‘A lot of life here’: Art community at Riverview Retirement Community is vast, vibrant

In a vibrant arts community like Spokane, there are various microcommunities within the city that thrive on their own while also playing a part in the success of the city.

Unbeknown to many, one of those microcommunities has blossomed at the Riverview Retirement Community, home to artists of all mediums and skill levels.

The success of the art community at Riverview, in part, began in Arizona. While living there during the winter, Gib Rossing noticed the amount of art groups in the area. When he and his wife moved to Spokane in 2017, he decided to form a group of his own in which creators could work together and encourage each other.

“A lot of it has been to help people start out who are not artists and don’t want to become artists,” the graphite pencil artist said. “Just the joy of being able to do something creative.”

The group is still going strong, now under the guidance of Dorothy Mehl, meeting every Wednesday from 2-4 p.m. in the Community Building on the Riverview campus.

After retiring in her 50s, Mehl began taking art classes and, to her surprise, fell in love with the practice. After moving to Riverview, she decided she wanted to keep her skills sharp through the art group.

The group welcomes creators to bring whatever they’re working on or take part in a group project. On a recent visit, Mehl and residents Dee Morton and David Anderson were working on individual projects, like painting rocks, while a collection of small bird house ornaments and round wooden ornaments painted with holiday scenes during previous art group sessions sat on the table in front of them.

After seeing the quality of work residents were producing during the art groups, Rossing decided in 2018 that the community needed an exhibition space. Thus, the art wall was born.

Work is hung on the art wall – across from the chapel and near the Terrace dining room – for two months at a time.

Outgoing featured artist Jackie Volz can’t remember when she wasn’t creating. She grew up with artistic parents but was shy and didn’t want people to think she was odd, so she hid her painting skills until she was in her 30s.

It wasn’t until Volz was in her 60s that she learned she could paint portraits. Then working as a teacher, Volz started drawing her students as they worked. After a lull in creating major art pieces while working and raising her family, Volz started painting intensely after her husband passed in 2003, likening that time to a cork popping out of a shaken bottle of soda.

“I had all this in me that needed to come out,” she said.

Now experiencing arthritis in her hands, Volz sees as inspiration Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who painted happy children and people dancing and enjoying picnics despite his arthritis.

“I think, ‘My gosh, there’s Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and then there are people painting with their toes and their mouths, so how can I complain?’ ” she said. “I have to keep doing what I can do.”

Another artist at Riverview, Carol Mellin, started creating in 2009 after retiring. Her mother-in-law was a watercolorist, and Mellin inherited her supplies when moving her to a new residence. She thought back to what she learned from art classes she had taken in the past when creating but also turned to tutorials on YouTube during COVID.

“You don’t start out at the top,” she said. “You have to move up.”

Resident and painter Alva Kiesbuy started young, creating first with chalk then with watercolors her mother bought for her. Later in life, she would join her painter mother-in-law at her art club.

Since moving to Riverview, Kiesbuy teaches watercolor classes to small groups.

As a child, Jan Krepcik embroidered pillowcases and handkerchiefs. Fast-forward to 1994, she noticed a woman working on a piece of Brazilian embroidery – a 3D type of embroidery which uses rayon thread instead of cotton or wool thread – outside a shop in Newport, Washington.

Krepcik, who has also taught embroidery classes at Riverview, remembers being in awe of the piece the woman was working on and started chatting with her.

“She said ‘Well, I’m starting classes,’ ” Krepcik said. “I said ‘Where and what time? I’ll be there.’ I got hooked, and it’s been an addiction ever since.”

The November/December featured artist at Riverview is Bill Bertsch. Born in Staten Island, Bertsch enlisted in the Navy during World War II and served in the South Pacific. Upon returning to the U.S., Bertsch was selected to visit munitions factories in the Northwest to tell employees how much their work was needed for the war effort.

During this time, Bertsch met his future wife Marie in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Three weeks after their first encounter, they were married. The couple eventually relocated to California and had two children, Dan and Terilyn.

After retiring, Bertsch and Marie traveled to Europe numerous times, sometimes exploring countries like France and Italy in a VW camper van. It is memories of these trips that inspire Bertsch’s paintings.

Bertsch, who celebrated his 100th birthday in January, started painting around 25 years ago after a neighbor in Palm Desert, California invited him to see his studio. This neighbor taught Bertsch about brush technique and color formation.

The walls of Bertsch’s room at Riverview are covered in original paintings, many of which will be on display at Riverview through December. There are paintings reminiscent of Claude Monet’s “The Japanese Footbridge” and the artist’s paintings of waterlilies. Others recall Italian coastlines or traditional farmers market stands in France.

One painting in particular seems unplaceable, with tall rock formations reaching for a dark blue sky. That painting, Bertsch said, is called “Mystery Planet.”

“It’s nowhere …” he said. “There’s no rule that you have to paint something actual.”

Prior to these paintings, Bertsch said his only other artistic experience was receiving an honorable mention for a picture he drew of baseball player Mickey Cochrane as a student. But painting helps Bertsch, and helped his late wife, according to his son, remember those European vacations.

“The memory aspect was important,” Dan said. “My late mom had dementia so she was able to relate to the paintings that he had made, many of them with themes that she appreciated and could remember herself so it brought her back from a murkier perspective. She was comforted by the paintings.”

Though there is a lot to see inside, art at Riverview isn’t contained to the walls. There are several Little Free Libraries, each side of which is painted by a different resident, and a bird mural, which covers the privacy wall between the terrace and memory care sections of the campus.

The mural was painted by Kaylee and Mackenzee Moss, with the help of residents and staff who added numerous birds to the scene.

Elsewhere on the Riverview campus, residents have the opportunity to hone their woodworking skills, under the guidance of instructor Tommy John.

John was an outside contractor for two years before being brought on full time nine years ago.

“I love it,” he said. “You get to meet lots of interesting people and hear their story. I mean, look at the talent.”

Everyone who wants to use the workshop has to take a 30-minute safety course before being certified on the tools they’d like to use.

John used to host classes, but the workshop has since transitioned into a space where residents can come in with a project and John will show them how to complete it in the easiest and safest way possible.

One resident, for example, wanted to figure out how to make a milk carton shape out of wood to hold his newspaper. John did the cutting for the resident, who wasn’t yet certified on the tools, and showed him how to glue it together. The resident is now working on learning to make the holder himself.

On a recent afternoon, resident Don Wilson was in the woodshop working on duck decoys. A hummingbird and warbler perch nearby.

Wilson said he visits the shop most days to further the skill he learned years ago through classes in Missoula.

“It’s time consuming, isn’t it?” he said.

In another space in the woodshop, Lanny Burrill worked on polishing a practically overflowing drawer full of small wooden hearts. Twenty-five years ago, Burrill had a chunk of wood that he found pretty, so he carved it into a heart for his wife. She liked it, so he carved another. Then another.

He didn’t keep track of how many hearts he created from his home workshop, but since moving to Riverview nine years ago, Burrill estimates he’s made more than 22,000 hearts.

He uses his wooden hearts to create cairn-like sculptures, which he sells at events.

With kits John keeps in stock, residents can learn how to create pens, bowls, handles for ice cream scoops, back-scratchers and wooden puzzles. Many of these resident-made products will be on sale during Riverview’s Craft Fair and Holiday Bazaar on Nov. 23 in the rec room.

As a visitor, the amount of art mediums represented and artistic opportunities offered at Riverview is pleasantly overwhelming, but they add a lot of spirit to the community. And, according to Rossing, to the residents.

“Older people can disappear,” he said. “They can almost become non-human, old objects. There’s a lot of vibrancy, a lot of life here.”