President, Columbia Arts Guild 2004-2006
Learning how to batik with the Columbia Arts Guild, St. Helens, OR 2004 – I am the goofy one with her mouth open…gah!
During my 2 year stint as the president of the Columbia Arts Guild in St. Helens, Oregon, I structured our monthly meetings to focus on learning new art skills or inviting one of our guild artists to share their particular media and/or processes for creating art. Prior to this we would meet at the local high school art room, share something we were working on and then, well, leave. I thought, gee, we have access to this lovely working space…lets’ do something!
For me, I just really wanted to learn stuff and it seemed like others seemed to share my same sentiment because over the 2 year period I presided over the Guild, our membership significantly rose to nearly 40 working artists which gave us some terrific learning opportunities. As well as just exposure to great art with which to be inspired by!
Just some of the media and techniques we worked with were:
- paper and fabric batik
- glass fusing and bead making (so cool)
- paper mache sculpture
- oil and acrylic painting workshops
- paper marbleing techniques
- Sculpey clay as art – not craft!
- stained glass demo
- Linoleum block printing
- Japanese Sumi painting
- tile work
- watercolor
- fiber arts and weaving
- mixed media and collage
- pointillism
- and a slew of collaborative art projects!
Just some of the events or projects we sponsored during my term:
- Custodians for the Columbia Gallery, a public gallery showing space adjacent to the St. Helens Library – we were responsible for hosting at least 6 shows a year and all related duties: advertising, scheduling, set up and take down, general upkeep, etc.
- Bi-Annual Local Children’s Art Show – advertising, liaison with local schools, collection from local schools, hang and take-down as well as judging.
- St. Helens Arts and Culture Commission – I had a seat on this board during my time as Columbia Arts Guild president. The nature of the commission was to help determine public art grants and awards as well as connecting the City Council to what the local art community was interested in doing. It was the first time local artist had really had a say in how our city dealt with
- The Shoestring Players Community Theater group productions – We supplied experienced painters for back-drop and set design work and mentoring for the 2005 “The Wizard of Oz” production and “The Beauty & The Beast” in 2006. This was where I got my first taste of being involved in theater and realized how much I loved it.
- Annual Recycled Art Competition during the City of St. Helens Fourth of July celebration
- The Arts & Eats Festival, St. Helens, Oregon 2006, 2007 – I was in charge of the children’s recycled art emporium and we had over 8,000 people attend the first year’s festival.