Editor's note: This article was edited at 9:35 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 23 to correct the names of the people who recieved the portrait from the artist and subsequently donated the portrait to Centralia College.
When a Centralia College board member asked artist Karla Bailey to attend a special event in the room on campus named after her aunt and uncle, Rose and Leon Bowman, she certainly didn’t expect the event to be an unveiling ceremony for a portrait she completed of her aunt and uncle for their memorial service.
“This whole thing was a complete ambush. I just came up to visit and go to whatever was going on in the Bowman room,” said Bailey, who was visiting from Wisconsin this week. “But it was very sweet, and I’m super honored to even have my name up next to my aunt and uncle because they were just amazing people.”
Rose and Leon Bowman moved to the Twin Cities in 1965 and became integral parts of the community, volunteering in Chehalis Rotary and dedicating their time to community service projects.
Rose Bowman died in 2017, and Leon Bowman died in 2021.
“Few families have given more time, energy and love to this community,” Centralia College states in a plaque that was hung up in the Bowman Rotary Banquet Room in the TransAlta Commons at the college.
Bailey, who specializes in graphite pencil hyper-realism and optical illusions, in addition to portraits and landscapes, created individual portraits of her aunt and uncle after each of them died and then did a joint portrait of them together for a memorial service after Leon Bowman died, she said.
After the memorial, Bailey gifted the portrait to friends Becky and Larry McGee “because they were Aunt Rose and Uncle Leon’s dear friends, and they were dear to me, too,” she said.
Becky and Larry McGee subsequently donated the portrait to Centralia College.
Centralia College unveiled the portrait in its new home at the entrance to the Bowman Rotary Banquet Room during the invite-only event on Monday, Oct. 16.
