‘Art is for everyone’: Calistoga Art Center invites the community to give it a try
To get a full understanding of the Calistoga Art Center’s impact on the Calistoga community, it’s good to go back to its beginning.
According to Martha Casselman, a former board member and board president, the Art Center was started in 2002 by a group of women who wanted to have more of an art education for people in Calistoga.
Even though Casselman is no longer on the board, her heart hasn’t left the Art Center.
“It’s still hard for me not to say ‘we’ when thinking about the board activity,” Casselman said. “I hear about it from others who wish to keep me tuned in. I still feel that a lot of my heart is with the Art Center and I really want it to succeed.”
Anna Johansson is the office and programs manager as well as an artist and teacher at the center, which is located in the Cropp Building at the Calistoga Fairgrounds. She does everything from leading summer camps to teaching painting and needle felting classes.
Johansson believes art greatly impacts brain and body health.
“Art has nothing to do with whether you want to be an artist at all,” said Johansson. “It’s just another tool in being the best human you can be and learning how to connect with yourself and all the different facets that we all have. It informs the person who’s creating it, and it just sharpens all of your senses, which allows you to then engage with the world in a different way.”
The center in April offered a Poetry Walk. Poems could be found hanging in Pioneer Park, Fireman’s Memorial Park, along the fence at Logvy Community Park and along the pathway at Avila Park.
The Poetry Walk project started at the tail end of COVID with the idea of posting poetry around town. Participants had the option of writing their own poem or choosing a favorite. The first year, hundreds of poems were submitted. Those who selected poems had the option of talking about why they chose them.
The center hosted its sold-out 16th Souper Bowl on April 18 at the Boys & Girls Club of Calistoga.
Up to 300 clay bowls, which are glazed, are made on volunteer time for the annual Souper Bowl.
For the event, more than a dozen mostly local Calistoga restaurants donate soups that volunteers serve to guests in the hand-made bowls. Everyone is allowed to vote for their favorite soup. Last year was the second year the Art Center developed a glazed clay trophy for the winning restaurant.
Another project in the works is the Art Center’s COVID-19 Commemorative Tile Project, which was inspired by an essay from a high school student, Loma Henry, who responded to a contest from the city of Calistoga seeking ideas to be more engaged with government in the Calistoga community.
During COVID, the Art Center didn’t have classes, but Johansson created art kits that she distributed at the Calistoga Elementary School. Henry, who participated in this, thought it would be exciting if the Art Center could organize art kits for people to paint tiles that described their experience during COVID. The board members at the Art Center deeply wanted to make Henry’s proposal happen. The Art Center ended up offering free tile painting classes and developing installation designs.
The location now is set. The Art Center is working with the city of Calistoga to get the permit. They’ve paid for the granite and are fundraising for the installation.
Opportunities that the Art Center provides for kids include a weekly Afterschool Creative Club for first through sixth graders. They’ve partnered with Calistoga Parks and Recreation and offer two summer camps that are free for residents. Mini sessions are also offered.
The Art Center’s community participation includes creating a float for the 4th of July parade in Calistoga. For Back to School Day at Calistoga Elementary School, they show up with a project for parents and kids.
Lisa Green is a member of the Art Center’s board of directors as well as the stained glass instructor. She said she always loved color but never considered herself an artist until she was in her late 20s. She was a music and agriculture major in school.
The father of a friend from Calistoga made stained glass art. Green loved seeing what he had made and the colors in each work.
When she moved back to Calistoga after living in Sebastopol for 17 years, she went with a friend to the Art Center and asked if they taught stained glass. Around a year later, she was hired to teach stained glass at the Art Center. She considers most of her classes suitable for ages 8 and up.
Aside from teaching stained glass classes, Green also leads senior workshops on mosaics, collage, metal and making bracelets from colored buttons.
She encourages those who aren’t into art to give one of the classes a try.
“Anybody can create,” said Green. “We don’t think we can create, but it’s really good for your soul. It’s opening yourself up. It’s connecting with the world around you.
“I can’t draw, but that doesn’t stop me from being creative because it’s energizing,” Green continued. “It makes you happy to create. I think most people, if they’ve made something, whether it’s a picture, a stained glass piece [or] a cake, creating brings life energy.”
Green has had students who say they can’t do anything walk out of classes satisfied because they have made something. “It’s exciting because it comes from inside of you,” Green said.
She appreciates that the Art Center serves as a place where people can create.
“When I first came to Calistoga, we didn’t have that and that was a lot of years ago,” Green said. “Now, you come in there and whether it’s doing some ceramics or a drawing class or a kids’ class, that’s really wonderful that that’s available to our community because it makes it a more well-rounded community and it makes people happy.
“Calistoga needs to know this is available. Even now, not everybody knows if there’s an Art Center,” Green added. “The thing that helps us out is knowing what our community wants to learn, how they want to create and how that manifests.”
Natalie Carpello is a sculpture artist who works primarily in ceramics. At the Art Center, she serves as the ceramic studio manager, instructor and ceramic artist-in-residence.
Carpello has created art since she was a child and was always artistically inclined. Growing up, her favorite birthday presents were trips to museums that gave her the chance to see exhibits of artists like Pablo Picasso. She earned a degree in sculpture and textiles from San Francisco State University and has a background in general sculpture, welding, blacksmithing, fiber arts, and a little bit of painting and graphic drawing. She’s been working out of the Art Center since 2016.
Carpello’s class at the Art Center is an open studio environment ceramics class for ages 16 and up. There’s no set curriculum and not all students are working on the same thing. People get to come in and work at their own pace, on their own projects, and at their own skill levels. Some students in the class have been working with clay and making pottery for more than 30 years while others will have just started a month ago.
Carpello has particularly strong praise for Johansson.
“I would go so far as to say that without Anna, we would not have made it through COVID when there was just no income and no one was willing to go out of their way and go out of their house,” said Carpello. “I would say that her efforts have singlehandedly helped keep the Art Center afloat and I don’t even know where we’d be without her.”
Carpello also has words of encouragement for those who don’t consider art to be their thing.
“Art is for everyone,” she said. “My class isn’t about making the most beautiful thing in the world. It’s just about exploring, getting your hands dirty and, in a way, releasing some tension.
“Art in general is great for you to participate in because it helps expand your mind,” Carpello continued. “It helps you work in different parts of your brain that you’re not necessarily working with. It helps with cognitive function.”
She cherishes the relationships that are built between students at the Art Center.
“I’ve been in some other art spaces where people are very much selfish,” said Carpello. “They’re just there to work on their thing and they don’t really care what anyone else is doing.
“Here, one student’s struggling and I’ll come out and I’ll see another more experienced student helping them and giving them advice and trying to help them thrive.
“We support each other outside of the Art Center,” continued Carpello. “If a student plays an instrument and they tell us, ‘Hey, I’m doing a performance in St. Helena,’ you will regularly find multiple students there supporting them. A few of the participants have become my very close personal friends.”
To learn more about the Art Center, visit calistogaartcenter.org/
