Village Green artists invite you to Art Stroll

The Village Green seniors will showcase their art at an upcoming “Art Stroll” from 1 to 3 p.m. May 30.

Pieces will include a variety of mediums including everything from wood carving to embroidery to watercolor.

“It’s an opportunity for residents here to show that they are something other than a person who has to use a walker or wheelchair to get down a hall,” featured artist Ora Jacobson said. She lives at Village Green in Federal Way and started a craft meetup about a year ago, where she leads residents through a creative activity each week.

Each guest might even have the opportunity to be an artist themselves.

“I’m going to take a canvas that’s only going to have a swoosh of paint on it….and the people that attend the Art Stroll, I’m going to ask them to contribute something,” Jacobson said.

For Jacobson, art is a way to “find quiet” and “step away from the ugliness” in the world.

“I get very exhausted by listening to people’s anger and hatred,” Jacobson said.

For artist Dick Ode, creating beautiful objects through woodturning on a lathe was a positive outlet after a car accident affected his physical and cognitive abilities. The accident occurred just after he retired from a career at Boeing.

Since then, Ode has created birdhouses, wooden vases and candle holders, pens and Christmas decorations. He likes using unique materials and creates intricate designs with them. Among these materials are large seed pods from Australia that result in lacy vases that have surprising patches of fuzzy texture on them.

Not every experiment was a success. Dick and his wife, Carmen, said he once tried to put deer horns on the lathe, but they gave an unpleasant oily smell and they left that experiment for later.

Ode said he always enjoyed working with wood and shared some whittling projects that kept him busy while traveling for work. One was a chain of interconnected links that were all carved out of the same piece of wood. The other was a sphere inside a square open sided cube that similarly had been carved from a single piece.

Esther Vine is over 100 years old and said she’s always liked art, even when she was a child. After a hand surgery, she can no longer paint, but still enjoys making cards and collages as creative outlets.

“I miss it,” Vine said. “Now I go to bed and paint in my mind.”

She creates watercolors and multimedia art pieces and encourages everyone to try doing art.

“I’ve heard so many people say, ‘I don’t know how to do anything’ But I think they need to try something experimental,” Vine said. She believes that everyone is an artist in their own way, and sometimes it “they just have to have it pulled out of them,” and that “everyone sees something different.”

For Vine, she likes that art gives her the chance to surprise herself with what she creates. With wet on wet watercolor especially, she said, “I never know whether a rabbit is going to pop out — or a flower!”

Jacobson appreciates the spontaneity found in art as well. She said it has allowed her to “be more free.”

When asked where she finds inspiration, Jacobson said she has “a brain that doesn’t want to turn off, my husband says it’s like a sponge.” She believes “there’s inspiration in everything that we are involved with in our lives, whether we want to take advantage of inspiration or not.”

Ashley Collier is the activity director at Village Green and said she is putting together the event because “for one thing, we have residents who say that they used to be an artist. But even if your hands ache and you don’t paint anymore, you’re still an artist!”

The event is open to the public at 35419 1st Ave. S., Federal Way, and will include refreshments.