The gallery’s new Young Artist is Patience MakePeace Gruey, who was raised and home schooled in Covelo. Homeless with her mother for the past seven years, she is now housed in Ukiah and attending Mendocino College, where she is taking a heavy load of mostly art-related classes.

“I've been making art all my life,” says Gruey, “just about since I could hold a crayon. My family, and especially my mother, are all artistic and my home was always a place of creativity even when we were living in a tent where there wasn’t enough light to see what color we were painting with.” 

When asked about what medium she likes best, Gruey waxed eloquent. “My very favorite medium is colored pencils,” she began. “It's super fun to play around with the colors and they can be so nice and soft, or super hard and clear. Then, there’s the Ticonderoga pencil. I love sketching faces with those and smudging the lines for the shadows. And then acrylic is my favorite medium for painting… it's so forgiving since after it dries I can go back over it with another color as much as I want till it's just right. I want to try oils eventually when I have a real studio. And I would like to do more with watercolor but generally I get too impatient and ruin it. I also love working with clay and am so happy with my class at the college, where I finally get to work with real clay that is going to be fired and glazed and everything. Oh… and I also love paper machè, I've done a bit with that but have lots of ideas and plans to do more.”

Gruey’s plans for her future are to become a college level art teacher, write books and make lots of art, plus to put on plays and make movies (mostly stop motion but also just beautiful animation) of her stories. “I want to start my family as soon as possible,” she says, “and to live a very enriching life and do as much good in the world as I can.”