The Art of Jill Ingram and Monica Stobie

These Dayton artists sell their work world-wide and are helping to make Dayton an up-and-coming "Art Town".

Story by Ken Graham
Photos Courtesy of the Artists

For many years Dayton had an Art Club. At one time several of its members displayed their work in a place called the "Peapod Gallery", which was in a small house on West Main Street. One of the Art Club's most active members was Iola Bramhall, who was (and still is) an oil painter. Her still life paintings and landscapes are well-known throughout the county.

In those days Iola often brought her young daughter, Jill, to club gatherings. "They always stuck me in a corner and gave me a piece of paper and a pencil and told me to be quiet," says Jill Ingram, now an accomplished Dayton artist in her own right. "It made me happy because I loved to draw, even back then."

Once, in her third-grade class, young Jill was given an assignment to decorate the class bulletin board. Her teacher was so impressed with the result that she declared: "You're an artist!" "I've been trying to live up to that ever since," Ingram now says.

Ingram is a 1970 graduate of Dayton High School and attended Eastern Washington and Seattle Pacific Universities, taking mostly art classes. She moved back to Dayton after college and married a local boy named Dick Ingram. The Ingrams have a grown son and daughter and have recently built a new home on the Ingram family farm, where they live along with Iola.

Ingram tried many different media as her art hobby progressed, including oils, acrylics and watercolors. She settled on watercolor as her main art medium, "because I needed something that was easy to clean up," she says.

Up until 1989, art was just a hobby for Ingram. But that year, the Ingram's daughter Jessica needed heart surgery. Besides spending a lot of time in Spokane with Jessica, Jill Ingram turned to her art as a way of coping with a difficult time. "I needed an outlet," she says now. "I did a lot of painting during those months." Jessica's surgery turned out also to be a turning point for Ingram's art career.

A year or so after Jessica's surgery, the Ingrams were visited by a medical researcher from Seattle who was interested in buying some of the pigs they raised. "After Jessica's surgery we really appreciated the value of this kind of research," says Ingram. During his visit, their visitor fell in love with Ingram's artwork. He gave her the phone number of a friend who owned an art gallery in Seattle's Pioneer Square called "The Prints and the Pauper". "He said ‘call them', and I did," says Ingram. Her work showed there for several years, and it sold well. "I also received a lot of commission work through the gallery," says Ingram. Since that time, she has also sold her work through a gallery in Spokane and through the Brickstone Gallery in Walla Walla. "People all over the world have my art now," she says. "It's very exciting." Ingram says that clients from Europe and China have bought or commissioned her work.

"I do a lot of portraits," says Ingram. "Especially in my commission work." Ingram says that she is often hired to paint people and buildings. "There is a lot of similarity between painting someone's face and their home. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's true." Among her many subjects, Ingram has produced more than a dozen watercolor paintings of both the Dayton Historic Depot and the renovated Columbia County Courthouse.

In 2003, Ingram rented part of the former Weinhard Café space in the Weinhard Hotel and opened her own gallery, Jill Ingram Watercolors. She also now shows at a gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

In 2006 Ingram submitted a piece called "Ruby Slippers" to the Northwest Watercolor Society's annual show in Seattle. Out of over 700 artists who entered, Ingram won the top prize for the best work of art in the show. "It was such a great honor," she says. "That really motivated me to move my career forward."

Monica Stobie's grandmother was also a watercolor artist. "When I was about four or five I'd watch her paint, and then she'd let me try it," she says. "I always knew that was what I wanted to do." One day Stobie's second-grade class was given an assignment to color in a drawing of a robin. "I was the only one who gave the drawing female coloring," she says. "The teacher told the class that that showed I had outstanding creativity. It gave a huge boost to my self-confidence as an artist. And I've been painting birds ever since."

Stobie grew up on an orchard near Yakima. She attended Eastern Washington University and became a teacher. "My art professors told me that only two percent of artists make a living at it," she says. "And most of them live in New York or LA. So I got a teaching degree." Stobie taught Junior High School art in Walla Walla and Milton Freewater for about 15 years. But her dream was always to make her living as an artist.

Stobie paints using pastels. One of her favorite subjects is rock art, also known as petroglyphs. She recreates them in vivid colors on a special rough-textured Mexican bark paper, which she fringes around the edges. The paper gives her work a "pre-historic" quality that fits her subject matter perfectly.

Stobie's interest in petroglyphs goes back to a trip she took in the late 1980s to Hell's Canyon where she saw a rock art site at "Buffalo Eddy". "From that point on, I was hooked," she says. A couple of years later she joined a group that traveled to the Four Corners area of Arizona and New Mexico to study and catalog ancient images at Navajo sites there. She has since toured petroglyph sites throughout the western U.S and parts of Europe. "I try to take a trip every year to a new rock art site," she says.

Prior to pursuing studio art full time, Stobie took a three-day seminar on marketing for artists. "I learned a lot about what art galleries and art buyers are looking for," she says. "They told us we needed to find our own unique look and stick with that. I already had that with the bark paper and the petroglyphs" she says. Stobie also learned that tourist towns were often the best art markets.

After the seminar, Stobie worked up the courage to load some of her work into her van and drive down to Joseph, Oregon. "Joseph has a lot of galleries, so I went into one and showed them some of my work." The gallery agreed to try three of her pieces, and they sold right away. "The woman I originally showed the work to ended up owning her own gallery, and she still carries my work," says Stobie. "And she's been a great friend and supporter for over 20 years."

Stobie's work is now carried in galleries throughout the northwest. Besides Joseph, she shows in galleries at Cannon Beach and Bend, Oregon, Priest Lake, Idaho and Big Fork, Montana. And, of course, in Dayton, Washington. Stobie has also shown her work for many years at the Canoe Ridge Winery in Walla Walla. And one of her paintings has recently been chosen as a wine label for the winery.

Stobie's connection with Joseph – a haven for bronze sculptors and foundries – has inspired her to add sculpture to her portfolio. She has recently released a new bronze sculpture based on a "Cowbird" image from one of her paintings.

Stobie has developed another thriving business selling prints of some of her work through the Coldwater Creek catalog. Over the past ten years, thousands of her prints have been sold through the catalog, and she has sold hundreds more through her own web site. Most are images of blue herons or quail, but her most recent Coldwater Creek print is a reproduction of a horse petroglyph image.

Stobie has lived in Dayton since 2000. Like Ingram, she has a grown son and daughter. As this paper was going to press, she was preparing for her marriage to Dayton resident Ted Paterson on September 29.

For the past two years, Stobie has shared space in Ingram's "Jill Ingram Watercolor Gallery" next to the lobby of Dayton's Weinhard Hotel. "We really work well together," says Stobie. "Our work is so different, and yet our backgrounds are so similar – we were both inspired very young by excellent teachers." Each artist has followed a different path that has led them to careers in art and a shared gallery space.

During this year's Dayton on Tour event, Ingram and Stobie's gallery will be part of the Saturday Art Walk. Stobie is also organizing the art show for local area artists at the Dayton Historic Depot, which will run through Thanksgiving Weekend.

Both Ingram and Stobie say that Dayton is an excellent "Art Town". "The environment here is so peaceful and inspiring," says Jill Ingram. "Many artists love the slower pace of a small town." Both artists also pointed to Dayton's increasing tourism business as a reason that its reputation as an "Art Town" should do nothing but grow.

Copyright (c) 2007, Blue Mountain News

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