Darcelle reveals himself.

Portland, Oregon's most celebrated drag queen has a new show called, 'Just call me Darcelle' that tells the story of the man behind the costumes. Playing to sold out crowds, this one man show covers Walter Cole's life from the shy, quiet boy to a drag queen in Portland's famous Darcelle XV Showplace.

It all started when Walter Cole opened a tavern in Portland and dared to dance. At the time, there was a law prohibiting entertainment and dancing in taverns. But Walter wanted his tavern to expand beyond beer and fist fights, so he and his partner put together a show that's still entertaining audiences with top quality songs, dancing and comedy.

For many years, Darcelle took center stage in anything connected with the show or tavern. Now, at 80, Walter Cole decided to come out of the closet and tell his story on stage. You can hear the whole story along with music and song, in a podcast interview on the Voices of Living Creatively website.

It's a positive journey from the voice of a man living a very creative life.

Keeping Portland Weird: A creative way to make a living.

According to two Portland business owners, being weird and living creatively are not only good for your life but good for business, too. Music Millennium owner, Terry Currier brought the saying "Keep Portland Weird" to the city and Impresa consulting firm owner, Joe Cortright say it makes perfect economic sense to keep Portland weird. It's these weird ideas that eventually lead to new ideas and innovation that create new business and a thriving new economy.

Many companies in the so-called new economy see a creative company culture as an important element of their success. One such company is Zappos.com, where CEO Tony Hsieh asks those who apply to the company, "How weird are you?" Zappos uses a weirdness gauge from 1 to 10 to hire new employees.

To find out how the weirdness scale works and how other companies are getting business by being weird, listen to the podcast on Voices of Living Creatively website at www.voicesoflivingcreatively.com

Staring at a blank wall inspires artist Gina Wilson to create an art mural.

Listen to an audio interview podcast on Voices of Living Creatively.

Chuck Wilson said to his wife one day, “I’m tired of looking at a blank wall. Would you be willing to paint a mural there?” Gina Wilson, award-winning fine artist, replied, “Sure.”

By the next day, Wilson, Beaverton Sub Station owner, had called the mayor, the arts commission and the owner of the building with the blank wall, Ickabod’s Tavern. Everyone thought the idea was wonderful, but there was a catch.

“It turns out that murals were under the laws of signage at the time and only a certain percentage of a business could be in signage,” explains Gina Wilson. There was a way around the law, a variance permit, but it could cost up to $3,600. Although Mayor Drake was willing to wave the variance, he suggested they wait. He wanted to change the law.

A year or so later, the law was changed designating murals as art instead of signage. The Beaverton Arts Commission formed a mural committee and Wilson submitted her design. Three months later, Gina was turning the blank wall on the back of Ickabod’s Tavern into an art mural for the City of Beaverton.

“Just me and my ladder,” said Gina. “There were a lot of people who were willing to help, but I’ve never made a mural that size before.” Gina learned on the job and it involved a lot more than just painting. “My husband power washed the wall. Bonnie, from Ickabod’s, painted the whole building so the surface was fresh paint for me. Once you have the idea, you grid it out and get it up there. Then, you kind of want to tweak the lines and move things a little bit here and there. The brown of the mural is actually the brown of the whole building. So although, I painted over the brown sometimes, because I’m moving lines around, most of the brown was already there, so it was really a matter of getting the lines in right and putting in the bits of color.”

The mural concept evolved out of Gina’s figurative abstract work as well as the site itself. The mural’s brown color reflected the color of the bank building next door. The four blue figures matched the number of the trees planted in front of the mural. The color purple, the only secondary color missing from the mural, will appear in the blooming bushes along the wall in the spring. “I looked at it as three different ways in which I dance with it. I’m really trying to make it interact with its environment,” Gina explained.

Decades ago, Gina and her husband, Chuck graduates of University of Illinois, packed up their truck and moved to Portland. Together, they’ve owned the Beaverton Sub Station, renovated an historic 1800 farmhouse and raised two daughters. “Mostly I’m enjoying life with my family, getting to know my children, helping Charles and working hard at my own craft and my own art,” Gina says.

Her art, family and community have come together before as you can see when you enter the deli. All along the side wall is a mural that started as a project for Gina’s two daughters and their friends, but now continues to evolve as customers come in and add pictures they’ve found. “It started about 12 years ago,” said Gina. “We’re still working on it and it’ll never end. It’s just fun and a real sense of community.”

The new mural for the city of Beaverton gave Gina another way to connect her art with her home town. “Anytime we interact in our community, we feel more like it belongs to us and that’s a really good feeling. I feel more involved and it’s empowering,” said Gina. “We really can change things. We thought we’d like a mural and in the process, laws got changed.”

The change that started with Chuck Wilson’s wish for a better view outside his window led to a beautiful new mural for the whole Beaverton community to enjoy. Gina hopes this means more art all around the city, “Hopefully there will be a lot more murals, now. I want to encourage people to work with the matching funds program and get other murals started.”

Helen Hollick pens a different path for the legend of Arthur.

Listen to an audio interview podcast at Voices of Living Creatively website.

”I was just so intrigued that he might have been real and that all of the stories of the knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Camelot and Lancelot were all just made up. But as soon as I realized that maybe there was a real Arthur, I became fascinated.”

Author Helen Hollick remembers the stories by Mary Stewart she read about Merlin and the young Arthur. But for Helen, it was something in the back of Stewart’s book that actually brought another sort of magic into her life. “The thing that intrigued me was her author’s notes which said if Arthur had been real, he would have lived around post Roman times,” explains Helen. “Now that really got me interested. Because I had never liked the stories that had placed him around Medieval times. When I read that, I thought, oh, I’ll check into that.”

That started Helen on a path leading her to write a trilogy of books about Arthur before and after he becomes king. The first book, The Kingmaking, was a down to earth portrayal of Arthur as the supposed bastard son who takes the throne and becomes king. The second book, Pendragon’s Banner covers the years between 459-465 A.D. and tells the tale of Arthur’s struggle with the power, politics and family strife. This book details the daily life of Arthur, Guinevere, their three children, servants and soldiers. Her take on the fighting among the family for control of the throne is just as believable as the battle scenes.

And begs the question, how did Helen Hollick write so richly of a past that may or may not have existed at all. The answer is some of it comes from extensive research and a diploma in Early Medieval History. Hollick says, “I looked into what facts we do know of that period, really researched post roman and early saxon, so in weaving in the real facts, that can make what we don’t know for sure to be more real. I looked into daily life. I looked into what kind of horses they would have had, harnesses, armor, and the buildings.”

Helen’s research also includes personal experiences as well. “I’ve actually been to all those places in the books, Glastonbury, visited Summerset, been to Scotland. It makes a great excuse for a holiday,” says Helen.

Some of the plot details, like the scene where Arthur’s young son falls into the river, come from her feelings and experiences as a mother. “We were actually on vacation camping by that very river,” Helen explains. “My own little girl was about 5. It had been raining, and we went down to look at the river. It was in flood, flowing very fast exactly as in that scene. I held my Cathy’s hand so very tight, because I had a vision of a child falling into the water. I pulled her back from the bank, told her to be careful and picked her up and held her. Then I went back to the camp and just wrote the scene down. It was very hard to write. I was in tears the whole time.”

And that wasn’t the only scene that was hard for Helen to write. The Battlefield scenes were a challenge as well. Helen says, “I have to say I don’t know how I manage to write the battle scenes. It really helps to be in a bad mood. It’s a really good way to get rid of angst, to write a battle scene.”

The battle scenes details aren’t the only thing that grabs you as a reader but it’s also the depth of Arthur’s feelings about the work a soldier must do. According to Helen, “When you read a story of battle it’s always made out to be a glorious thing, propaganda, of course, to get people to go out and fight. But you don’t think about the other side, people get killed, horses get hurt. This is the reality.”

The battle scene that begins Book Two, Pendragon’s Banner came after a long period of writer’s block. “I got to the point where I thought, if I don’t do something about this writer’s block, I’m not going to get this book finished,” explains Helen. “And I was determined to write the words, ‘the end’, even if I never got published. So I went along to a writer’s course and the teacher said, I want you to write down your feelings. I just wrote down the first word that came into my head. Before I knew it, I wrote the word, sword, then the word battle. And all of a sudden the whole battle scene just came into my head and I just sat and wrote. It was really funny because then the teacher said, ok, you can stop now and I said no way, I haven’t written for 6 months and if you think I’m going to stop now, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Even though Helen’s extensive historical research gives the scenes detail, it’s not what got her started writing. “I hated history when I was at school, absolutely hated it,” says Helen. “When I was 13, I was writing pony stories, because I really wanted a pony of my own and we couldn’t afford one. So I made one up.”

From then on, writing has been a life long passion. Even when her original publisher stopped printing her books, she got the copyright back and self-published them in the U.K. Then found a new home for her trilogy here in the United States with Sourcebooks. In addition to her Arthur trilogy, Helen Hollick has written a fantasy adventure series about pirates for fun and most recently, a movie script about the battle of Hastings called 1066.

“We hope to shoot in the UK but it will be on release in American as well,” Helen says. “We’re talking big blockbuster here. Fingers crossed, I’ve even got my dress.”

But whether or not her books or movies about Arthur, pirates or the battle of Hastings are a success, Helen would never stop writing.

“I’m always scribbling something down, even if I’m not working on a book. That short time when I heard that they weren’t going to publish my books, I was devastated,” says Helen. “I sobbed for 2 weeks. Then I pulled myself up and thought come on, it doesn’t mean you can’t publish your books.”

Helen Hollick advises everyone to follow their dreams, too. “Do it. Don’t think about it, go out and do it,” says Helen. “At least try, I feel that at least I tried and I’ve managed it. Ok, if my books don’t sell it doesn’t matter, at least I’ve done it. Rather than looking back in a few years time and thinking oh, I wish I’d done that. At least have a go, give it your best shot.”

Margie Lee: Following an intuitive path through art and life.

Listen to the podcast interview with Margie on the Voices of Living Creatively website.

“I have done a lot of different things, but I think that’s the way my art developed,” says Margie Lee. “It’s not just a straight path, that’s for sure.”


Margie Lee’s life path has led her across the country and Europe, and across the fields of geology, literature and art. Margie’s interest in art started in second grade when she tagged along to her older brother’s private art lessons, “I was very encouraged by my brother who was a painter. It was a very rich environment, all the teachers were from the college,” Margie explains. Her early schooling in Bellingham, Washington, was at the Campus School, a lab school associated with Western Washington University.

Margie’s interests grew to include math and science in high school and it was there her path took a turn that led her back to art. “I got kicked out of French class, and put in art which was horrible because all the weird kids were in that class,” Margie laughs. “But I started doing my sketching. I liked to draw figures and fashion illustration. The teacher noticed and said I think you should go into this…so I kept that in my mind.”

Fashion illustration was Margie’s first career choice, but with the advice of her mom, and her interest in science, she went to Western Washington University getting a BA in Geology but right after graduation her path took another turn. “I worked for one day, and I got fired,” says Margie. “So that weekend, some friends and I went to Carmel. It was so beautiful, and I wanted to know who lived here, and they said artists.” That’s when Margie realized, “I don’t think Geology is for me. I think I’d better go into art.
So I started that path.”

Seeing her figure drawing and painting as characters, someone suggested she look into working in costume design. Since there were only a few places in San Francisco that hired costume designers, she took another suggestion and headed across the country getting a job working as a wardrobe mistress in New York. It was there, resident playwright Lanford Wilson, asked her to do the graphics for the theater. That’s when Margie started taking classes at The Art Students League.

“I studied printmaking,” says Margie. “Then I met an artist named Ari and he said why don’t you try oil. I was very frightened of oil but I tried it and I just got hooked on oil painting.” Her classes didn’t lead her to graphic design for the theater, but into the fine art world instead. Margie describes her path, “I had a few exhibits in New York, went back to Bellingham and had some more exhibits, then I won a Purchase Prize at the Anacortes Art Festival and I used that to go to Europe.”

Margie went back to New York after Europe and met her husband, a writer. From there, they went to San Diego, where Margie painted and her husband wrote a book. A move to Boston led her back to college, this time to study another love, literature. After getting her masters in English and American Literature from Harvard, Margie started writing. Making art and writing was a balancing act according to Margie, “It’s hard to do both. Because, all this time I’m doing different jobs to make a living, I could not possibly do both. When I say balance, I mean I’ll do writing for 4 years and art for 3 years.”

Margie’s worked at a variety of jobs over the years including UPS loader, telephone survey researcher, fish cleaner, Burger King cashier and bookstore clerk. But it was her last job that finally allowed her to combine her unique skills. Working at the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Margie did graphics and art. “I did a lot of charts and maps,” explains Margie. “I mainly wanted to do illustrations for the features section. My art was being used, not in fashion illustration but in this character study way. I did it all from memory and on photo shop. I get them all out of my head, my imagination. You have to have an imagination for that, that’s why they want an artist because the artist can do something they can’t get from a photograph.”

Describing her painting process Margie says, “I start with a blank piece of paper or canvas. I just start putting paint on it, sometimes I have an idea in my mind and sometimes I’m just putting paint on it. I’ll see what’s on the canvas. If I see something exciting, I’ll just go with it.”

It’s her intuition and imagination that fuels her creative process now more than ever. Whether it’s writing poetry, creative non-fiction, painting or her newest passion, video, Margie is involved in characters, words and stories.

This year in addition to being on the Portland Open Studios Tour, Margie is on the board and produced a video about other Portland Open Studios artists. As she learned about how other artists work, she learned more about her own work as well, “It’s just amazing what these artists have in their backgrounds. You’re going into a studio with someone who’s practically spent their whole life on something and what a wealth of information. I was just amazed at the biographies and process.”


While filming artist Bill Park painting, Margie recalls he said, “And now, it’s getting really ugly and that’s just where I want to be.” Margie agrees, “That’s just the perfect point to be in art, to be creative, when you’ve just lost everything and you have nothing more to lose.”

Margie’s never at a loss for work these days, dividing her time between her solo studio work, Five Windows Studio, her poetry and creative non-fiction groups, video work and Portland Open Studios. Margie’s life and art have taken many turns along the way but there is a common thread to her intuitive path, “There are just so many projects that I want to do. As an artist, my number one thing is experimentation and always something new.”

From the past to the future: Beaverton’s new mural celebrates youth and hope.

Listen to the podcast with Hector Hernandez at Voices of Living Creatively

“My intention is not to portray a beautiful world, my intention is to portray a world that is real but we can overcome problems,” says Hector Hernandez, mural artist.

Working with 15 students from Merlo Station High School, Hector Hernandez, created a mural concept that spans the solar system, early Beaverton, the threat of global warming and technological development to a hopeful resolution for the future generation and their children. This new mural combined new technology with traditional mural methods that Hernandez learned growing up in Mexico.

As a child in Mexico, Hector remembers he was always drawing and painting, “My first memories were of painting the walls, painting the street, the images of the trains, the landscape around me of the city.” Hector says, “I knew that I cannot be detached from art.” So while he was completing his degree in social anthropology, he worked for a Mexican mural artist. This art experience led him to study drawing and painting at San Carlos in Mexico City, art history and culture in Japan. Hector has degrees from Oregon State University and University of Oregon where he completed his Masters of Fine Art in 1999.

After all his study, it’s murals that still capture his artistic passion. “We need to express something, so for me I’m following the Mexican tradition,” says Hector. “Mural painting is the most unselfish work of art expression because it is public and therefore for everybody to see. I think that is very important.”

And he feels that his study of social anthropology has added a dimension to his mural work. “Anthropology was a very good way to learn about social issues, and culture and that is also reflected in my murals.” He wants his murals to bring messages to the people in the community. “For me, an artist is more like an activist,” explains Hector, “who is involved in many areas, in research, in the artistic creation, in the exploration and also the use of new materials and new techniques.”

Hector combined teaching traditional art techniques with the latest technology, but the center of his work with Merlo Station High School students was the mural itself. According to Hernandez, “Murals are an excellent teaching tool. Not only in the message, but also because it involves the cooperation of people for the implementation and organization of the mural. I will provide those tools for them to learn how to paint and create for a new generation.”

The 13 by 80 foot mural located at the intersection of S.W. Farmington Road and S.W. Watson in Beaverton has a powerful message of the dangers of global warming in our technological society and the hopes for future generations.

Hernandez explains how the elements of color, figures of youth and flower symbols tell a story of moving from darkness into the light. “The universe and solar flare represent this threat, the elements of technology, the motherboard, the circuit board, intertwined with the butterflies, if we use technology in a wise way, we will intertwine our interests with the interests of nature. The students follow the butterflies, and encounter again our path to nature represented by the flowers.” The Lotus flower represents emerging from difficulties, the Peony symbolizes wealth and well-being and the Sunflower completes the cycle of overcoming the problems and emerging into the light with energy and strength.

This hope is not just for the future and our children but the future of public art as well. Many cities once banned murals out of a fear that it would increase graffiti and tagging. But studies in California and Philadelphia proved just the opposite. Hernandez says, “Basically the more murals you have the less graffiti you have, especially tagging.”

Hernandez hopes that these studies and the new public art regulations will mean more art for the enjoyment of everyone. ““I hope that we’ll have more pieces of artwork and community artists in the cities around the country in general. We need more public art to reflect the spirit the identity and character of the people there.”

But what means the most to Hector is being able to share his vision and work together with students, teachers, arts organizations and the citizens of Beaverton. “Even if you did not have a good idea about my vision, you had faith in me and that was really touching,” says Hernandez.

Jan vonBergen: Building On Cultural Influences.

Listen to the podcast interview at www.voicesoflivingcreatively.com

Jan’s interest in art started in her childhood at the family dinner table where ethnic dishes were served up with side discussions of the culture, textiles and art from around the world. She remembers delicious curry dishes, her mother’s beautiful sari, and a home filled with exotic smells, artifacts and furniture. These early influences are the building blocks for her kimono inspired prints and organic ceramic vessels that you can see as part of Portland Open Studios Tour.

Jan explains, “It was all based on food, their way of showing us the culture was through the food, beautiful fabrics, clothing, some of the customs. They would make these curry dinners and that’s how we celebrated these cultures. And my parents would go to auction houses and they collected a lot of their furniture, some of it was Asian table fabrics and kimonos. And my grandparents house, too, was filled with antiques.”

It was her artistic grandmother who fueled Jan’s early art training teaching her to sew, knit, paint and make wreaths. From there Jan took Saturday art classes at Marylhurst and the Portland Art Museum, moving on to college at the Museum Art School, where she majored in ceramic sculpture and minored in print making. These two diverse media are still a major focus for her today.

Whether it’s one of Jan’s Asian-inspired kimono prints or her organic, ceramic vessels, there’s always a combination of line, color, texture and form. According to Jan, “Along with my training as a sculptor, I was also a calligrapher. Calligraphy, sculpture and printmaking, those three are my favorite things.” And although these might seem like very different media, to Jan, they both involve building.

Says Jan, “To me they’re very close. Print making is more immediate, you have an idea and try it. With ceramics, you throw it, bisque it, glaze, fire it so I’ve got two weeks before I can see it. So it’s not as immediate but I do love making it.”

With the vessels, Jan starts with a formal shape adding calligraphic marks in the clay, much like printing, then makes tiny, organic, sculptural shapes to form the lids.

To build a print, Jan might start by taking a picture of a swirl image in the road. Using that as a base to make a copper plate, she adds bits of her hand-painted Sumi papers, stamps from garage sale envelopes or ethnic ceremonial papers piecing together her image. Then, she might cut the plate into smaller, more abstract shapes before she runs it through her printing press.

Jan explains, “I like that building. I can take the plate and cut it up, glue stuff down, add whatever and build this thing. Then I ink it and it has all this texture.”

While the mediums might be very different, the connections in Jan’s art and life are easy to see when you tour her home with its multi-ethnic furniture, sculpture and garden tea-house. Sitting in the tea house, Jan reflected on how her passion for art led her to teaching which in turn, taught her even more.

“Teaching those students was where my learning began, because they taught me so much. They taught me patience. How to really think about what I’m really doing because I had to verbalize it for them. And they would share an idea and I would think, gosh, I never would have thought about it that way. It’s another point of view and another vision that you get in that time and space to be part of …I can’t think of any other profession that you get to do that in, to join that young person in that part of their creativity,” Jan said.

As a Fulbright scholar, Jan went to Japan five years ago and taught lessons in Italic calligraphy, book binding and drawing. Now retired, she was a beloved art teacher for many years at Arts & Communication and Southridge High School in Beaverton.

You can visit Jan and see her at work in her studio October 10, 11 and 17, 18 as part of the Portland Open Studios Tour. Tour Guides with tickets are available at Art Media, New Seasons and other outlets listed at www.portlandopenstudios.com