Story and photos by Stacy Fisher
Art can communicate, reveal and elevate a culture’s values, shape our everyday lives, make social statements and enjoyed for its aesthetic beauty. Art is a tremendously important form of cultural expression.
It is a self-affirming activity that can help a populace to interpret, think about, and appreciate the world in new ways. Such a discipline frames nature, which focuses our perceptions more intently on what is all around us.
Some argue that children are already naturally born artists (and potential budding scientists), with a curiosity of their surroundings that leads them to ask innumerable questions that sometimes exhaust adults.
Susanville resident Kim Bird caught the art bug when she was just a small child after finger painting during art class in kindergarten, and having her work praised by her teacher, parents and other adults after being picked to be in the community art show, and possibly triggered her decision to become the artist she is today.
That praise so filled her with a sense of self-confidence in her artistic abilities, she says, it may have planted the seed that would ultimately grow into her becoming a full-fledged, professional artist several years later.
Born and raised in Rochester, Minnesota, Bird said the experience in her early childhood of having had people compliment her entry into the artistic world filled her with a strong passion for art.
“I found I was always good at art,” she enthuses, “which led me to take art classes in high school and as an adult,” including three years after high school attending the prestigious Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a private college specializing in the visual arts.
She also took classes in fashion design and photography during this period. She adds that she would also undertake the opportunity of making period costumes for stage plays later on in her life.
Bird, who began her career early on as a watercolorist, is now more focused on the use of pastels instead. Unlike watercolor, pastels can be blended with fingers, a blending stump, or applied with hard pastel pencils. Unlike the process of watercolor painting, pastel colors are already made into sticks, rather than on the palette. She has also dabbled now and again in oil paintings she says.
Over the years she’s exhibited her works at a number of festivals where Bird sold her paintings while further developing her skills as an artist.
After marring her husband, a forester, they moved around the country due to his job requirements. For a number of years she put aside her artistic endeavors to raise children. “But I got back into art when we moved to Cadillac, Michigan,” she recalls. “There I once again enrolled in watercolor classes, which I found I really liked.”
It was shortly after that time in 2009 that she started experimenting in pastels and found that medium suited her style and taste even better than watercolors.
Her family continued to move around to different states until finally ending up in Susanville, California, where her husband is now retired from his position as Forest Supervisor for Lassen National Forest.
“My girls were grown up and on their own,” she continues, “so I again began exhibiting my artwork for the ‘Art Around the Lake’ event,” an annual, non-profit showing of art pieces where people would visit the artists stationed along different locations around Lake Almanor, adjacent to the town of Chester in Plumas County.
Bird says the goal of the event was to give artists opportunities to flourish and increase the general public’s awareness of the arts.
Her participation in the art show was noticed by Blue Goose Gallery of Artists, manager Kathy Donnelly, and it was then that she invited Bird to join the gallery in 2013 as a member of the co-op and display her works there year round. “I happily accepted her offer and now I’m also on the board of directors.”
Besides showcasing wonderful works of art, one of the fun programs the gallery holds is a free reception called “First Fridays” in which they host one or two artists after normal business hours from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. during the summer months. They work on projects while guests can come to watch them create their artwork.
“We serve hors d’oeuvres, wine, with plenty of other refreshments, plus door prizes and a ‘Guessing Jar,’ with the winner receiving a gift certificate” good toward gallery merchandise. And of course during the showing the public can tour the galley’s large display rooms to view top-notch artwork.
Bird shares that she appreciates the other works by member artists at the gallery as well, which include photography and woodworking, among other disciplines.
“When I create art I get this feeling that wells up inside me that taps into the creative part of myself,” reflects Bird. “I am completely focused and sometimes it paints itself, but other times there may be a struggle — it just depends,” adding that part of the process for her is getting away from the project at hand then coming back “with fresh eyes.”
The Blue Goose Gallery of Artists has moved from its previous location on Main St. in downtown Chester, to its new, larger location on the Almanor Peninsula in the Berkshire-Hathaway complex.
Hours of operation during the winter months are Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In the summer months starting in the month of July the gallery will be open every day. The gallery closes during the month of March.