{a.title}
{a.dek}
By {a.author} · {a.readMin} min read
Read
{a.dek}
Announcements, open calls, recaps, and the occasional long piece on the county we live in. Updated most weeks. Subscribe if you'd rather not check.
{featured.dek}
Open calls, what's hung this month at the Annex, classes coming up. We don't share your address; we don't send more than we'd want to read ourselves.
{a.dek}
{/* byline + meta */}W hen the board signed the lease on the old hardware store, we knew the building wouldn't be ready for two years. We didn't know that twenty-three of us would help paint the back room, that Lillian would bring shortbread every Saturday for nine straight weeks, or that we'd end up replacing the front window the day before the opening.
Seven years went by where the lights at the Council office stayed on, and the meetings stayed on the books, but the work mostly happened in basements and kitchens. People kept making things. We kept showing up to County Fair. The Quilt Wall stayed on the highway, and someone — Walt Henning, mostly — kept the paint touched up.
We've spent the last eighteen months knocking on doors, reopening the books, and signing leases. We've registered the 501(c)(3), filed three years of late tax forms, written to every artist in the directory, and called every business on Main Street. Eighty-two volunteers have logged hours. Twelve barns will open their doors on May 16. One wall on the highway needs a fresh quilt.
{/* Pull quote */}"We are not too proud to ask you to help. An hour, an idea, or twenty dollars — we can use all three."
What's next looks different than what came before. We're keeping the things that worked — Open Studios, the Quilt Wall grants, after-school printmaking at the library — and adding a few that we wish had existed when we were starting out. A student cohort. A traveling gallery. A shared art-supply closet. Classes that don't expect you to already know how.
We've tried to keep the writing small and the buildings open. The plan is to keep doing that. We hope you'll come visit, or send us a note, or apply for one of the grants. The door is unlocked Thursday through Sunday, eleven to four. Knock first only if you want to.
A few thank-yous. The Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission for the grant that paid the deposit. The NEA for the rural-recovery line. The 341 households who became members in the last year. The Rooks County Commission for the front-door sign. Tom Halverson, who keeps nominating students who turn into the kind of artists you actually want to know.
And every one of you who keeps showing up.
— Mariella
{a.dek}
Each spring, the Council selects six painted barn-quilt panels to add to the County Quilt Wall on Hwy K-9. Applications are open to any artist living, working, or having grown up in Rooks County — students, members, and folks who've never shown with us before.
Selected artists receive a $1,200 honorarium, a 4×4 painted panel ready to mount, and a permanent place on the Wall (or until weather takes the paint).