 25 years, mainly for jewelry. She also worked with Ernst, who had an oriental rug business.
“But we always wanted to own a farm,” she said. “We wanted to grow our own food and have a better lifestyle. This valley had all the things that were on our wish list.”
The von Allmen farm is a warm and welcoming site. Located at 4341 Muzzy Road, it is a model of tidiness. Rows of firewood are stacked in an open shed, sorted according to species and log size. The completely renovated house boasts a clay workshop that becomes von Allmen’s studio and another basement studio where she sews. A spotless chicken coop is home to surprisingly content birds. Out back is a huge shop in which Ernst keeps busy with his many hobbies and projects. Last week, a long line of braced steel fence corner posts was in production. All were made with recycled steel, awaiting several coats of paint before Ernst undertakes a 1,300-foot fencing project that will allow the couple to pursue their next dream, landscaping the area around the house and protecting their gardens from the area’s abundant wildlife.
Creston has a four-season climate and the von Allmens revel in it, adjusting their activities to the weather. What serves as her gallery during the summer will revert to her clay studio in the winter, when she is more drawn to the physical activity of making and firing clay. When she isn’t working in the garden during the spring and summer months, she repairs to her above ground basement sewing studio, which is replete with framed old pages from a sewing magazine, open shelves of impeccably arranged bolts of cloth and a pair of comfy upholstered chairs brought from Switzerland.
“I don’t like to work in a messy space,” von Allmen said, pointing out the obvious. “Wherever I’m working I want to make it feel like a living space. So I always have chairs and art and maybe even an espresso machine in that space.”
In the winter, she said, “My clay shop is my sanctuary. To be creative I have to dig into my inner self, either in a workshop or out in nature.”
Visitors to the Creston Valley Farmers Market will be familiar with von Allmen’s elegant clothing displays and neatly arranged produce. But her clay bird and cat characters are reserved for display in galleries, including her own and Eileen Hirota’s (the pieces were a popular attraction in the now-closed Painted Turtle Gallery on Canyon Street).
“I dream of a fantasy or theme and then I work towards it,” she said in an effort to explain her latest series that features characters from an imaginary oriental marketplace. This year she has created several dozen pieces, including an alchemist, a silk trader, a jewel salesman, an oil sheikh, a prince, a bride-to-be and… well, you get the idea.
“I have had a lifelong passion for markets,” von Allmen explained. “In the old days, everyone looked forward to market day. Back then, markets were a necessity. They were the only place that people could sell, buy and trade. Vendors from near and far would meet a colourful mix of farmers, traders, salesmen, musicians, entertainers and buyers. Even the odd thief would sneak in!”
The oriental marketplace experience was inspired in part by a trip to Turkey when Ernst was still in the rug trade. And her fascination by markets extends into her participation in the local farmers market. She speaks of markets with passion and doesn’t measure her success in them in terms of sales.
“With markets you have to be patient as an artist and don’t expect to make sales,” she said. “Advertising fees is what I call the space rental. You have to give customers time to identify with your work and they want to get to know you, so continuity is the key. I started my artistic career by going to markets 30 years ago and I have had offers to exhibit in shows and galleries ever since.”
Von Allmen refers to her business as Cloth and Clay Art and describes her bird and cat figures as whimsical. One member of a recent group that toured her gallery described her work as “perfect”, a word she disagrees with. Sort of.
“I like things perfect but when it comes to the last little detail of perfection I can’t do it, so maybe my things are 95 per cent perfect,” she laughed. “Perfection kills creativity.”
While her interest in birds is explained in part by a dislike of making faces from clay, there are other factors at play, too.
“The first bird I made was in a raku workshop in a secluded community in the Swiss mountains,” she said. “It had a population of about 50 and you could only get to it by cable car or a two-hour hike. I felt kind of trapped when I was there, so I created a bird with big wings. If you are standing on a cliff and you have wings, you are free. Birds have freedom.”
And, while von Allmen’s raku-fired characters have distinctive bird-like beaks, they also have human characteristics.
“Their eyes are like a human being’s and they stand upright,” she pointed out. “And I like tall, slim figures, so I make the cats like that, too.”
The materials she selects for the clay characters’ clothing comes from the same vast collection of fabric that she uses for her women’s clothing line.
“I have been collecting fabric for most of my life,” she said, pulling a bolt of antique black brocade from a floor-to-ceiling shelf on which fabrics are arranged by colour. “And I’m not a fan of modern… whatever it is. I don’t like pinks and purples — you won’t find any girlie colours in my house! I prefer more muted, natural tones. Then I add a bit of glitter like gold or copper to catch the eye.”
In all her work, von Allmen finds inspiration in nature. Fabrics are all made from natural fibres in earth tones and they often feature subtle leaf or feather designs. Her creations, obviously, reflect her own personality and interests.
On Sundays, June through September, Bea and Ernst von Allmen invite the public to their farm for a visit to Bea’s gallery between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The gallery is also open by appointment by calling 250-428-0119.
This fall, the artist plans to become more computer savvy by taking a course that will enable her to create her own web site and perhaps even begin online sales. And she ends the conversation on a sun-filled weekday morning with another piece of tantalizing news.
“This winter I’m going to work on something different that I’ve been thinking about for years,” she smiled. “But I can’t talk about it until I know it will work.”
Yet another reason to continue returning to the gallery, studios and home of one of the Creston Valley’s most innovative creators. And one of the nicest.
Creston Valley Advance
Artist brings Tlingit culture to Creston
In the language of her maternal family, Jean Taylor is called Khàsx’ ân Tlâ. The well-known Tlingit artist has recently relocated from Teslin, in the Yukon, to Creston so she can be closer to a daughter and three grandsons.
“Having grandchildren here is a huge attraction,” Taylor said on Monday. “I’ve been able to spend time painting with the two younger ones.”
Taylor and her husband, Hugh, who consults with First Nations communities in the Kootenays and Montana, have been so pleased with their several months in Creston that they are now considering making it home.
“We’ve always moved around,” she said, in an open kitchen and living room that doubles as her studio. “We would spend about five years in Teslin and then go somewhere else for a while to get some new experiences.”
Although she has been drawing since she was able to grip a pencil, Taylor began to take her art more seriously after leaving a career in social work and the health care field.
“We moved to Grande Prairie for a while and I took some art courses,” she said. “And I learned that art was what I wanted to do.”
Her close ties to her Tlingit culture provide the theme for many of her acrylic paintings. She has come to appreciate that she was raised among artists who didn’t use the word to describe themselves.
“We grew up with no television or electricity. We packed our water in and chopped our firewood. And we made our own playthings. I made my own entertainment by drawing dolls or building them out of sticks. My first art sales were in elementary school, where I drew dolls and costume cutouts, then sold them for 25 cents.
“I was surrounded by artists — my grandfather made snowshoes, my grandma tanned hides to be made into clothing and shoes, my aunts gathered beads and drew patterns to decorate moccasins and mukluks — you didn’t see that as art when you were a child.”
As she reached “middle age”, Taylor found her professional work increasingly exhausting.
“I needed happiness,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What will I do with the next chapter of my life?’ It took a few years to make up my mind. I learned that I could do more than just draw and I haven’t looked back since.”
Taylor leans to culture themes in her paintings. Tlingit people in masks, button blankets, intricately woven hats (she wears one for public appearances), moccasins, mukluks, mitts, jacket and snowshoes are what she grew up with. She has also become a skilled portrait artist and now often receives commissions.
“Right now I’m into painting ravens,” she said.
This week she is working on a painting that sprawls across two canvases, destined for a show in the north. It depicts five ravens on the ground, each one showing movement and looking for all the world like a group of dancers.
“I’m from the eagle clan. But if my husband was adopted into a clan he would be a raven. That creates a balance.”
A collection of paintings now on display at the Creston and District Public Library illustrates Taylor’s versatility. Landscapes, including one that features Creston’s grain elevators, Tlingit dancers and women in traditional garb are among the subjects, all painted with strong, confident brush strokes that give the viewer a sense of motion and life.
“I’ve been looking forward to this show for a month,” she said, “ever since Hugh (who also acts as her manager) arranged it.”
Taylor’s painting career, which she undertook in an effort to find happiness, completes a spiritual circle when the paintings also create a feeling of happiness for those who see and own them.
Creston Valley Advance
“Having grandchildren here is a huge attraction,” Taylor said on Monday. “I’ve been able to spend time painting with the two younger ones.”
Taylor and her husband, Hugh, who consults with First Nations communities in the Kootenays and Montana, have been so pleased with their several months in Creston that they are now considering making it home.
“We’ve always moved around,” she said, in an open kitchen and living room that doubles as her studio. “We would spend about five years in Teslin and then go somewhere else for a while to get some new experiences.”
Although she has been drawing since she was able to grip a pencil, Taylor began to take her art more seriously after leaving a career in social work and the health care field.
“We moved to Grande Prairie for a while and I took some art courses,” she said. “And I learned that art was what I wanted to do.”
Her close ties to her Tlingit culture provide the theme for many of her acrylic paintings. She has come to appreciate that she was raised among artists who didn’t use the word to describe themselves.
“We grew up with no television or electricity. We packed our water in and chopped our firewood. And we made our own playthings. I made my own entertainment by drawing dolls or building them out of sticks. My first art sales were in elementary school, where I drew dolls and costume cutouts, then sold them for 25 cents.
“I was surrounded by artists — my grandfather made snowshoes, my grandma tanned hides to be made into clothing and shoes, my aunts gathered beads and drew patterns to decorate moccasins and mukluks — you didn’t see that as art when you were a child.”
As she reached “middle age”, Taylor found her professional work increasingly exhausting.
“I needed happiness,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What will I do with the next chapter of my life?’ It took a few years to make up my mind. I learned that I could do more than just draw and I haven’t looked back since.”
Taylor leans to culture themes in her paintings. Tlingit people in masks, button blankets, intricately woven hats (she wears one for public appearances), moccasins, mukluks, mitts, jacket and snowshoes are what she grew up with. She has also become a skilled portrait artist and now often receives commissions.
“Right now I’m into painting ravens,” she said.
This week she is working on a painting that sprawls across two canvases, destined for a show in the north. It depicts five ravens on the ground, each one showing movement and looking for all the world like a group of dancers.
“I’m from the eagle clan. But if my husband was adopted into a clan he would be a raven. That creates a balance.”
A collection of paintings now on display at the Creston and District Public Library illustrates Taylor’s versatility. Landscapes, including one that features Creston’s grain elevators, Tlingit dancers and women in traditional garb are among the subjects, all painted with strong, confident brush strokes that give the viewer a sense of motion and life.
“I’ve been looking forward to this show for a month,” she said, “ever since Hugh (who also acts as her manager) arranged it.”
Taylor’s painting career, which she undertook in an effort to find happiness, completes a spiritual circle when the paintings also create a feeling of happiness for those who see and own them.
Creston Valley Advance
Creston's Annaliese Phypers uses mixed media to give her art a ‘surreal look’
Annaliese Phypers says the urge to create art is difficult to explain.
“I’ll just get restless and I won’t realize why,” she said. “Then I’ll start to paint and the feeling just disappears.”
Phypers, who lived her first 10 years in Creston and just returned a year ago, recently hung her first-ever show of mixed media pieces and paintings at Kingfisher Used Books on 12th Avenue North.
A familiar face behind the counter at Black Bear Books, Phypers’s work often begins with a portrait of a woman, to which she adds her own interpretation.
“I kind of like the surreal look,” she smiles.
Phypers grew up on Vancouver Island, but had a go at art school in Ottawa, lasting for a semester before realizing that the academic side of art wasn’t what she was looking for.
“The history and all the other courses was interesting, but I’m inspired by the prospect of creation rather than study,” she says. “I’m a big mixed media fan. I love the intricacy and lines of Art Nouveau. And I really admire certain graffiti artists.”
In high school, she got her first shot at making street art.
“I was with a group of people who set up a big concrete wall in the middle of town, right by a skate park,” she said. “People really put a lot of work into it. It’s a lot different when you can take your time and not have to keep one eye out, expecting to be caught!”
Returning to Creston after 12 years away was a pleasant surprise, she said.
“I was completely surprised at the change in the local arts scene. I was blown away — it was really inspiring.”
Phypers’s creativity isn’t limited to art. She is now partnering with artist/foodie Jen Hart to start MasterPathFoods, a raw food vegan catering business operating out of a food truck.
She got her start in the food business in Duncan, where she worked at El Centro, a fusion café that served gourmet sandwiches, soups, salads, specialty coffees, local wines and desserts, working closely with farmers in the area.
To her surprise, Phypers found herself in charge of the kitchen.
“The universe doesn’t give you anything you’re not ready for,” the owner told her.
“It was an amazing experience,” she said.
Phypers and Hart recently had a kickoff event for their business at Cranberry Manor and more are in the works.
One statement sums up her enthusiasm for creating art and food.
“I constantly surprise myself,” the 22-year-old admitted. “As I get older, I have the confidence to know I can execute a plan, and that’s really exciting.”
Creston Valley Advance
“I’ll just get restless and I won’t realize why,” she said. “Then I’ll start to paint and the feeling just disappears.”
Phypers, who lived her first 10 years in Creston and just returned a year ago, recently hung her first-ever show of mixed media pieces and paintings at Kingfisher Used Books on 12th Avenue North.
A familiar face behind the counter at Black Bear Books, Phypers’s work often begins with a portrait of a woman, to which she adds her own interpretation.
“I kind of like the surreal look,” she smiles.
Phypers grew up on Vancouver Island, but had a go at art school in Ottawa, lasting for a semester before realizing that the academic side of art wasn’t what she was looking for.
“The history and all the other courses was interesting, but I’m inspired by the prospect of creation rather than study,” she says. “I’m a big mixed media fan. I love the intricacy and lines of Art Nouveau. And I really admire certain graffiti artists.”
In high school, she got her first shot at making street art.
“I was with a group of people who set up a big concrete wall in the middle of town, right by a skate park,” she said. “People really put a lot of work into it. It’s a lot different when you can take your time and not have to keep one eye out, expecting to be caught!”
Returning to Creston after 12 years away was a pleasant surprise, she said.
“I was completely surprised at the change in the local arts scene. I was blown away — it was really inspiring.”
Phypers’s creativity isn’t limited to art. She is now partnering with artist/foodie Jen Hart to start MasterPathFoods, a raw food vegan catering business operating out of a food truck.
She got her start in the food business in Duncan, where she worked at El Centro, a fusion café that served gourmet sandwiches, soups, salads, specialty coffees, local wines and desserts, working closely with farmers in the area.
To her surprise, Phypers found herself in charge of the kitchen.
“The universe doesn’t give you anything you’re not ready for,” the owner told her.
“It was an amazing experience,” she said.
Phypers and Hart recently had a kickoff event for their business at Cranberry Manor and more are in the works.
One statement sums up her enthusiasm for creating art and food.
“I constantly surprise myself,” the 22-year-old admitted. “As I get older, I have the confidence to know I can execute a plan, and that’s really exciting.”
Creston Valley Advance
art grows from a fertile imagination
Ten years after opening her successful Imagine Ink graphic design and printing shop, Brandy Dyer has leaped into the art world with a show of 13 pieces at Buffalo Trails.
It’s not like she’s new to art, of course. She has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember.
“I remember coming home from kindergarten with a picture of a dog,” she said. “My mom and dad had company and everyone said it was so-o-o-o good. I’ll never forget the feedback I got. And I still have that picture.”
Dyer, born and raised in Creston, credits retired PCSS teacher and artist Ute Bachinski for helping her with the transition from high school to Medicine Hat College.
“Miss Bachinski worked me, kind of pushed me along, working extra hours so that I would get my portfolio done and find a school to get into,” she said.
She reveled in college, where she studied design and visual communication, but floundered when she moved to Calgary after graduation. She worked in print shops, a newspaper and as a waitress before deciding the city wasn’t for her. Returning to Creston, she worked at a print shop and spent a year at the Advance.
“There were really only a couple of jobs for me in Creston and they weren’t available,” she said. “My option was to move back to the city or create my own job.”
With the help of Community Futures and encouragement from her dad, also a business owner, she ventured out on her own. Imagine Ink was born in a small corner of the Creston Valley Mall.
“I found out I was pregnant on the day I opened the shop,” she said. “And I didn’t think I knew anything about the business. I didn’t know how to use the equipment or how to price jobs. But my dad just kept telling me, ‘You’ll figure it out.’”
The shop was an instant success. Part of her help from Community Futures involved creating a business plan.
“I thought I was just making up a lot of the projections, but then I opened up and every month I was hitting all the numbers—it was a pretty good business plan, I guess,” she said.
Over her ten years of running Imagine Ink, Dyer has struggled to balance being a businesswoman and mother of two daughters, Kienna, 9, and Keryn, 6. Three years ago, her husband, Chris, was killed when a car crashed into his motorcycle while he was driving home.
She has also moved the business twice, renovated one house and built another. It is only recently that she has found the time and inspiration to create a body of art works.
“One of the few pieces of my own that I have kept was a painting of fruit, and I decided to do a series called The Fruit’s Gone Wild,” she said. To help motivate herself, she created an on-line blog called Brandy Ink during the winter. With each new pastel art work she did, she posted the picture on the blog and wrote about it.
“Since starting that blog I’ve made 13 pieces of art—talking about creating has helped push me into the studio more regularly,” she said.
The very colourful and bright collection includes pieces like The Sassy Pears, The Monkey’s Lunch, The Suave Pear and The Lush Cherries. One, The Sweet Life, is a collage that came out of a failed attempt to draw grapes. Unhappy with the initial effort, Dyer used her graphic design expertise to turn the picture into a celebration of wine and friendship.
She credits friends, including Buffalo Trails Coffee House owner Michelle Staggs for encouraging her to have her own show.
“I was a little worried about the red walls, but they really showed off the pictures well,” she said. At last Friday night’s opening friends and supporters overflowed from the coffee house, purchasing seven of the pastels, as well as limited edition prints and sets of greeting cards.
“It was really exciting knowing I was going to have my own show,” she laughed. “Then, about a month ago I realized, ‘Oh, my God, I have to make four more pieces in a month!’ But I have to have a deadline—I work best under pressure.”
With one show now in progress (the pictures will be on display until August 1st at Buffalo Trails, 1215 Canyon Street) Comfort is already planning for the next.
“The theme will be martinis and wine,” she said. She hopes to hold the show in the new addition to Aldo & Co Restaurante Italiano. “It’s huge space with high ceilings, so I can make some bigger pictures—I already have so many ideas! I love taking the ordinary and making it into something exciting.”
Brandy Dyer’s blog, Brandy Ink, can be located on the Internet at http://brandyink.typepad.com/brandyink/.
June 2010 – Creston Valley Advance
It’s not like she’s new to art, of course. She has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember.
“I remember coming home from kindergarten with a picture of a dog,” she said. “My mom and dad had company and everyone said it was so-o-o-o good. I’ll never forget the feedback I got. And I still have that picture.”
Dyer, born and raised in Creston, credits retired PCSS teacher and artist Ute Bachinski for helping her with the transition from high school to Medicine Hat College.
“Miss Bachinski worked me, kind of pushed me along, working extra hours so that I would get my portfolio done and find a school to get into,” she said.
She reveled in college, where she studied design and visual communication, but floundered when she moved to Calgary after graduation. She worked in print shops, a newspaper and as a waitress before deciding the city wasn’t for her. Returning to Creston, she worked at a print shop and spent a year at the Advance.
“There were really only a couple of jobs for me in Creston and they weren’t available,” she said. “My option was to move back to the city or create my own job.”
With the help of Community Futures and encouragement from her dad, also a business owner, she ventured out on her own. Imagine Ink was born in a small corner of the Creston Valley Mall.
“I found out I was pregnant on the day I opened the shop,” she said. “And I didn’t think I knew anything about the business. I didn’t know how to use the equipment or how to price jobs. But my dad just kept telling me, ‘You’ll figure it out.’”
The shop was an instant success. Part of her help from Community Futures involved creating a business plan.
“I thought I was just making up a lot of the projections, but then I opened up and every month I was hitting all the numbers—it was a pretty good business plan, I guess,” she said.
Over her ten years of running Imagine Ink, Dyer has struggled to balance being a businesswoman and mother of two daughters, Kienna, 9, and Keryn, 6. Three years ago, her husband, Chris, was killed when a car crashed into his motorcycle while he was driving home.
She has also moved the business twice, renovated one house and built another. It is only recently that she has found the time and inspiration to create a body of art works.
“One of the few pieces of my own that I have kept was a painting of fruit, and I decided to do a series called The Fruit’s Gone Wild,” she said. To help motivate herself, she created an on-line blog called Brandy Ink during the winter. With each new pastel art work she did, she posted the picture on the blog and wrote about it.
“Since starting that blog I’ve made 13 pieces of art—talking about creating has helped push me into the studio more regularly,” she said.
The very colourful and bright collection includes pieces like The Sassy Pears, The Monkey’s Lunch, The Suave Pear and The Lush Cherries. One, The Sweet Life, is a collage that came out of a failed attempt to draw grapes. Unhappy with the initial effort, Dyer used her graphic design expertise to turn the picture into a celebration of wine and friendship.
She credits friends, including Buffalo Trails Coffee House owner Michelle Staggs for encouraging her to have her own show.
“I was a little worried about the red walls, but they really showed off the pictures well,” she said. At last Friday night’s opening friends and supporters overflowed from the coffee house, purchasing seven of the pastels, as well as limited edition prints and sets of greeting cards.
“It was really exciting knowing I was going to have my own show,” she laughed. “Then, about a month ago I realized, ‘Oh, my God, I have to make four more pieces in a month!’ But I have to have a deadline—I work best under pressure.”
With one show now in progress (the pictures will be on display until August 1st at Buffalo Trails, 1215 Canyon Street) Comfort is already planning for the next.
“The theme will be martinis and wine,” she said. She hopes to hold the show in the new addition to Aldo & Co Restaurante Italiano. “It’s huge space with high ceilings, so I can make some bigger pictures—I already have so many ideas! I love taking the ordinary and making it into something exciting.”
Brandy Dyer’s blog, Brandy Ink, can be located on the Internet at http://brandyink.typepad.com/brandyink/.
June 2010 – Creston Valley Advance
Creston child artists signing Oodles of Doodles
When was the last time you had the chance to have a book signed by 10 kids? Probably about the same time you came across a book that 10 kids helped to produce.
Oodles of Doodles was produced in the fall by children’s art teacher and graphic artist Brandy Dyer.
“In September, my students at Art Classes for Kids worked very hard creating doodles and scribbles for a book that I was producing,” she said.
“I encouraged them to think outside the box and to scribble outside the lines. I'm pretty sure their parents were wondering what the heck I was up to and questioned whether or not this book was going to come together in the end!”
The book did come together, though, with the generous support of the Creston and District Credit Union, which paid for the production costs. That support means that all proceeds from the book’s sales go directly into a scholarship fund for Art Classes for Kids to sponsor classes for children who don’t have the financial resources to attend.
“The book's purpose is to inspire creativity,” Dyer explained. “It's chock full of creativity exercises and challenges. Did you know that creativity promotes independence, communication, courage, and self-esteem?”
Designed for use by children from seven to 12, Oodles of Doodles makes a great stocking stuffer that will help bring out the creativity in any child. And wouldn’t it be even more inspiring for the young artist on your Christmas list to see that it has been signed by the kids who helped create it?
Dyer and students Alisha Ramsay, Jesika and Elizabeth Troughton, Erika and Olivia Wiklund, Emily Wierenga, Keiryn and Kienna Dyer, Katie Foy and Sophie Casemore will be at Creston Card and Stationery on Saturday from 1-2:30 p.m. They will be signing books and helping to raise funds, too.
“The kids who created this book got to learn all about other kids in need and how the scholarship fund works,” Dyer said. “They were thrilled to contribute if it meant that they would improve the lives of their peers.”
Creston Valley Advance
Oodles of Doodles was produced in the fall by children’s art teacher and graphic artist Brandy Dyer.
“In September, my students at Art Classes for Kids worked very hard creating doodles and scribbles for a book that I was producing,” she said.
“I encouraged them to think outside the box and to scribble outside the lines. I'm pretty sure their parents were wondering what the heck I was up to and questioned whether or not this book was going to come together in the end!”
The book did come together, though, with the generous support of the Creston and District Credit Union, which paid for the production costs. That support means that all proceeds from the book’s sales go directly into a scholarship fund for Art Classes for Kids to sponsor classes for children who don’t have the financial resources to attend.
“The book's purpose is to inspire creativity,” Dyer explained. “It's chock full of creativity exercises and challenges. Did you know that creativity promotes independence, communication, courage, and self-esteem?”
Designed for use by children from seven to 12, Oodles of Doodles makes a great stocking stuffer that will help bring out the creativity in any child. And wouldn’t it be even more inspiring for the young artist on your Christmas list to see that it has been signed by the kids who helped create it?
Dyer and students Alisha Ramsay, Jesika and Elizabeth Troughton, Erika and Olivia Wiklund, Emily Wierenga, Keiryn and Kienna Dyer, Katie Foy and Sophie Casemore will be at Creston Card and Stationery on Saturday from 1-2:30 p.m. They will be signing books and helping to raise funds, too.
“The kids who created this book got to learn all about other kids in need and how the scholarship fund works,” Dyer said. “They were thrilled to contribute if it meant that they would improve the lives of their peers.”
Creston Valley Advance
natalie santano brings joy to her photography
Award-winning photographer Natalie Santano has a single objective when she photographs a wedding—to capture the joy and love that the newlyweds, their family and friends share.
“It’s such an honour to be asked to take photographs at happy occasions,” she says. “I try to make sure the bride and groom have images that will bring back how they felt on that special day, images that they will treasure for the rest of their lives.”
In 2010 she was the East Kootenay Best of Business gold winner for both the photographer and wedding service categories.
Photography comes as naturally to Natalie as her beautiful smile. It’s something she’s being doing for as long as she can remember.
“I’ve been taking pictures since I was 7 or 8 years old,” she recalls. “I was using a cheap camera—just point and shoot—and I loved sneaking up on people and taking their photo. Even if they were blowing their nose!”
“As I got older and became more aware about how I looked, I started focusing on the beauty of other people. I started out working for free, taking photos of friends and family,” she says. “I didn’t have the confidence to charge for my services.”
A friend’s spur-of-the-moment wedding changed all that. Natalie took photos of the special occasion and the bride insisted on paying.
“I really think you have a talent for this,” the friend said. “You should pursue it as a business.”
Natalie took the advice, but eased into the life of a professional photographer slowly, working mostly for friends and charging small fees. Word of mouth helped spread the message about her skills and soon she was treating the business, well, like a business.
With more than 3,000 fans, she’s made quite an impact with her Facebook page, which now provides the majority of her work.
“It’s been overwhelmingly successful,” she says. “I get a tremendous number of bookings through Facebook followers.”
Wife of Creston computer shop (Pro-to-Call) owner Kitt Santano and mother of Porter, a year-and-a-half-old son, Natalie said she feels fortunate to have created a career that allows her to keep her life in balance. She arranges her schedule so that either she or Kitt can be with Porter most of the time, and she does a lot of her photo editing at night, when Porter is in bed.
Photography, she says, allows her own personality to shine through.
“I’m a hopeless romantic,” she laughs. “I love photographing couples and their loved ones, bringing out the passion they share for each other and their families and friends.”
She spends free time seeking out suitable outdoor locations for photography sessions, finding old cars and barns, graffiti-covered walls, easily accessed railway tracks, clusters of trees and flowers in bloom, making notes so she can match the location to the interests of those being photographed. Location is important, but so is getting each person in the shot to look their best.
“Once I’m behind the camera my mind is running a hundred miles an hour, thinking of how to turn a head or move an arm to create the best look,” she says. “I will crack witty remarks to help people relax, but mostly I try to respond to the people, figuring out how they look their best.”
“Most people don’t really like being photographed, so much of my work involves getting them to relax,” she says. “I hope that when they look at the photos years from now they will think of how much fun they had on that special day.”
Much of Natalie’s work involves weddings, engagements, babies and children, and family photography, but she gets a surprising amount of corporate work, too, a testament to her professionalism and creativity.
“I always have fun on a photo shoot,” she said, “but I take my job seriously. You don’t get a second chance to capture those special moments and I do my best to make sure my clients get even better results than they might have hoped for.”
For more information about Natalie Santano Photography, call 250-402-9127. Her web site can be found at www.nataliesantano.com.
“It’s such an honour to be asked to take photographs at happy occasions,” she says. “I try to make sure the bride and groom have images that will bring back how they felt on that special day, images that they will treasure for the rest of their lives.”
In 2010 she was the East Kootenay Best of Business gold winner for both the photographer and wedding service categories.
Photography comes as naturally to Natalie as her beautiful smile. It’s something she’s being doing for as long as she can remember.
“I’ve been taking pictures since I was 7 or 8 years old,” she recalls. “I was using a cheap camera—just point and shoot—and I loved sneaking up on people and taking their photo. Even if they were blowing their nose!”
“As I got older and became more aware about how I looked, I started focusing on the beauty of other people. I started out working for free, taking photos of friends and family,” she says. “I didn’t have the confidence to charge for my services.”
A friend’s spur-of-the-moment wedding changed all that. Natalie took photos of the special occasion and the bride insisted on paying.
“I really think you have a talent for this,” the friend said. “You should pursue it as a business.”
Natalie took the advice, but eased into the life of a professional photographer slowly, working mostly for friends and charging small fees. Word of mouth helped spread the message about her skills and soon she was treating the business, well, like a business.
With more than 3,000 fans, she’s made quite an impact with her Facebook page, which now provides the majority of her work.
“It’s been overwhelmingly successful,” she says. “I get a tremendous number of bookings through Facebook followers.”
Wife of Creston computer shop (Pro-to-Call) owner Kitt Santano and mother of Porter, a year-and-a-half-old son, Natalie said she feels fortunate to have created a career that allows her to keep her life in balance. She arranges her schedule so that either she or Kitt can be with Porter most of the time, and she does a lot of her photo editing at night, when Porter is in bed.
Photography, she says, allows her own personality to shine through.
“I’m a hopeless romantic,” she laughs. “I love photographing couples and their loved ones, bringing out the passion they share for each other and their families and friends.”
She spends free time seeking out suitable outdoor locations for photography sessions, finding old cars and barns, graffiti-covered walls, easily accessed railway tracks, clusters of trees and flowers in bloom, making notes so she can match the location to the interests of those being photographed. Location is important, but so is getting each person in the shot to look their best.
“Once I’m behind the camera my mind is running a hundred miles an hour, thinking of how to turn a head or move an arm to create the best look,” she says. “I will crack witty remarks to help people relax, but mostly I try to respond to the people, figuring out how they look their best.”
“Most people don’t really like being photographed, so much of my work involves getting them to relax,” she says. “I hope that when they look at the photos years from now they will think of how much fun they had on that special day.”
Much of Natalie’s work involves weddings, engagements, babies and children, and family photography, but she gets a surprising amount of corporate work, too, a testament to her professionalism and creativity.
“I always have fun on a photo shoot,” she said, “but I take my job seriously. You don’t get a second chance to capture those special moments and I do my best to make sure my clients get even better results than they might have hoped for.”
For more information about Natalie Santano Photography, call 250-402-9127. Her web site can be found at www.nataliesantano.com.
