Karen Wallaert, the featured artist in the front windows of the Corner Gallery for the month of December, is a long-time artist with a lifetime of experience teaching art in our local schools. Now retired from her job as a Teacher’s Assistant at Nokomis School, she says she is delighted to have enough time and energy to focus on creating art, instead of feeling done for the day when she got home from work. 

This is Karen’s first time showing her work at the Corner Gallery, though she has been in many other galleries over the past years. She has played with a variety of media, including ceramics and jewelry made of ceramic, in addition to painting. And for ten years after her retirement she taught art in after-school programs at both Nokomis and Oak Manor Schools. When Karen was very young she worked as a professional seamstress- making dresses, men’s suits and doing clothing alterations. She even knitted,  but says emphatically, “I’m glad that’s all over.”

“This show will be mostly my current work in oils and acrylics,” Karen says. “It has no theme, and will include a wide variety of subjects- still lifes, animals, and abstracts. Whenever I get bored I do something different.”

Another aspect of Karen’s show will be seven or eight pieces done by a young student of hers. Karen describes Mia Cortina as her prodigy, who comes to do art with her on a weekly basis. “Mia is basically performing at high school level or above in all subjects, even though she is only in the seventh grade,” Karen explains. “We work together to have fun and experiment with art… if Mia likes the assignments I give her she does them, or if she’s not interested we figure out something else to do.”

Karen continues. “I’ve taught a few other groups of kids since retirement. I want to teach them that art is accessible, because as an adult I’ve had so many people say kind of wistfully “I wish I could do art. But I believe that everyone is an artist. It’s just a way of expressing the unique parts of yourself. You can do whatever you feel like doing. That’s what I love about working with Mia- She always surprises me. She does stuff that I never would have thought of.”

The First Friday opening celebration for Karen and Mia’s show will be on December 5 from 5-8pm. Live vocal and guitar music will be presented throughout the evening by Char Jacobs and Chris Gibson. The Corner Gallery is located at 201 S State street in Ukiah.