A select number of works featured in the Art is Ageless® exhibition and competition at Rolla Presbyterian Manor will now appear in the 2023 Art is Ageless calendar, notecards and postcards.
“Community Matters” spoke to four Rolla-area artists whose work is featured alongside other talented senior artists across Missouri and Kansas.
“Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked to draw pictures,” Carol Jessup said. “I started out with crayons.”
The 85-year-old artist has two pieces shown in 2023 Art is Ageless materials, each in a different medium. “Sunrise on Lake Superior” is an oil landscape that’s reproduced on a postcard in the calendar. Carol based the painting on a snapshot of the Great Lake taken near her former home in Duluth, Minnesota.
“We lived in that area for a while, and it’s beautiful,” she said. “About every weekend we managed to drive up to Split Rock Lighthouse with our kids.”
Carol bases many of her paintings on photographs she’s taken, and her favorite medium is watercolor. But she created her second winning piece with needle and thread. “Gardening” will appear on an Art is Ageless birthday card.
“It has a lot of different stiches, so making it was a learning experience for me,” she said.
Carol learned about the Art is Ageless exhibition and competition many years ago, when her mother-in-law lived at Rolla Presbyterian Manor.
“I just decided, oh what the heck,” she said.
“I think it’s a wonderful program, and it gives people a chance to express themselves in a creative way.”
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One of Ellen Reynolds’ winning entries was inspired by an interior decoration scheme.
“I got a new beautician, and she was going to decorate her salon with all black and white,” she said.
Ellen looked up the lyrics to the title song of the rock opera “Hair,” which contains numerous descriptions of all kinds of tresses, from “straight” and “curly” to “bangled” and “tangled.”
The result is “Homage to the Musical Hair,” a pen-and-ink and charcoal drawing that Ellen gave to her stylist. It appears in the 2023 Art is Ageless calendar.
An artist from “way back,” Ellen worked as an elementary-school art teacher for 28 years. After she retired from teaching, she became the administrator of the Texas County Museum of Art and History.
“I’ve been in art all this time, I guess,” said the 72-year-old.
In contrast with her calendar feature, “Spring Flowers/Spring Boots” is a colorful watercolor painting.
“I had seen boots that were used for vases, and I thought that was neat,” Ellen said. “Then I made up my own flowers.”
The colorful result is featured on an Art is Ageless notecard.
Ellen has been submitting work to the Art is Ageless exhibition at Rolla Presbyterian Manor for about 10 years, even before she was eligible for the competition, which is open to artists 65 and older.
Her parents lived at Presbyterian Manor, which is how she became familiar with Art is Ageless.
“My folks were very, very happy there,” she said. “They were always well taken care of; the people were friendly and everything was clean.
“I ate a lot of meals there, too, and the food was good.”
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Sophia deLaat’s gourd art has been delighting Rolla Presbyterian Manor residents for years.
“Gourds seem to lend themselves to creating all different kinds of shapes,” she said.
One such shape is that of an angel. Around 10 years ago, Sophia began making illuminated angel gourd sculptures inspired by a vision of laughing angels she saw in a dream.
“All my work has some kind of praise aspect to it, a recognition that there is poetry all around us,” she said.
The gourd angels reflected the “multifaceted” nature of these angelic beings.
Her “Christmas Angel” will appear in the Art is Ageless calendar. Though she estimates it’s only 10 inches high, Sophia imbued the figure with delicate pattern and detail, some of it gilded.
The 73-year-old artist says she’s grateful for the opportunity to share her work with the Presbyterian Manor community, and she enjoyed speaking with residents during the Art is Ageless calendar reception last month.
“The people (at Presbyterian Manor) have just been so supportive,” she said. “How many places do artists have the opportunity to connect with their audience in this way?
“It makes it worthwhile to cultivate a creative practice”
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Helen Hoertel picked up the art of quilling after she received a Mother’s Day card that featured an intricate rolled paper pattern.
The 90-year-old artist likes to keep her hands busy when she’s watching the evening news, and she decided to make Christmas cards using the technique.
“Red Quilled Christmas” will be featured in the honorable mention gallery in the Art is Ageless calendar.
(((Janet, leave this last line out – Jeff or Julie, you can keep it in as a link on the blog or the e-newsletter)))
Helen was featured in a “Community Matters” story back in May.
