We celebrated this arbor day right.

We started off the day by hosting the YCCDC for some fun with recycled art making! We learned all about seeing what we may normally throw away as things that can also be used to create useful and decorative art! My favorite was a wind chime made from bottle caps, wood scraps, and burlap string! Some other favorites were made using cardboard. Who knew you could do so much with such a common item? Needless to say, we had a blast!

Gabriel from Keeler Estate Vineyard also joined us for the day. KEV is a biodynamic, organic, salmon safe, and LIVE certified vineyard located in Amity. She had so much to tell us about earth friendly farming, and we had so much to learn! And her wines are absolutely stunning to boot!

To finish the day Gabriel and our manager Kelsey taught a Paint and Play class where we explored the more mystical side of Biodynamic Farming. We learned all about the moon’s cycle and how it not only influences their farming schedule, but also how the wine tastes! Kelsey guided the class through the process of creating their very own moon phase calendars, teaching techniques like creating different values. In the end everyone had very unique and fabulous compositions!

Needless to say, we had a blast and cannot even wait for next year!

As many of you know, our first show here at WALLOW is titled Lynn Powers: A Life Full of Color, and shows an astounding array of a great artists life’s work. However, Lynn is not the only artist whose work you will find hanging on our walls in the coming months. Dour Roy and Dwight Evalt are also living lives full of color as local working artists, and they are both featured in our inaugural show!

Doug Roy is a very accomplished paper artist. He creates incredible compositions of teeny tiny sliced paper that are simply astounding! His attention to detail is nothing short of fastidious. The images that he depicts are both highly intricate and maintain a childish whimsy and enthusiasm. You really need to see this stuff in person. Stand as close as you can to get a good look at the detail!

Dwight is also a well-known local here in Carlton! You might know him from the high school, where he used to teach! Though as an educator he taught fundamentals of art, his work is very abstract! His compositions are chaotic and full of life and color. His process focuses very keenly on experimentation. He says that he likes to work with a medium and see what happens, what it wants to do in the composition, and then works from there. He also loves to play with different surfaces. In this show you will see a few compositions he did on vinyl that are extremely unique!

Doug and Dwight’s work couldn’t be more stylistically different, but both of them WALLOW in color!

We are up and running and hosting classes! Opening up the gallery has been a joy, but a lot of work. Watching the kids class today made it all worth it! Our first class was all about our very favorite thing: COLOR! In this class we created our own color wheels and learned how to mix colors together to make even more colors! We also had an awesome time playing with food coloring in water, mixing colors together to make a full spectrum!

We are very lucky to have Miss Maggie Bowman on our team to teach the kids classes. She was a teacher in local schools for over 30 years! Our manager Kelsey will be student teaching these classes and is so excited to see what she has in store!

We are all so excited to finally have little artists in the house!!

We opened our doors to the public on March 4th. We planned to celebrate this milestone with a festive gathering, but we could not have even imaged the amazing turn out! We were so touched by the number of people who came out. Over the course of the day we saw around 200 faces- some new, welcoming us to the community who wanted to learn more about what we are doing here, and some familiar, who came to honor Lynn Powers and her artistic legacy. Ken Wright donated Pinot and Chardonnay for the occasion and Kramer Vineyard provided all of the sparkling wine. The Horseradish brought over some incredibly tasty small bites, enjoyed by all.

Once the night was well underway, our founder, Ben Powers, engaged the guests by turning down the lights and giving a presentation describing who we are and how we plan to honor Lynn’s memory through serving the arts community. Despite being full to the brim with people, the room went silent as he spoke of his mother, what she contributed to the world, and how very much he was going to miss her. Needless to say, it was an emotional moment that exposed the heart of who we are as an organization, and the pure inspiration that fuels our work.

We are so grateful to all who came out in support of our brand new endeavor. We hope to do you all proud as we begin this adventure!