(Joan Sheets)
If your elementary school child has enjoyed an art project in a Redmond School District school, there is a good chance that Joan Sheets was the driving force behind it.
When Joan and husband Don Sheets, a noted woodworker, moved to Eagle Crest in 2008, they learned that there was no money in the Redmond School District budget for art education at the elementary level. As a retired art teacher, Joan took that as a challenge. She co-founded Art on the River in Eagle Crest and gave a percentage of the sales and raffle proceeds to the Redmond schools to use for art education. Art on the River was successful and ongoing up until the pandemic.
Since 2020, she has focused her energies toward the same goal through her work with Dry Canyon Arts Association (DCAA), where she serves as Education Chair. With Joan’s guidance, DCAA has been able to place art education projects in several Redmond area schools. DCAA’s art education goals are much more ambitious this year. They plan to collect enough funds through grants and donations to put art education into every Redmond elementary school. DCAA calls this new program Jumpstart Art and Joan believes you will hear a lot more about it during the upcoming school year.
Joan knows from experience the value of early education. She was drawing, painting and even creating displays for department stores at an early age. Her early exposure to art won her a scholarship to the University of Oregon. She later graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in art education and went on to earn her Masters of Teaching from Lewis and Clark College.
Joan has taught at institutions as diverse as Corvallis Senior High School, Lane Community College, Mt. Sylvan Community Adult Education program, and Thomas Edison High School for different learners, all while working on her own art in her Portland studio. While in Portland, she was represented by several galleries in Portland and Seattle.
When she is not busy securing education opportunities for Redmond elementary children, she works out of her Eagle Crest studio. She says it is separate enough from the house that it makes a “perfect, happy place to create.” Meanwhile, her husband Don works away in the woodworking shop he built off of the garage. “We are both in heaven when we are working there.”
Although Joan’s portfolio includes many works of art for your walls, her later work is meant to enhance your neck: silk scarves hand painted with scenes of birds, animals, and Oregon landscapes. She finds immense pleasure in watching the colorful dyes react with the 100% Habotai silk and creating something both useful and beautiful.
If you think that one person can’t make a difference in the lives of children, just spend a day with Joan. She may have something in common with another woman who embarked on a mission to make a difference. “One of my high school students once sarcastically asked me, ‘Who do you think you are anyway, Joan of Art?’ I laughed and it stuck with the whole school so I have been Joan of Art ever since.”
The public is invited to meet “Joan of Art” at a reception in her honor at Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realtors in Downtown Redmond during September’s First Friday Art Walk, September 6, between 5-8pm. Joan’s art will be installed at Sotheby’s for the month of September and she will be on hand with a selection of her scarves. Her husband, Don Sheets, will bring some of his custom wood works to display. Hors d’oeuvres and beverages will be served.