Volunteers have helped Art’s Alive! show expand

It’s been said that sometimes the biggest things start small.

That’s the way it was for the Foundation for the Arts in Mill Creek, the organization putting on this weekend’s Art’s Alive! event at the Mill Creek Country Club.

How small? Try six members roughly a decade ago, according to Vicki Wellman, the group’s treasurer and one of its senior members.

The organization was started by Jeanine Cyr, who is still active on its board. Cyr actively recruited other members as part of a goal of having an art show and art foundation in Mill Creek.

“She just kind of twisted our arms,” Wellman said about how she first got involved.

Marlene King, the organization’s president and Asian art buff, has a similar story regarding the start of her involvement with the group. King said Lisa Neimeyer was the key figure in recruiting her.

“She came up to me and said ‘Marlene, wouldn’t you like to help out?’ “

Today, the organization now has 160 members encompassing both private citizens and area businesses both within Mill Creek itself and the surrounding area. Whereas the organization began with just six members, today it has a board of 12 that meets monthly. Board members include Wellman, King, Cyr, Bobbie Hatting, Donna Woods, Jon Schmidt, Donna Rickman, Pat McClure, Bonnie Gemmill, Pam Hohner, Mary Kay Voss and Barbara Anderson-Hale.

“It’s running so beautifully now,” Wellman said. “We have big support from the community. Lots of members have come on board.”

Similarly, the Art’s Alive art show has grown as well. What began eight years ago as a single-day event in an office building near the Mill Creek Post Office, with a patron’s night pre-show event in member’s homes, has now become a two-day, weekend event. This year it moves to the Mill Creek Country Club, 15500 Country Club Drive, which is also where recent Patron’s Night events have taken place.

The show has moved from Mill Creek City Hall, where last year’s event not only filled the community room and the council chambers, but also included tents outside City Hall. The move to a new venue is also why the show is taking place later in the year; golfing takes up the bulk of the country club during the warmer months.

The city of Mill Creek supported the show by not charging the foundation for using City Hall. Wellman said city manager Bob Stowe is a major supporter for the group’s efforts.

For years Art’s Alive! was a single-day event. It became a two-day event in 2001 and took place that year just 10 days after the terrorist attacks.

“Our Patron’s Night was at the country club,” Voss said about the event, which took place Sept. 21, 2001. “Everyone was at the bar watching the president speak (on television).”

Over the years the show has grown in quality. Whereas at one time the show actively sought artists to participate, things have changed.

“We turn away artists now,” Wellman said.

Several members take part in deciding which artists will participate, and the organization strives to have artists in a variety of mediums participate. But the decision making is more than just based on personal taste. Wellman, for example, was an art major at Northwestern University, and her son, Brian Rudd, is an outdoor sculptor living in Rochester, N.Y. King serves on the city’s Arts and Beautification Board, an Asian art collector, and minored in art at Michigan State University.

“I usually defer to the guys and girls with the art background on those kind of decisions,” said Voss, who doesn’t have an arts background but said she supports having such events in Mill Creek.

While the Art’s Alive! show is the organization’s biggest event during the year, it isn’t its only one. The organization has also put on classes in watercolor painting and photography and has done “field trips,” where members visit places like the Seattle Art Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

The organization also uses some proceeds from the show to fund an arts scholarship, named in honor of Cyr, which last year totaled $750. One goal of the organization is to increase the amount and number of art scholarships it offers, Wellman said.

The Foundation for the Arts in Mill Creek meets at 6 p.m. the third Monday of each month at the Mill Creek John L. Scott real estate office, 15714 Country Club Drive.

For more information, call King at 425-337-1316.