The 2016 People’s Choice winners at the Quilt Show are, in the following categories:
Miniature – Linda McCanna
Wall Hanging – Lorraine Haynes
Crib/Lap – Karin Vokaty
Large Quilt – Mo Lodovici
Other – Susan Griffith
Wearables – Jean Hickman
Youth – Summit Valley students, staff and community
Antique – Mary Ann Wolsky
Challenge – Lorraine Haynes
Here are photos from the Chewelah Quilt Show…
Foul weather last week turned nice just in time for the Chokes & Spokes Car Club’s 39th Annual Nostalgia Days Car Show in Chewelah’s city park last Saturday, May 28. Over 120 cars were registered for the event from Washington, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia and many visitors enjoyed a stroll through the park to view the classic cars. At the conclusion of the event, the club presented a $1,000 scholarship award to Dakota Helms, a student from Hunters who is enrolled in automotive courses at Spokane Community College. The club presents the scholarship annually to a local student learning an automotive-related trade. Funds are raised through a silent auction and the “Win a Item” drawings at the show.
NOSTALGIA DAYS WINNERS
Favorite Survivor
1957 Chevy Bel Air, Bob Nelson, Chewelah
Favorite Pickup
1955 Studebaker, Wendell Sather, Spokane
Favorite Motorcycle
1948 BSA, Pete Charbonneau
Favorite Work in Progress
1952 Chevy Sport Coupe, Ken and Paula Leithead, Colville
Favorite Truck
1948 Ford F5 Bus, Wayne and Renee Shawgo, Newport
Favorite Stock
1933 Ford Deluxe Tudor, Dale Halverson, Spokane Valley
Favorite Driver
1931 Chrysler 3-window Coupe, Betty Reed, Colville
Favorite Van/Station Wagon
1957 Oldsmobile, Jack and Sue White, Spokane
Favorite Custom/Rod
1954 Mercury Monarch, Gary Walling, Spokane
Favorite Rat Rod
1939 Ford rat truck, Jim and Sonia Hebert, Post Falls
Favorite Orphan
1960 Nash Metropolitan, Margo Sety, Chewelah
Long Distance
Dick Webster, Missoula, Mont.
Oldest
1917 Model T Ford, Randy Traaen, Chewelah
Mayor’s Choice
1957 Oldsmobile Fiesta Wagon, Jack and Sue White, Spokane
Jared Arnold photos
110 Years Ago – May 25, 1906
A benefit dance last Friday was very successful. Excellent music was furnished by A. D. Palmer and Albert Kulzer.
W. Lon Johnson completed a very successful school term last Friday in Valley and has been employed to teach the school again next year. More
Margo Sety has always had art on the mind.
When Margo was a kid, her mother would also make sure the household was stocked with art supplies, her father always made sure there were tools around for her to use on projects. It’s no suprise the Chewelah-native was always doing one creative thing or another.
“I remember one time I frosted the edge of a table while making a cake,” Sety said. “While I was in elementary school, my teachers would give me a lot of attention with my art. I think when people give you encouragement, your desire to do art really grows.”
That encouragement from the teachers continued through middle and high school. She was also an art minor in college with a teaching endorsement from EWU.
Sety is now a third grade teacher at Gess Elementary — and a simple walk around the town of Chewelah will reveal that she’s an accomplished artist as well. Her watercolor paintings adorn several local businesses and will be on full display when the Chewelah Arts Guild host their Taste of Chewelah event.
The paintings aren’t just a testament to Sety’s artistic ability but also to her persistence. For years, watercolor paintings weren’t her cup of tea.
“I just had not been successful with them and then Gail Johannes began offering classes in them and they became really rewarding,” Sety said.
Rewarding to the tune of over 30 paintings and many of them being displayed for everyone to see. The most she’s shown is 19, and Sety admits she’s ecstatic and amazed that she’s been able to have three shows for her work.
Margo said that most of her paintings are of birds, which provide an amount of intrigue for her.
“I’ll find a cool bird and then after painting it, I’ll have to ask what it is and before long I’m doing a bunch of research on the bird,” Sety said. “It’s funny how art works like that.”
Watercolor has provided Sety with a “green medium.” Not requiring a ton of supplies, Margo can put her paints in a backpack and go into a field and paint it. Sety said she’s inspired by the local area’s landscapes.
“I want to do more local landscapes,” Sety said. “Quartzite is right there and we have our little barn and meadow scenes that are wonderful. You also have four seasons that change those scenes throughout the year.”
Sety added she’d also like to paint more of downtown. After getting comfortable with the art, it’s still not an easy thing to do as watercolor can sometimes be unforgiving.
“Other painting styles you can add white to a scene,” Sety said. “But in watercolor painting, with white you always have to think about how to save it on the painting. It’s a challenge and there are ways to undo things but it’s still tough.”
Having taught at Gess Elementary since the mid-90s, Sety has also helped out with the Chewelah Community Float, murals around town and various art projects.
She tries to get as much art as possible into her classroom while meeting state learning standards for art and addressing other learning goals. Sety, first hand, knows how art can become a child’s “thing.”
“My mind isn’t cluttered with all the stuff flying around in life when I’m doing art,” Sety said. “It’s concentrating on creating pieces and doing problem solving at once. Musicians and chefs say the same thing.”
You can see Sety’s work at the Flowery Trail Coffeehouse. The work will be part of the Taste of Chewelah on June 16 in downtown.
By Brandon Hansen/The Independent Staff
Here are upcoming events in the Chewelah area for May 26-June 16. More
The teachers at Summit Valley School decided to have a focus on linear measurement for the 2015-2016 school year. In spite of not being quilters, we thought making a school quilt would be just the creative, math rich project we were looking for! We turned to our community for help in reaching our goal.
We received donations of fabric from the Colville Quilt Guild and members of the Summit Valley community. Each student designed a unique eight inch square block. The younger students created striped blocks with the fabric of their choice. Their blocks were cut and sewn by volunteers. The older students designed blocks with certain geometric figures dependent on their grade level. Grades three and four practiced sewing with the help of volunteers and the loan of sewing machines from our local 4H. Grades five through eight cut and sewed their own blocks with help from local Summit Valley craftswomen. The quilt was pieced and quilted by Summit Valley community members. Special thanks to Mavis Bowe and Elaine Tolson for piecing, bordering and binding the quilt.
It was a joy to see how the fruits of all of our individual labors came together to create such a beautiful representation of our school and our community. We are very grateful for all of the support we received in completing this project. Our quilt will be a part of the upcoming Chewelah Quilt Show.
-Submitted by Summit Valley School
Lights burning in Brad Schwartz’s garage until midnight or 3 a.m. are not a sign of forgetfulness. Chances are he’s still up working on several collages, prints, or paintings.
The Spokane mixed-media artist will be bringing some of that work to a new show opening Thursday, June 2 at Trails End Gallery in Chewelah. He’ll talk about his art the previous evening at the Quartzite Brewery, an event also open to the public.
“My wife Helen and our kids (Olivia, 14, and Rowan, 10) will notice maybe five new pieces on my work bench some mornings and say ‘when did you do these?’ The answer is usually ‘last night’,” Schwartz says.
A website and graphic arts designer at KHQ, Schwartz finds time to create art by adding hours to his work day. He’s been doing that ever since completing his degree in printmaking and painting at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1994.
There was no doubt he would return to Spokane, where he was born and raised, he says.
“Not only is Eastern Washington a great place to live and raise a family, it’s also a landscape that’s inspiring to an artist.”
Leading his Cub Scout den on weekend hikes, he makes quick sketches or photos of flora and fauna that may become subjects for prints or paintings: a mullein weed, a wildflower, a burned tree, a knotted rope.
The resulting art is “a brief snapshot in time that puts a viewer, just momentarily, in my place. I lend others my vision—an insight into my feelings for the landscapes that surround us,” Schwartz says. The title of his Chewelah show, “land(e)scapes,” hints at that experience.
The show will feature prints made with Schwartz’s favorite techniques: intaglio and relief printing. With intaglio, the artist carves marks on a metal printing plate, forces ink into the grooves, and prints either by hand or with a press. Relief prints are usually made on wood or linoleum blocks and produce a high-contrast black-and- white image without the broad range of tones possible in an intaglio print.
Scrolling through images on his website, www.baschwar.com, you’re struck by the variety of subjects that interest him—some art-related, some personal. There are local landscapes, magnificent cloud formations, VW Beetles, a pulled-pork sandwich, a raven, and dry flies from his tackle box, to name a few.
“I do more fishing than catching,” Schwartz jokes, “but for me the repetitive motion of fly-casting is a mind-clearing process. It allows me to refine ideas in my head about art I’m working on.”
The Schwartz home is overflowing with art, much of it made by fellow artists in a “Baren Forum” he belonged to. Schwartz would make 30 identical prints, send one to each of the other 29 members, and receive back a version of the same theme by each artist. The ideas generated by their techniques and approaches have been valuable, he says.
Schwartz says he’s looking forward to showing his work in Chewelah.
“I love this little town, it’s so beautiful the way it nestles under Quartzite.” He also looks forward to eventually making the transition to full-time artist, but that’s another story.
For information on the 5-8 p.m. opening at Trails End Gallery, June 2; and Brad Schwartz’s 7 p.m. lecture at Quartzite Brewery on June 1, contact Tim Nielsen at 503-516-8355. The gallery is located at 101 N. Park Street. Trails End Gallery, 101-B N. Park Street, will be open during the June 16 Taste of Chewelah Art Walk sponsored by Chewelah Arts Guild.
By Robert Nein/Chewelah Arts Guild
Here is our full special section in the May 26 edition of the Chewelah Independent featuring the 2016 Chewelah Community Float. Section done by Kellie Trudeau. Click on each page to see a bigger view of it!
Since last October, we have been prosecuting a case against Jack Kenneth Gannon, DOB 7/26/1961. The charges amount to six counts of Dealing in Child Pornography and one count of Receipt of Child Pornography.
Valley School District has refinanced its callable 2005 and 2006 bonds in order to take advantage of lower interest rates. The recent refinancing will save the district’s taxpayers a total of $372,567 over the next 10 years.
Superintendent Kevin Foster emphasized that these savings flow directly to taxpayers through reduced tax levies and are not available for district expenses. “This is a direct savings to our community in the form of taxes they expected, but will not have to pay,” Foster said.
The Valley School Board accomplished these savings by approving the issuance of refunding bonds at its meeting held on Wednesday, April 20, 2016. The district has been actively monitoring bond market conditions and recent low interest rates allowed the district to exceed its savings target. Interest rates averaged 1.75 percent on the new bonds compared to 4.64 percent on the old debt.
For more information, contact Eileen Harris, Chief Financial Officer, Valley School District at (509) 937-2788.
-Submitted by Valley School District