Painter Trudy Ahbel-Dallas was born in Austria in 1925, what she calls “the hard time” between the two World Wars. “These were the war years of my youth, and no doubt influenced the rest of my life and art.” The retired physician, who lives in Friday Harbor, Wash., says in an artist’s statement that while she was working, art was “only a dream or doodling while on the phone.” Now, “I’d like to improve — make more ‘original’ paintings during my 99th year.”
Ahbel-Dallas is among the artists from around the Northwest whose work was included last month in The Big, an annual exhibit at Art Center East in La Grande. She joined artists as diverse as Shirley Cook, a retired registered nurse who works with gourds; Nick Stoltz, a metalworker who fashions recycled steel from farm implements into large pieces inspired by nature; and Haydyn Wallander, a poet who pairs clean, typewritten pages with whimsical hand-drawn illustrations.
The range of artistic endeavors represented in the annual show mimics the scope of what the nonprofit Art Center East brings to La Grande, population 15,000, and surrounding Eastern Oregon communities. Founded in 1977, Art Center East provides arts education for both children and adults, exhibits and annual events open to the public, and creative resources for a wide swath of the state where arts opportunities can be separated by many miles and constrained by modest populations.
OREGON CULTURAL HUBS: An occasional series
A short distance from the city’s downtown strip and just down the hill from Eastern Oregon University, Art Center East occupies a historic Carnegie building on Penn Avenue that was constructed in 1913 and served as the city’s public library until 2006. During that time, the children’s section occupied the basement, with the regular collection on the main floor, which is now home to the center’s three galleries.
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The Orlaske Gallery, named for ceramicist and visual artist Sue Orlaske following her death in 2021, occupies the eastern section of the main floor, just to the left after entering. When I visited last fall, it was hosting an exhibit by photographer Josh Raftery titled Start the Story at the End. The works included a series of cyanotypes, the products of a process that dates to the origins of photography in which objects are placed on light-sensitive paper and exposed to UV rays. The results are haunting, blue-tinged images that, in the exhibit, were counterposed against typewritten poetic passages.
The Main Gallery featured the traveling exhibit Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years, a historical display supported by Oregon Black Pioneers, the Oregon Remembrance Project, and the Eastern Oregon Sunrise Project, referencing “sundown towns” where Black Oregonians were prohibited after dark. (Most communities in Oregon were either legally or practically sundown towns for parts of the 19th and 20th centuries.)
Both exhibits exuded a willingness to engage with past practices, whether aesthetic or cultural, in ways that speak to the present. Truth be told, most of the Art Center’s work is forward-looking, aimed at inculcating both the appreciation and availability of the arts across a 10-county region that has historically been ill-served in such regards.
That accessibility mandate comes across in the third gallery on the Center’s main floor, an eclectic twist on the notion of a museum gift shop, featuring work for sale by a large array of local and regional artists. One highlight is an Art-o-mat installation, i.e. a retired cigarette machine that’s been repurposed to dispense tiny, original, unique artworks for five bucks a pop. The space also features work by Idaho-based painter Don Gray, La Grande wildlife artist Debra Otterstein, Pendleton watercolorist Hiroko Cannon, and others, encompassing beadwork, wool felting, printmaking, and more.
Gallery Director Jennifer Durr got involved with the Center nearly a decade ago. Initially, she assisted with gallery work, having connected with the institution through her husband, a ceramic artist. From there, she transitioned from a career in health care to a larger role as a member of the Art Center team and eventually to her current job, a position that was created for her by Executive Director Darcy Dolge in spring 2021. “I had been the student gallery director at EOU when I was doing my undergraduate studies, working under Professor Corey Peeke,” she said. “So, I had already had some experience with gallery formats, doing installs, handling art, and all that.”
Apart from navigating the immense challenges in the wake of COVID, Durr sees one of her biggest roles as a facilitator and connector: “Especially in our part of Oregon, we have a lot of genuinely committed professional artists who don’t necessarily see themselves as such. People who have been making art for over a decade, who have their own unique style and their own ways of expression, and who have a lot to offer our community, still really view themselves as hobbyists. And it’s really sad to me.” Her efforts to convince creators to believe in themselves, to, as she puts it, “kill this idea that you have to be a starving artist to be quote-unquote gallery worthy,” have borne fruit.
Many of the Center’s gallery shows over the past two years have been the artist’s first solo exhibit. Some are the result of Durr’s contact with artists who “don’t necessarily view themselves as dignified enough or professional enough to be worth having an exhibition space by themselves,” she said. As part of that approach, the Art Center holds The Big, which is open to all artists ages 18 and up, from beginners to veterans, and offers cash prizes for works in a variety of categories.
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Following on the heels of The Big is the Center’s ninth annual Fiber Arts & Jewelry Exhibit, which opens with an artist’s reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, and runs through March 29. “We have come to realize that our local fiber arts community and jewelry artists like to be celebrated in a more professional way,” said Durr, “and we have no better space for it than at the art center. They also enjoy a theme, and this year’s theme is folklore: myths, mysteries, fairy tales, and folk traditions. That could be a generational family story, or it could be a very well-known tale.”
Other annual events include the Handmade Holidays Makers Market, the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the Día de los Muertos Community Ofrenda and Youth Art Exhibit in early November. For the latter, area K-12 students create artwork commemorating loved ones or public figures who have died.
“We provide a curriculum for teachers about the traditional Indigenous art aspect, and they incorporate that into their lessons. And the kids get to do the artwork, and it’s on display for two weeks,” said Outreach Director Moira Madden. “We also have a community ofrenda, where folks come in and can leave a photograph of someone they’ve lost. There are candles lit, marigolds, it’s really exquisite.” Last year’s honorees included a grandparent who died in a forest fire, a Boston terrier, and the actor Kevin Hart (who, as far as we know, is doing just fine). Each piece was touching in its own way.
The Center’s work is not, however, by any means confined to the building, or even the city of La Grande. “A big part of what we do here at Art Center East is offering opportunity and access,” Madden told me during my visit. That approach leads to an inclusivity regarding art forms, from literary arts (former Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani has visited for a reading) to ceramics to performing arts. The center facilitates an array of music classes, some taught by current or former faculty from EOU.
Inclusivity is the byword as well for the ages and experience levels of participants. “We have a book club for kids aged zero to 5,” Madden said. “We have an African drumming class with one kiddo who’s 12 and another member who’s ‘over 80’ — that’s as specific as they wanted to get. For us, the arts are really about the process and not the product.”
Entrance to the exhibits is always free, and youth classes are supported entirely by grant funding, including those at the Center’s partner location at the Catherine Creek Community Center, 15 miles away in Union, population about 2,000. “So many folks here are not able to travel to Boise to see a performance, for their own financial reasons,” said Madden.
It can be challenging to get the word out about all that Art Center East has to offer. The La Grande Observer no longer produces print issues, and social media and digital advertising goes only so far, especially with such a broad geographic reach and primarily rural population.
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Another outreach avenue is the Center’s rural schools program, which sends professional artists to teach in communities that lack funding for arts education in their public schools. Over an area that’s nearly one-third of the entire state, the Artists in Rural Schools program provides lessons that meet the Oregon Department of Education’s standards to thousands of K-8 students in places as far-flung as Malheur County in the far southeast and Umatilla County just to the northwest.
“We have a whole roster of artists available,” Madden said. “A district can look at that roster and say, for instance, they want Kelly Thibodeaux, who’s a fiddler from Oakridge, to come to our school for two weeks. Sometimes the school has the funds to pay for that. Sometimes it’s a PTO or PTA organization who raises the funds. And our grant funding, which we apply for and manage, is able to give them some help toward those costs.”
While these sorts of programs aren’t unusual, most don’t require teachers to drive several hours and obtain lodging, which makes the cost per unit of teaching more expensive. “I work with a school in Long Creek, which is on the way to John Day,” Madden continued. “It’s a very tiny community of 171 people total, and their K-12 school has a population of 27 students. It’s been a real joy to facilitate artists coming to their school. We’ve worked with them for several years now.”
For locals, both children and adults, seeking to explore their creative sides, Art Center East also has dedicated space in the building’s basement equipped with supplies and even a ceramics kiln. “We’re offering people a way to engage in creative expression in a time that it’s just difficult to find opportunities for that,” said Madden.
Putting down the phones, turning away from screens, and engaging in a real way with the tactile world is becoming a rare thing, as is the ability to put oneself out there in that world without fear of judgment. This can be a bigger problem with adults, she said, adding that the Center “really is a safe space. So, when we do an open studio, or a creative drama exploration, it has an educative component, but it’s also an experience with no pressure.”
Inculcating an appreciation for the arts and exposing young and old to creative opportunities is one thing, but in a capitalist system, there will always be a need to justify the existence of institutions like Art Center East on a return-on-investment basis. For that purpose, the Arts & Economic Prosperity (AEP) report prepared every few years by Americans for the Arts offers a useful perspective.
According to research for the report prepared by the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District and presented as part of the 6th AEP in 2023, total spending by the nonprofit arts and culture industry in the region was more than $6 million. The figure includes not only direct spending on arts and culture events, but also income reaped by local hotels, restaurants, and other businesses catering to locals and visitors attending such events. “That may not seem like much on the west side [of the state],” said Madden, “but it’s really huge.”
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Still, the effort to maintain financial health never abates. Being on the other side of the Cascades from Portland and Salem doesn’t help. “There’s also definitely an idea that because we serve 10 counties, we must be getting funds constantly,” Durr said. “I think we hold ourselves so well that it can be misleading — actually, we need every membership that comes in.”
When I asked Durr if she had an overarching philosophy to the curation she performs, her two-part answer seemed to encapsulate the approachable, inquisitive vibe of the Center itself:
“I reach for artists who have distinct styles, and a unique medium is always of peak interest to me. And then, also, if the artist is just a good human. If you have that special sparkle in your eye when you talk about your work. That’s why I like to meet all my artists in person, so that I can get to know how they feel about themselves and their artwork. That’s kind of what lights my fire, just getting people involved.”
“When I meet people, I often, as a second or third question, ask them if they make art,” Durr said. “In some cases, they say ‘Oh, no, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.’ I’ll fight them on that.”