Library displays variety of local art

Charlotte Nitcher recalls that, as a very young child, she discovered the fun of creative endeavors while drawing lines in the talcum powder soil of Florida. She hasn't stopped creating art in some form or another since those early days.

Many Sisters residents know Nitcher as the public services specialist at the Sisters Library, where she has worked for the past 20 years. Currently, her artwork is on display at the Friends of the Sisters Library (FOSL) December exhibit in the library community room. Before viewing Nitcher's exhibit, visitors can view in the lobby display case some of the items that provided inspiration for Nitcher's work.

Acrylics, oils, and oil pastels are the most-used mediums by Nitcher. She admits her first love is drawing, followed by painting, then paper and printmaking.

As a child, Nitcher always delighted in receiving a new box of crayons. For her 10th Christmas, she received a real Sears art kit with quality paper, graphite pencils, charcoal, oil pastels, and kneaded eraser. Using the books included in the kit, she practiced shadowing and perspective, while honing her sketching skills.

Nitcher said that the obligatory art classes in grade school and junior high were more about following directions and actually squashed creativity. Rather than draw a simple round red apple as instructed, Nitcher drew an apple cut open, with the seeds exposed - not viewed positively by her teacher. So, the budding artist created in private, at home, and out among the oak trees surrounding her home in Albany, Oregon where her family moved when she was four.

Nitcher and her high school sweetheart husband of 43 years, John, met while playing in the band, he the saxophone, she the clarinet. They couldn't actually date until she turned 16, and five years later they were married. Following John's graduation from Oregon State University, they lived in Reedsport with their children for 19 years before moving to Central Oregon in 1995, where they first lived east of Sisters.

Following a dream in which Nitcher saw a vision of a house, she drew a sketch, and her builder husband built her the dream house on the rim above Whychus Creek Canyon, complete with a separate art studio facing the Cascades.

While her children were growing up, Nitcher directed her creativity toward projects involving the children's interests. She also taught string-quilting classes and created wearable art for sale. Quilting, fiber arts, sketching and gardening provided creative outlets for her until she began taking art classes at the local community college in 1990, followed by earning her Bachelor of Science in Liberal Studies from Linfield College in 1993.

Inspiration for her art seems to come to Nitcher at any time of day or night, in the shower, images from dreams, in response to social issues, and from nature, photography, and real life.

"Some of my ideas are quirky," Nitcher admits, as she describes her idea for a painting of blind justice in the moonlight, holding a potato masher rather than the usual scales of justice.

The moon image figures into a number of her paintings as in "Longing," a painting with a dark blue background, a large moon, and a pair of skeletal hands reaching for the moon.

One very unique piece on display is a three-panel screen Nitcher had in mind for a long time before she finally found the appropriate articulating hinges on a trip back East.

"I have always loved the European cave paintings, and knew I wanted to do something similar," Nitcher explained.

Using three hollow-core doors which she stripped and finished herself, Nitcher created a stunning free-standing screen using acrylic paints to replicate the cave drawings in earthy shades of yellow ocher, burnt sienna, and umber.

Nitcher has received several awards for her work, including a Best of Show in 1993 at the Surreal and Abstract Show at the Mind Power Gallery in Reedsport and a first place in life drawing at COCC in the spring of 2001. Her painting of daughter Christina was one of only 250 pieces selected from among 40,000 slides for the 1993 Beaverton Arts Commission annual juried show.

She continues to study independently, take art classes, and enter several group shows a year. The exhibit at the library is her first one-woman show. Nitcher looks forward to her retirement in about three years, which will afford her more time to paint. However, she will miss the people she works with and the library patrons she serves.

"The library is a great place to work," said Nitcher.

She may very well be seen volunteering there after she retires.

Nitcher can be contacted at 541-420-4602, [email protected], or ccnitcher.

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The prints by 12-year-old friends Eva and Grace exhibited in the library's computer room during December are examples from the afterschool art program offered by Circle of Friends (COF) and facilitated by Annie Painter, local artist, educator, and COF volunteer since 2014.

Circle of Friends is a Sisters nonprofit mentoring program whose vision is that every child in Sisters who needs a Friend has a Friend. The mentors provide consistency and long-term relationships for the children they mentor. Mentors in the program spend at least two to four hours of one-on-one time with his or her child on a weekly basis.

Two years ago their mentors, Diane Cooper with Eva and Virginia Rhett with Grace, began bringing them to Painter's studio for art lessons, tea parties, games and good social time. Unable to commit to mentoring just one child, due to her work and travel schedule, Painter offered to volunteer art time for any interested COF child and mentor.

Last year, Painter asked Eva and Grace to commit to at least three, two-hour sessions on the hand crank printing press. They accepted the challenge, freely exploring found materials, lace, pieces of plastic - anything they could roll with soy-based printing ink and run through the press on high-quality paper.

They cleaned up their pieces with erasers, embellished with colored pencil, measured and mounted the work, and demonstrated their techniques and showed their results at the annual Circle of Friends luncheon last May.

"This (the library) is their second community art exhibit. Not bad for two twelve-year-olds. Congratulations Eva and Grace," said Painter.

Circle of Friends can be reached at 541-588-6445 or check their website, www.acircleoffriendsoregon.com. Painter's contact information is 541-639-2526, or

[email protected] Her website is www.anniepainter.com and her teaching studio is located at 392 E. Main Ave. in Sisters.