Blackbird Fly

DISCOVERING ART. BUILDING COMMUNITY. HOW ONE WOMAN’S DREAM OF AN ARTS CENTER FOR ALL TOOK FLIGHT.

- Jeff Smith

Is Virginia an artist? “Actually, I have a kind of complicated relationship with that word,” she says. “My mom always told me artists are weird.” As she speaks, she is pulling a small squeegee across a fine-mesh screen covered with ink to leave the imprint of a chrysanthemum on a flattened piece of clay. It’s part of a ceramics project. Virginia describes herself as a homesteader. She makes soap. Has goats and chickens. A BIG garden. She was drawn to Blackbird Arts more in the spirit of a maker than in the spirit of an artist. “I figured I could make pretty ceramic soap dishes to go with my homemade soap and sell them together,” she says. Will she one day embrace the term artist? “I might have to talk to my mom about that.”

Beside Virginia as she works is Jill, a hospice nurse, screen-printing a blue elephant onto a piece of clay. “I almost didn’t come in today,” she says. She was on call last night, she was up much of the night and was tired. But once at Blackbird, the energy of the place and her art infused her. “I’m glad I came,” she says, stepping back to admire her elephant imprint. Is she an artist? “No. I’m a nurse. Science, linear thinking, reasoning.” She puts a hand to her forehead and moves her arm to point straight out, like an arrow. “Here, I turn off that part of my brain and tap into other ideas and the people here, and I let my creativity flow.”

There are dozens more people like this making art at Blackbird Arts community art center. They make art, don’t feel right embracing the title “artist,” and yet they love the discovery that they can, in fact, make art.