Art, adjacencies and Kathy Ariosa: Making a new creative beginning in the heart of a timbered empire

By JANET HANSEN/For The Herald — Kathy Ariosa, the Oakridge Art Council’s featured artist of the month, is a relatively new member of our flourishing artists colony, which has enjoyed a small corner of the local landscape for decades.

Kathy’s work embodies intangible strengths found universally among the most successful artisans in the world. In a 40-year career working with creatives of many disciplines, I’ve always found one clear takeaway: Creators don’t rest. The best of them are always envisioning their next project, which begins in the heart, and the most successful embrace a high level of spirituality.

Kathy moved to Oakridge in the winter of 2017 from Baltimore, Maryland. She’d retired from a career in banking and a busy life raising two children with her late husband, Jay. Having lived in Maryland for more than 50 years, moving to the rural Northwest was like a spark in the night.

“I was taken by the breathtaking scenery around Oakridge and getting away from life in a busy city reignited my creativity,” Kathy says of picking up pursuits she’d put down years before.

At an early age, Kathy’s mother instilled in her a love for traditional arts. Playing piano, crochet, miniatures, painting and making clothing were some of Kathy’s initial endeavors.  Her sensibilities garnered her acceptance into NYC’s Fashion Institute of Technology in1973. Unfortunately, circumstances did not allow her to follow that dream.

Creating art in a 21st-century mountain town

For centuries, artists have lived in big cities exposing their work to large groups of the population contributing to their success. Vienna, Austria was the home of Gustav Klimt, one of Kathy’s favorite artists. Klimt was a symbolist painter, founder of the Vienna Secession and the Art Nouveau movement, a definitive moment in art history.

That Oakridge is completely isolated from larger arts communities gives collectors the opportunity to discover pieces from local artists, and one Oakridge couple is already collecting Kathy’s work, which is primarily focused on mixed-media collage. Using upcycled materials combined with traditional mediums such as pen and ink, oils, acrylics, and watercolor, she takes inspiration from disparate items engendering something distinct and inimitable. The materials come from practically any source involving one, two, and three-dimensional objects.

The idea of upcycling goes back centuries to luthiers such as Giuseppe Guarneri who created some of the world’s most prized violins from wood found on scrap piles. Similarly, Kathy often uses discarded writings from books, poetry, papers, maps, cigar boxes and all manner of interesting pieces to forge new work.

Our generation was taught to revere the Masters and contemporary artists like Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha. All of them are associated with certain art movements and their work has become so famous, it’s likely the average person can never afford to own even one piece. If Oakridge nurtures the intersection where art and commerce meet, we encourage art lovers to become collectors.  To that end, Kathy’s work is on exhibit at Oakridge Arts Council’s gallery on Highway 58 at the Oakridge Industrial Park, and Boho Chateau at 48319 E. First St.

Creating adjacencies in the community

A new buzzword in the arts is adjacencies. Much like famous musicians who share the stage and recordings with other household names to expand their audience, adjacencies in the arts world provide a level of exposure artists may never experience from exhibits, galleries and art shows.

For example, Marc Chagall was trained to paint traditionally in Saint Petersburg and Paris.  His mentor, Léon Bakst, invited Chagall to work on the set of the Ballet Russes, a prominent ballet company that initiated the incorporation of dance, music, and art. The move eventually launched Chagall onto the world stage with celebrated contemporaries such as Degas, Monet, Cezanne and a long list of others.

In Kathy’s case, a chance discussion about art with Dillon Sanders, the principal of Inbound, LLC, occurred in the summer of 2020. Kathy was commissioned on the spot to create the last in a series of four murals that brand Inbound’s headquarters on East First Street. Kathy submitted her design ideas and set to work after receiving four, 4’x 8’ panels specially treated to withstand the weather.

Out of her comfort zone with the sheer size of the mural, Kathy spent the winter and spring of 2020 -2021 in her garage working.

“It was daunting to think of the project because it’s towering. I could only paint two boards at a time and there were a lot of parts of the image that had to line up.”

A technique highlighted throughout the mural is a spiritual doodling method called Zentangle, used to great effect by Klimt and Alphonse Mucha, another influence in Kathy’s work. Much of Klimt and Mucha’s work incorporates the ornate use of seemingly endless doodles that may lead to other unwitting shapes with no preconceived idea of how the design will evolve.

Borrowing Native American symbols for peace, transformation and harmony, Kathy essentially embedded blessings into her work for all those who work at Inbound — a company dedicated to wildland firefighting. Integrating fire and regrowth from the ashes, she established a visual prayer for the renewal of Mother Earth.

Taking the idea of adjacency to another level, Deep Woods Distillery opened discussions to use the image of her mural for the label of their newest spirit, Rumbustion, a molasses-based rum. The image of Kathy’s mural is forever attached to Rumbustion making an impression on all who enjoy the spirit.

The mural and label are reminders that art is deeply functional within the heart of the timbered empire.

The spiritual side of art

Moving to Oakridge was Kathy’s impetus for a new creative beginning and a deeper spiritual awareness living in the Cascade foothills. She relies heavily on her faith in God for all things, and it brings with it a soft focus for her art, which always encompasses gratitude. So much contemporary art and music focus on life’s harshness, it’s refreshing to embrace more ethereal and delicate ideals.

In a recent Facebook post, Kathy wrote:

“As I take action to create the life of my dreams,

I also relax and rely on faith to light my path

and show me the way.”

Janet Hansen retired from the music industry as a senior marketing exec and publicist in 2017. Her work comprised interfacing with national media in campaigns that include credits in three GRAMMY awards, and two of history’s most popular songs. She returned to her home in Oakridge in 2019 opening Boho Chateau, a boutique dedicated to local history and art in 2020.

Kathy Ariosa is the fifth Oakridge-Westfir resident to be profiled as artist of the month in an arrangement between The Herald and the Oakridge Art Council. The group selected her in a drawing of names among its 30-plus members, and the process is to be repeated each month as a means of recognizing the community’s robust arts scene.