Creative Spirits Gallery
The goal of the WLLC Creative Spirits Gallery is to support emerging and established artists and give their works exposure. The gallery exhibits works by area professional artists with opportunities for amateur artists as well. The gallery team seeks to create collaborations among the artists and between the artists and the community.
The gallery has two main exhibition walls, each approximately 15 feet long and 8 feet tall. In addition to this space, two of our sanctuary’s walls serve as exhibiting walls, each approximately 8 feet tall and 40 feet long. There is also a niche gallery space called “Little Spirits” that can hold 2 large or up to 20 small pieces. Glass art can be displayed in natural light and fabric art hanged on poles or with clips. Artists also have brought in their own cabinets for display of jewelry and other 3D pieces.
Artists Currently on Display in the Gallery
Rose West
My first real, stop-dead-in-your-tracks art experience happened at age eleven. My grade school had bussed us to the art museum in Winnipeg, Canada, where I grew up. We were being herded from one room to the next when a painting just stunned me. It was a self-portrait of a man in a yellow straw hat. I stopped dead in my tracks and sat down on the floor as my classmates filed past me. It was a Vincent Van Gogh self-portrait.
The colors just danced across his face, the yellow straw of his hat, and into the background. Oh, my, I was in awe. Becoming an artist was not my path. My last art class was in 7th grade. After retirement, I rediscovered the magic of art when I opened a Christmas gift of watercolor pencils.
Books from my library were my first choice for learning. I quickly realized I needed classes in person. I met teachers and artists in a community of
which I knew little. I started in watercolor; explored acrylics, mixed media, and oil & cold wax. I was encouraged to enter juried shows; started on the local level, then state, and finally on the regional stage. My proudest award is my People’s Choice Award.
A recent award-winning painting, ”Mind the Gap” has been published in the 2020 Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff Annual Catalog, Selection of Community Artists. I received the Bronze Award at the Watercolor Society of Oregon and achieved Signature status at their Fall 2023 convention. In 2025, I received my signature status in the Northwest Watercolor Society.
Jenny Read Stout
I am interested in the relationships between space, place, and memory. Growing up in 1990’s suburban San Diego, my childhood as a military dependent was often shaped by transience and living in-between. Because of this ethos of impermanence, eternal things such as memory, family, and resourcefulness were strong values that eventually became resonant themes in my art.
This body of work is a practice driven by process and subject. Using elements of traditional botanical illustration as a grounding point, I contemplated the symbolism of each inflorescence and how the meaning is changed or altered when juxtaposed with its surrounding elements. The maps, sheet music, and other ephemera I incorporated as texture are outdated, thrifted, or otherwise discarded. Their identifying elements disappear or reappear between layers of paint and pencil, sometimes rendering them incomprehensible—like an attempt to make tangible the fleeting space between memory and dream.
Currently, I am an MFA candidate in Visual Arts at Clark University in Worcester, MA (expected 2027). I also teach community education courses at PCC Sylvania. I hold a Master of Arts in Teaching (Museum Education Program) from The George Washington University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Art with Emphasis in Painting and Printmaking from San Diego State University. I have also studied Children’s Book Illustration at University of California San Diego and Botanical Illustration with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. I live in West Linn with my family.
Ann Truax
Ann Truax first started making block prints (linoleum and woodcuts) in the late 1980’s. The block printing process requires precision, planning and commitment. Pulling a print off the press for the first time is exciting. Sometimes the results are happy ones, other times not so much.
Ann usually plans a block print by doing several colored pencil drawings. Sometimes she works with a single block in black and white. In other cases, she uses the reduction block approach, a processs in which, with each successive color, part of the block is carved away.
In more recent years, Ann has branched out into doing monoprints, a more forgiving, spontaneous technique, which has led to further exploration of combining elements of mono prints, block printing and collage. The possibilities are endless.
As a grandmother and retired ESL teacher with Portland Public Schools, she is often drawn to images that focus on children. She is concerned about the uncertain future we are passing on to them, and her work often expresses that apprehension. Likewise, as a confirmed lover of the outdoors, she worries about the climactic changes happening to our precious landscapes, and sometimes her work speaks to the environmental dangers we are now facing.
Above all, color, shape, pattern and gesture are important parts of her work. For several years, Ann has been a member of Print Arts Northwest and has participated in numerous group show with that organization.
Past Artists
