Amanda Hanson sits on the bench she painted as part of the Chehalis Community Renaissance Team’s efforts to beautify Market Street. Hanson is a freelance illustrator.
Chehalis residents with reason to walk down Market Street have likely seen at least one of the three benches on the sidewalk that provide shots of color and scenery on an otherwise gray backdrop.
Those benches — located outside Book ’N’ Brush, Chehalis Coworks and in front of the Southwest Washington Dance Center — were painted by artists with local ties as part of continuing efforts by the Chehalis Community Renaissance Team to beautify downtown.
Annalee Tobey, Executive Director of the CCRT, said the group is involved in multiple efforts to add color to the downtown area.
“We wanted to engage our artist community,” Tobey said. “We’re working on another project right now to paint garbage can lids. Anything we can do to add a touch of color and share the unique personality of the community.”
The three artists selected to paint a bench — Karen Betts, Amanda Hanson and Suzanne Norman — all came with unique connections to the Chehalis area.
Norman only recently moved to Toledo and works in Chehalis as a behavioral health specialist. She briefly pursued an art education at Lower Columbia College in the late 1990’s, but dropped it in favor of psychology.
Fast forward a dozen years, and Norman starts watching videos on Youtube of people making art with spray paint. She quickly picked up a can and won awards for her work at three consecutive art festivals in Longview.
Norman has since taught herself to paint with oil-based and acrylic paints, but used spray paint to impart images of Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier onto her bench.
“I didn’t want to chance it on this project,” Norman said. “I know how it’s going to act and what it’s going to do. It’s expressive and it’s been an art form that I’ve loved. I want people to enjoy it, look at it, and hopefully it brightens their day.”
Creating eye-catching art is something Karen Betts has been doing for about three decades in both Chehalis and Centralia.
Betts, whose bench featuring salmon and a canoe sits outside the Chehalis Coworks building, has painted many signs and windows in the area with both temporary designs, like a Christmas display, and with permanence in mind.
She studied illustration at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and has been involved with numerous art installations during her adult life while also running Gaean Allusions Pottery in Chehalis with her husband Godfrey.
“I’m used to doing art that’s functional, so it’s nice to take it to that level of something people can use,” Betts said. “I think it’s awesome to have art that’s useful.”
Her bench features a silhouette of Native Americans in a canoe with salmon swimming nearby. Wanting to remind people that “Chehalis is not just a city, it’s also a river and a tribe,” Betts painted the canoe in the style of the Chinook tribe, but made the people inside it representative of the Chehalis people.
Amanda Hanson also wanted her bench to have a local flair.
A graduate of Onalaska High School, she earned an art degree at Central Washington University before starting her creative career working for the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.
Hanson is a freelance illustrator, mostly geared toward children, and an after-school art instructor for programs in Lewis and Thurston counties. She painted the bench outside the dance center that features wildlife native to the area.
“I’ve done projects similar to this, so when I saw that Chehalis was doing something like what I’ve done in the past, I wanted to give it a try,” Hanson said.
The benches will remain in their current locations for the time being, though members of the public may have the chance to claim ownership at some point down the road.
Plans initially called for them to be auctioned off later this month during ChehalisFest, but the CCRT chose to leave them be for now. Tobey said the benches may go on the auction block during the Harvest Swap Meet in September.
