Painted Sky Center for the Arts builds community through art

The Painted Sky Center for the Arts opened in 2018 as a way for artists in Grant County to connect and collaborate. Five years later, the center now offers public classes in ceramics, leatherworking, painting and more. It also features after-school youth programming and workshops with visiting artists and teachers.

Kim Randleas is board president and Genevieve Paddock is a ceramics instructor at the center. They join us to talk about how Painted Sky has helped create a place for Grant County residents to connect through the arts.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Painted Sky Center for the Arts opened in 2018 as a way for artists in Grant County to connect and collaborate. Five years later, the center now offers public classes in ceramics, leatherworking, painting, and more, along with after school workshops and camps for kids. We visited the center yesterday to meet Kim Randleas and Genevieve Paddock. Kim is the Board President of the Center. Genevieve is a ceramics instructor there.

I started by asking Kim how she would have described the arts community in Grant County before she helped found Painted Sky in 2018.

Kim Randleas: I definitely would have said it was a desert. Which is interesting. I mean, we’re in the high desert and we had an arts and cultural desert, I think because… we were all there, you know, but it takes a little bit of rain to make that bloom and as soon as it does then it’s just really incredible.

Miller: So you were all there, meaning that there were artists sprinkled here and there? But was it a community?

Randleas: Oh, my gosh no. So Grant County is an awesome place to be an artist and it’s beautiful. The people are amazing. But people were making work and selling it out of the county and no one was really coming together. So, that’s what I mean about giving it some nourishment and watching it bloom. So, it’s been really exciting over the past few years to watch that.

Miller: When you talked to community leaders, whether at the county level or the city level, a couple of years ago, what was your pitch to them? What did you say you wanted to create?

Randleas: Well, that’s interesting. I definitely wanted to create a community around the beautiful things that people were making and honor what we are. And this type of organization couldn’t have come from anywhere else except for a grassroots organization because there were so many people that came and said we need this and we want this, right from the very beginning.

Miller: So it wasn’t hard to convince people that you didn’t have to do arm twisting?

Randleas: Absolutely not. It was incredible. We just started talking about it and people were standing up saying we want this, we need this. How can we help? We had a little open house here just to get people together. We started with $0. Nothing. We didn’t ask for any grant money from anywhere. We had a small open house in this building where we are. And we had, I think, about 250 people who came for the first weekend. We had city officials, county officials, lots of supporters and everyone was overjoyed. And we actually raised $1,200 that first time. And that’s what we started with. We started with just over $1000 to start the Art Center.

And then I think it was probably six months later, we received money from Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care. And they saw the need for artistic outlets for people that were on the Oregon Health Plan. It was incredible.

Miller: So the Medicaid coordinating organization here, they were your first big grant? And what’s the connection that they saw or that you see between wellness and health and art making?

Randleas: It was immediate. They could recognize that you can make art and not have to talk about what’s going on in your life. You can just come and you create wellness from the act of making art. And it was the first program that they had invested in like this. And we were able to give so many scholarships that first couple of years when they were helping us out. We still provide scholarships, but they were all in on providing free art classes for Oregon Health Plan members. It was awesome.

Miller: Genevieve, do you remember the first time you heard about the plans for this place?

Genevieve Paddock: I do. Actually, we were out of town for a while and Kim called us up and said, “Hey, I’m gonna do an art center.” And my husband David and I said, “yes, do it! We totally support you.” We’re both artists and, yeah, we have had all the confidence in the world that Kim could pull it off. She’s an entrepreneur from way back. And so we knew that if anyone could do it, Kim could do it.

Miller: So you weren’t surprised that this is actually taking off?

Paddock: Knowing Kim, I’m not surprised that it took off, but maybe considering the setting, I’m amazed.

Miller: And what do you mean by that?

Paddock: I think there are so many talented people here, but they’ve always kind of kept it to themselves and not felt like they had a place to share. And so sometimes new ideas can be a tough sell here, but people have come out of the woodwork. It’s been amazing.

Miller: So Kim, you talked about $1,200 which is not nothing, in that first fundraiser, but obviously not enough to make a full organization run in a sustainable way. And then you got some money from an Oregon care organization. But how has this actually taken off? Like, how have you gone from an idea to a reality?

Randleas: Well, financially, one of the first things that we did was we started an after- school program which we never had had in Grant County. There was Parks and Rec and they do sports. But there wasn’t an outlet for kids to make art after school. So we did start that, which paid for our building and our teachers and we knew that we could rent a building if we had enough from the after-school program revenue to pay our rent. And that’s how we started financially.

And organizationally, we set our minds to having this great place where everyone could go and there’s a spot for everyone. We would try our very best to have a place that is so comfortable, you can leave everything outside, whether there’s something going on politically or in your home or whatever. It’s been a core philosophy of ours that you come in and you make art and it doesn’t matter who your neighbors are or what they do or what they say or what’s going on in your world. And that philosophy, I think, has brought so many people to the art center and created more communities.

So people started seeing that they could come and then they started investing money in the art center. And we want to be really good stewards of people’s investments. And it definitely took a while for us to show that we could sustain what we’re doing. But especially now that we’re in a new building and we just keep growing and growing, we’re gaining more and more people’s confidence in what we can do.

Miller: The idea that you created a space where people could be among other members of the community with whom they may have differences, say political differences, was that a conscious decision?

Randleas: Absolutely, this was intentional and we deliberately don’t engage in political events or anything that goes on in our community, because we support everyone. And everyone has a really valid point about what they’re doing. And we just want to make art and it just comes across as people, like you said. There’s no sign. But when you create a philosophy and you try to embed that in an organization from the very beginning, we pull people in that are leaders that have that philosophy and it just grows and grows.

Miller: Do you remember when kids came for the first time? As you said, that it was a kind of, it seems like a savvy decision that you saw a hole that there was no after-school program here that was arts based or arts and culture based. There were some sports. Do you remember the first time that kids came through the door?

Randleas: Well, absolutely. We were in Canyon City. And Canyon City is just so small and we’re right next to the city park. So kids were just getting off the bus, ecstatic. They could go and have a snack, they could go out into the park and play around and then come in and make a project. And we had kids that were saying they didn’t want to go home, which was kind of a good sign. Parents would come and then they’d say “No, I need to finish my project.” And it’s pretty awesome to see that there’s other opportunities for kids with the after-school program.

Miller: Genevieve, you’ve taught ceramics here. What’s it been like to teach classes here?

Paddock: It’s been wonderful. I love teaching ceramics. I think what I love about it, I love the material and I love the process and I love being able to teach that process. We were talking earlier and sometimes it can be difficult to teach art because art has to come from a very personal spot very much from the heart. So it’s kind of hard to direct a person to do that. But with ceramics, there are some very solid rules and principles that you have to abide by. Or learn what the rules are and then break them. So I’ve really enjoyed that teaching process. There’s a lot of potential for failure in ceramics and I’m a cheerleader for people. So I love it when people do succeed and the wins feel really well earned in ceramics.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for the variety of life experiences or backgrounds that your students have come from?

Paddock: Oh, we have seniors, we have kids, we have people who have had a background in ceramics who maybe did it, you know, 40 years ago in college. And they thought, “Oh, I wanna do it again but I’m not quite sure I remember how. Is this the way?” And you pat them on the back and say, “Yeah, you know what you’re doing.” And then we have people who have never touched it and then they come in and they say, “Oh, I think I found my medium.” So it just runs the gamut.

Miller: What’s it like to hear that “I feel like I’ve found my medium?”

Paddock: Oh, I feel like, “Yes, welcome to the tribe.”

Miller: And am I right that your kids have taken classes here too?

Paddock: They have, yeah. And of course we have clay at home. And so they’re just clay babies. They’ve done that their whole life. But the summer program last year was amazing for them. It was great. I mean, they would come home every day with crafts that would make any Pinterest board envious.

Miller: Kim, Genevieve called you an entrepreneur. My understanding is that you come from a background of running for-profit small businesses, including a restaurant. How much has that shaped the way you think about managing this nonprofit in a way that’s actually sustainable so it can keep going and ideally keep growing?

Randleas: It was just invaluable. And that was another conscious decision that we made really early on, that if we didn’t have any outside funding, could we still operate and not close? Because, to me, this isn’t about any one person or anybody running it - me, Genevieve or anybody else. Because we want it to be here in 100 years or longer. And so how are we gonna set it up so it stays here and systems are in place and we have the funding to do that. So we can operate on a shoestring budget and not have to ask for any money.

Miller: I know that you have gotten some grants recently that are going to enable you to expand, offering to get an executive director. But you’re saying even without those grants, you could still operate in a kind of bare bones way?

Randleas: Absolutely. Yes.

Miller: And not every nonprofit can say that if they don’t get grants. I mean many of them, if not most, would just shut down.

Randleas: It’s so important, especially in our small town. We have the most giving people, I feel like, of anywhere. I haven’t lived in a lot of different places. But if there’s any fundraisers for anything, people are pouring out thousands and thousands of dollars and we don’t have a lot of high income people here. But we’re very, very giving. And so I don’t wanna keep asking people. We’ve never canvassed our town for money from the businesses. We’ve put it out. We have memberships. We have membership opportunities but we’ve never gone out and asked because we wanted to show people what we were doing and then they want to support us after that. But our community can get pretty tapped out on donations.

Paddock: Yeah, our community is really good about being there when the chips are down. People come together. There’s spaghetti feeds, taco feeds, all of that. And it’s really great to see people coming together to support a successful venture.

Miller: Genevieve, what do you think this center has meant for the community? How do you think it’s changed things? I mean, we started by Kim saying that before this, she would have called this an arts and culture desert. So what’s changed?

Paddock: So I think what’s great about Painted Sky, especially being in a rural community… when you’re in the city, you have so many opportunities to see the arts, go to movies, go to concerts, whatever kind of art it is, you’re just immersed in it. Whereas here, in this rural community, it’s really a homegrown effort. We have to create our own arts and culture and I think what makes that especially poignant is that we have a shared history. Like, for example, we had a ceramic night a while ago and someone was looking at a particular glaze and they commented and said, “Oh, it looks like fire on a mountain.” Well, that sparked a really emotional conversation for many of the students about the Canyon Creek Complex fire that happened in 2015. Two of my students lost absolutely everything.

Another example of how it really resonates with our own experience. I can look at one of Kim’s paintings and I can say, “I know what field she was standing in to get that view of Little Canyon Mountain.” I think having that shared experience and shared history really makes our art authentic to our experience.

Miller: Kim, you talked about your desire that this center will continue long into the future. What are your hopes for what this could be like going forward?

Randleas: So my hope is that we move forward very intentionally and for our community. We set out a lot of goals like I talked to you about, making sure it was a supportive place for people to come. And if we can continue doing it that way, I think that’s really my main focus.

I think that sometimes organizations get to be about the people that were on the ground when it first started and it’s about their vision. And then as it grows, then you get more and more people to bring their vision to the organization and be flexible enough to have the organization grow and change and it might look different. But it doesn’t mean it’s not what we wanted. It just means that’s how it evolved.

Miller: But that takes humility I suppose, right? It means someone like you, who was part of the reason this existed in the first place. It means maybe letting other people lead the way?

Randleas: Well, it has to be. There’s no other option and that happens really early on in organizations when it’s time to have someone take the reins. So we’re getting a new executive director in July. And it’s so important to have the people that started the organization step back and let the vision evolve and not try to control where that goes.

Miller: And you’re ready to be a participant and a student and a member of the community as opposed to the leader. It seems like you’re looking forward to that?

Randleas: Absolutely. I’m very much looking forward to it with no regrets of what went into the process, that 100% of what I’ve done has been very, very fulfilling and I’m happy to do it. But I’m happy to let someone else take the reins.

Miller: Kim Randleas and Genevieve Paddock, thanks so much.

Paddock / Randleas: Thank you.

Miller: Kim Randleas is the board president of the Painted Sky Center for the Arts. Genevieve Paddock is a ceramics instructor there.

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