Page 22 - April 2016

local characTer
A Love LeTTer To The verde vALLey
The paintings of Ellen Jo Roberts are featured this month STory By
at the Old Town Frame Company in Old Town Cottonwood.
clair anna rose
First impressions do tend to stick — a painter, an instant film enthusiast and writer — Ellen Jo Roberts is not someone easily forgotten. The first time I met Ms. Roberts she had a folding bellows Polaroid Land Camera and it was like being transported back in time to have her gather us all into a tight group as the camera spat out a sheet of film and developed as we talked. A few years later when the word arrives she will be displaying a collection of new paintings this April, I enthusiastically drive to Cottonwood for the day to meet with the artist where she’ll be displaying her art — at the Old Town Frame Company, owned by Nancy and Trevor Gottschalk.
The painter is hoping to have 44 new works done (in celebration of her 44th whirl around the sun) in time for the opening during Cottonwood’s second saturday Artwalk. At the time we meet a spread of 19 paintings awaits me. “Local Character” is a collection of all things Clarkdale, Cottonwood and Jerome, and encapsulates the small-town charm.
In Chicago, Ms. Roberts grew up attending public school and creating art from a young age. she first fell in love with northern Arizona while on a spring Break vacation when she was in college. she and her boyfriend (now husband) traveled to Flagstaff and within a year they had relocated there. They lived in Flagstaff for a few years before moving to Jerome, and in 2001 they moved from their perch on Mingus Mountain to the town of Clarkdale, nestled between Jerome and Cottonwood.
The artist herself is a“local character.” she has dubbed her living room“The Clarkdale Camera Museum,” because of her abundant and eclectic camera collection. One of her analogue cameras of choice, the Polaroid Land Camera, is an item she makes a habit of carrying with her as she goes about the day. “People see you with old cameras and it’s always a good conversation- starter. I could be totally invisible somewhere until I take out this camera,” she says, pointing to a portrait of a Polaroid Land camera. “People want to talk to you about it. ‘what is that? An old Polaroid? Oh, my gosh! My grandpa had that.’ I’ll walk my dogs and I’ll carry my weird old cameras around — people start to know you’re into these old cameras.”
After a while people would start asking if she wanted their “out-dated” analogue cameras. “One of my friends gave me this old Polaroid she had in the ‘70s in high school — so I just started
collecting cameras and some of them, the really cool ones, I’ll put on display at my house.” “I’m into vintage cameras and actually utilizing them, actually taking pictures with them, and people give them to me,” Ms. Roberts explains. “I’ve amassed quite a collection because people
don’t use them any more, but they don’t want to discard them.”
Due to film labs closing in the area, Ms. Roberts either sends her photos out to companies
that still process film, or more often, shoots with instant film. “I shoot mostly instant film now because it’s just more fun — there’s a little bit of extra magic,” she says. “It has a warmth to it. It has something that’s more human for us than digital. The film glosses over some imperfections too, I think, whereas digital is harsh reality. It’s the same with music too. It’s ironic the internet kind of saved a lot of analog technology.”
Ms. Roberts doesn’t refer to herself as a photographer, instead she calls herself a “shutterbug.” “I’m into documenting things — the world around us, because somebody told me once, ‘Any photo you can take has already been taken. But what you can do is document the place where you live in a way other people might not ever do.’ The little details of small-town life is what I’m really interested in. I think there’s a lot of local character in our area,” Ms. Roberts says of her
town and surrounding Cottonwood and Jerome.
The paintings themselves seem almost like a collection of snapshots, and continue with the
theme of documenting the small town life. The artist describes her show as “a love letter to the Verde Valley.” One painting, Arizona Campout, is a panoramic view of a vintage camper parked alongside a bend in the Verde River in an area known locally as Box Canyon. The color scheme in this painting, and many of the others in the show, recalls the colors of 1950s Rodeo dishes:
teal, bright yellow, coral, Robin’s egg Blue, and light green tie the paintings together into a colorful and playful body of work.
A bright yellow Vw Karmann Ghia is spotlighted in one of the paintings, and I recognize it as the beauty parked on the street, which caught my eye when I rolled into town (“That’s yours?”). Other paintings in the series show an obvious love for the almost-lost wonders of a bygone era
— Land cameras and record players, a Vw bus and a coin-operated horse ride.
some subjects pique my curiosity — more than one painting by Ms. Roberts features donkeys — a part of Cottonwood and Clarkdale’s local character some locals may know about.
In the early days of Cottonwood a donkey would mosey through the town by the name of ned. Decades later, once again there are wandering donkeys, and every now and then they appear at the painter’s property, or can be spotted roaming Clarkdale.
“They just show up,” Ms. Roberts says of the donkeys. “There have been times when I’ve opened my front door and let my dogs out in the morning and the donkeys are all lined up outside my fence, or we’ll just see them at random, and they kind of cause a traffic jam sometimes. when I work at Verde Canyon Railroad they’ll show up there, and when the train comes back all the tourists are out there taking pictures of them.” she further describes her wandering subjects as friendly, “They live on a ranch, but they escape sometimes when there’s a gate that’s left open and they’ll just wander around Clarkdale. It’s become a bit of a thing — there’s a hashtag and everything for them now!”
By the time the show goes up, Ms. Roberts hopes to add some more paintings of sedona and Cottonwood scenes, and vehicles she has in mind. “I’d like to do pictures of some more things that say something about this area,” she says. “I think the river is a big aspect of where we live too. where we live is so interesting because we’re in a transition zone between the sonoran Desert and the High Alpine, which makes this scenery so dramatic, amazing and special. It’s a very rare kind of landscape here, which is inspiring all the time. we spend a lot of time on the Verde River; we have inflatable kayaks and go rafting. It’s just a celebration of this place where we live.”
Through her body of work Ms. Roberts hopes to honor and acknowledge not only the current culture, but also the previous cultures which used to thrive in the area. while painting the scenes, animals and icons of the area, the artist has been able to view her town with the eyes of a newcomer. “You see it from a different perspective again, or are reminded of when you first came here. One of my cousins was here and we were just walking to the Clarkdale Post Office and back down to my house, and he said, ‘You get to look at this view every day, oh my God!’ And I thought, oh yeah, I’m pretty lucky — sycamore Canyon is right there and it’s just beautiful. with small-town life you can really have your eyes open to the details a little more, because there’s less coming at you.”
The “Local Character” opening is also an open house for Cottonwood Mayoral candidate Tim Elinski. “He’s a good friend of mine, I’ve known him for twelve years or so,” says Ms. Roberts. “we thought it would be fun to tie in some of the paintings with Tim and his interests.” One
painting features Mr. elinski’s dog, while another is of the record player Ms. Roberts bought off him at a yard sale.
“Local Character” opens with a reception at the Old Town Frame Company, 1028 n. Main street Cottonwood, on saturday April 9 during the second saturday Artwalk. There will be wine and hors d’oeuvres, and THAT Brewery will be providing samples of their beers, while Steve Easterline performs live music. OldTownFrameCompany.com 928/634-6311
| Clair Anna rose has her ticket to the Clarkdale Camera museum.
clairannarose@thenoise.us
22 • APRIL 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us