Nancy
BEGINNINGS
My childhood was rooted in music and art and horses. I thought if people knew those three things about me, they would know who I was. I loved to sing and draw as a little girl of 7 or 8 yrs old. My first time singing for people was when I was 10 at a church Christmas program in Basin City, WA. My Aunt Beulah was practicing for the program with a couple of her friends around the piano and I kept singing along in the background. They decided I should have my own song in the program and signed me up to sing Silent Night. That summer we hit on hard times and went to Montana to pick cherries in Flathead Valley. My mom would sing with me and taught me how to hold the melody while she sang alto on You Are My Sunshine. My first time on stage was in Deer Park, WA at the middle school I went to. The music teacher went to several schools to teach part time at each one. When she came to our school, she instigated a talent show and encouraged us all to participate. I signed up to sing a song I knew well from listening to my daddy’s records and his radio station, Your Cheating Heart. Grandma Alkire bought me the sheet music and the music teacher kindly transposed it to a key I could sing in and accompanied me on piano. My mom and dad were very excited and proud of me. Daddy found a silver sparkly cowgirl outfit for me he borrowed from a friend who had a Jr Rodeo princess in his family. I loved singing that night on stage and was awarded a standing ovation and tons of compliments by the audience. Grandma Alkire was sure I could win a talent show on TV and took me up to audition at the station for Starlit Stairway, a local talent search program in Spokane, WA. I didn’t have my own accompanist, so their studio piano player played for my try-out. I didn’t know that magic key my music teacher had picked for me and I bombed out really badly when he picked a key that was too low. Daddy decided if I was going to sing, I better learn an instrument to accompany myself. He rented a guitar for one month and bought me a Mel Bay beginner’s guitar book. I taught myself that month the old folk songs in the key of C. But we couldn’t afford to rent it another month and watched for an opportunity to buy one. A couple years went by before I got my own guitar. We were strapped financially, and Dad was without work when we went picking fruit to make ends meet. The orchard hired me at half pay to thin pears and I earned enough money to buy my own guitar at Kmart! We were living in a campground and I learned the chords to House of the Rising Sun from one of the other campers. Without anyone else to teach me I played all I knew and started writing my own songs. I even made up chords to my songs because the ones I knew were not enough. Then I joined choir for 6 years! I also became a Christian and wrote a couple of Christian songs: Temperance and Miracles.
1986
A New Day
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1986
New Horizons
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CHARITY
Author of historical fiction books, hobby filmmaker, world traveler, vintage/antique collector, musician of like 3 or 7 instruments, artist, and enthusiast of life in general. I'm the bouncy smiley addition to the band, playing lead/background instruments and some vocal pieces that some say tie the band together. I love telling stories to my nephews and nieces in between concerts, and I really enjoyed traveling around America in a tiny motorhome with my large family doing random adventures! 2020 saw a different shift in my life; I lived in North Dakota full time, spending my time enjoying friendship and working on a variety of creative projects. I released my first single and music video, Out of The Deep, and am focusing on my 6 book, historical fiction, series, Legacy of Chevolta.
In December of 2020, I said "yes" to marrying my best friend, Josh, and we married in April 2021.
I still join the band every now and then for concerts and help them with projects behind the scenes.
You can check out my books via the link below and I'd love to connect with you on Instagram!
1986
The Struggles
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1986
A New Dream
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1986
Sunrise, Sunset
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1986
A New Day
"Bree is a spirited and standout font that takes its inspiration from handwriting. It's sure to grab your reader's attention, especially in short paragraphs."
FIRST CONCERT
Bob
Bob’s music background was mostly in band. He learned to play trumpet and stuck with it through High School and 2 yrs of college where he also joined choir and dance band and took up music as his minor. All his brothers also played brass. He loved the big band era. After college Bob pursued learning 12 string guitar and traded his expensive trumpet for a guitar to learn the more current folk genres of the time.
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Nancy
MEET THE ARTIST
Gallery
VIEW & PURCHASE ART
History
AN ARTIST'S JOURNEY
1974
THE DREAM
school, world fair, government soil samples, travel agency, pen and ink etc..
I was 16 when I got my job at the World's Fair in Spokane. And I when I was 16 in high school, I did pencil portraits. So my classmates would bring me, you know photos of their friends and family and their selves or whoever. you were 16? Yeah, and I would do.
You did pencil portraits?
Okay, so you did pencil portraits when you were 16 for your classmates. Yeah, and then I would sell those to them for $1.5-3 dollars and make extra lunch money pocket money buy more art supplies. the life of an artist! and then when I went to work for Maxine as a live-in housekeeper, that's what I.
Was just before I turn 16 when I moved in with her. So I was 15 years old.
people love helping young people with their dreams and.
My dream was to be an artist and.
So I got I went to for an interview at the World's Fair at the gallery Barbizon was two brothers that from Austria. I think it was the own the gallery there and they hired sidewalk artist.
On commission. portraits? and charcoal. I'd never done charcoal up into that point. I'd always done pencil, but when I went to for a interview, they needed charcoal portrait artists and I couldn't go to work until I was 16 so they said come back when you are 16 and we will hire you, you know, I took my my.
You know my pad of paper that I had done paper portraits of my friends in and that was my resume just show them this is what I've done. Wow! and they were like great come back when you're 16 and will hire you and so and then I had a friend that Maxine's friend bought me a or gave me one she had in her attic who knows.
And then I practiced in charcoal that whole month before I turn 16. so it wasn't like a year before? no, it was like a month I practice in charcoal and did portraits of Maxine and anybody else would sit still so I had tried some and then I was still in high school, of course, so I get out of school and catch the bus and go downtown and go to work at the World's Fair.
And work Until 10 o'clock at night for the rest of the fair which went to midnight. didn't you get bad grades in art class? I didn't get a bad grade in art class. I gotta B one year. Other than that I got all A’s. a “bad grade.” It was my bad grade. it was a bad grade to me because that was the year. My mom told me she would pay me if I got straight A's.
And my only B was in art, and it was because I was tardy to because art class was in an Annex Building on one side of the high school and lunch cafeteria was in an Annex on the other side of the high school building and I did not gauge my time. Well, and I was Gabby and my art teacher was he was a punctual.
stickler when the bell rang. He locked the door and take attendance and then let everybody else in with with a bad Mark. Was there a lot of tardy people? there were three or four of us waiting outside the door to get in we might have been one minute late, you know.
But it any rate. No, I did good in art. I was always ahead and did lots of extra work and I even came in early to try to make up for my B but, you know, but I didn't make it. came in before school started to try to make up credit. But anyway, that's beside the point. I got a job at the gallery Barbizon.
it was Gustav and..., they were brothers from I think I think it was Austria. I don't know I could put those those a long time ago. Gustav makes me think that Germany. Yeah. Well Germany and Austria right next to each other and I suppose the Germans took over. That's true. Yeah.
Austria not Australia, Austria, Austria is a little tiny country next to Germany and Switzerland.
The world art show?. So the world the world's fair was 1974 Expo 74. I keep thinking it is the same thing as the Olympics. No, it's not. The Olympics is called the is called the World's Fair and it's like every four years.
Countries from all over the world their exhibits. To the worlds fair. Wow. That's amazing. Wow. I was in the worlds fair as a sidewalk artist doing charcoal portraits. And I made 40% commissions. 60% went to the gallery. And they paid for my pass
But you are 16, So that's... I was 16 and I was it was great. I went to school all day I think I came home and did a 15 minute nap caught the bus and went to work and work till ten o'clock at night at the fair. Wow. from August 31st. about two and a half months and then after I was
16 or 17. I didn't do art. You know, I've worked as a live-in housekeeper. I didn't do a whole lot of art, but I was a.
You know, I was a young Christian. I was really involved and going to church 3-4 times a week and met daddy at the prayer meeting at the university. when we got engaged and he was looking for a job for me. He was a job counselor at a job service.
You know other than housekeeping job and I went out and went all all over Spokane looking for a job and I went to silkscreen shops and newspaper shops that you know do the grocery ads and all kinds of different art venues. I walked up and down the business streets and finally I went into this one place. I think it was a t-shirt shop. I can't remember.
For the second time see if maybe they needed me now and The proprietor told me, you know kid. I know all the professional artists from Seattle to Chicago. They all have it a secondary college degree. Go to school Yeah. I was 18. I was 18 so you had graduated?
I had graduated. Yeah, but just just High School. Yeah, and so I gathered up my portfolio and went to a college and you know talk to someone at the college and they said sure you know can take you on and teach you you know for a for exorbitant fee and it was like but my reason was looking for a job is because I didn't have any money. you needed money not to
Spend money! needed money, and I decided not to go to college.
Right about the same time one of the ladies in the prayer group I was going to worked for the federal government in the soil conservation. and she told me, she knew I was looking for a job, and she says we are looking for temporary employees to do paste up and lay out.
work for doing soil Maps.
You basically be doing you know working on a light table taking little labels and putting them on maps and they will pay you a GS two wage which is the government system is all GS this and that on a um, but GS two.
three dollars and sixteen cents an hour.
Which was above minimum wage. $3.16 an hour was above minimum wage? In 1979. Yeah.
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STARTING OUT
1981
mom bought her her first water color paints, starts putting verses in, begins art shows, learnign the ropes and marketing.
To the nine months trip around the country and came back. I was still doing the pen and ink little bit of water color and then when we got back to.
Montana and then moved when now I'm back to where Johanna was three, and I started selling roses for Valentine's Day and by then I was putting verses in all my pictures and they were in watercolor and I was selling for like forty-sixty dollars. They were Eleven by fourteen Originals Yeah that was just for the paper unframed. Maybe they were $25, but I was really happy.
That year we made $2,000 in art because it was somewhere in that year daddy told me that if I sold...because we were looking at a really cool piano. I wanted to do music and music had kind of Gone by the wayside and I wanted to do music more. We're singing at coffee houses. I was singing coffee houses. The piano was $1500 and daddy said I could sell enough artwork. I could buy it. So we started to put more effort.
Into selling my art work. daddy signed up for another art shows it was our second time at the CMR Russell art show in their gymnasium, you know, sometimes high schools raise money by having an art show and renting the booth space and we did a few of those that were really good in the booth spaces were pretty reasonable. This one the booth space was kind of spendy, but it was a it was a good show.
And the first one I done there I didn't make much money. But this time we went so this was a year later. We went and daddy said okay, we're going to do this art show and he's tried to set me up to succeed and he says okay. He says this is what you need to do paint a Hundred Flowers 50 of them roses and 25 of those red., and so he bought me the.
Supplies to do that and I painted and painted and painted five by seven roses So they were all uniform one size all one subject and what he felt was a good mix for demand. and he bought the fabric, it was the bright bright blue.
double knit waffle weave type fabric. and we the booth we rented was two 4x8 sheets of plywood put in a V. That's how they sold them and they were just accordion across the floor and you paid for 2 boards. So it was a really efficient use of the balcony space. We were in the balcony and so he's thinking this is our second time to the show last time. We had a table on the main floor and he's thinking we got a balcony.
Space people can see it from all over so he put them in bright blue fabric and he bought this blanket Fabric and made huge letters cut out of blanket fabric that said originals
five dollars a piece.
You know and you could read it from anywhere in the gym. So and we didn't frame them or anything. We took like straight pins and stuck onto the fabric and covered... My Niche was price, originals and visibility and then he had also given me a winning mix of what people would buy and I think we sold 400 dollars worth.
We didn't sell everything but we just about did. did you sit there and paint? No, no, there was no room. There was only room to stand there and sell them. So that was my first successful art show.
And part of it is because daddy took an interesting marketing it and he did a really good job. And so from then we started developing that a little bit more but didn't take it. Seriously. We were just trying to raise money to for that piano so we kept working towards that.
But so in the course of that year, we got the daddy got license with the Assembly of God for Christian workers papers, and we started singing and preaching and going around and we did that and ended up in Hungry Horse Montana at the assembly God Bible Camp because there was no more places for us to go.
And we were basically living out of a car with two tents by then. And Daddy is looking for a way to bring in some income. So he decided to sell my pictures and.
MaryAnna Stover2 days ago
That blue fabric around it and then shut the lid and then pin all the pictures to the lid to the hood of the car, you know, so we were improving in our ability to Market. So anyway, he did pretty good with that and made quite a bit of money. We were able to you know by the bus and everything. In fact by the end of the year, we had sold $2,000 worth of artwork, but we hadn’t saved it all we used it. What year was that? That would be 1985
In 85, so that was the first year that we felt legitimate. So then we took off and we're going to go to Arizona for the first time with the artwork and stopped in Ogden, Utah and.
That's where daddy bought a booth in a mall and set up my artwork there and I was so painting by this time Eleven by fourteen Originals of wildlife as well as flowers. So I was doing wildlife and flowers and sceneries and he read a guy told him that if we had been framed they would sell better. And for more money. He says I can't afford frames. He says,.
As I have a frame shop, you put my business cards on your table. I will frame one of your pictures for free on your table and send them to me to get them framed when you sell them. So they'll know what they look like finished give them my card. It'll take him to my shop. He says and we both win. And and it worked really good sold a lot lot of them. I can't remember how much but it was enough to pay for.
getting a bus to Arizona and finding a place to stay for two months. and so then.
This is all leading up to when Hidden Verse Art finally started as a business . But so when he sold all of that the guy gave him his suppliers, which is something people never did he gave us the names of his suppliers for frames and matts and glass because it's really hard to we have
Trouble now finding them at good prices. So so then we finished getting down to Arizona, but we were still trying to go into Ministry and your music and you know, the artwork is still kind of a an emergency. how many kids did you have? Just those three. Okay, so then we went down there and daddy tried.
Several things he tried getting a job teaching at a Bible College and then he did Roofing he did all kinds of things down there. And we finally the bus broke down on the side of the highway in between one job in the other and and this guy came and towed us to some place he thought we could get help
While we were there in Arizona and the bus was broken down and they towed us to this one church group on the west side of town. We were stuck for money again. Daddy got a job digging ditches for cable TV, and he worked Dawn till Dusk every day doing that. trying to get the parts to fix the bus and did that for a few weeks?
Probably three or four weeks five weeks and.
And did you put versus in them right away? I started putting versus in my paintings when Johanna was a baby. So I was painting clear back then but it wasn't a business. Oh, so I still... so what did you do with them then? I sold them. I guess that makes it kind of like a business. Yeah! my first painting. Okay what I started in watercolor when I was expecting Johanna.
What year was that? 1982. because Joel was born in 80 and she's two years later. Okay, so it would have been in 81. Yeah. You started doing watercolor in 81? My mom bought me a children's watercolor set. like the one you get for a dollar at Walmart? Yeah, like she bought me one of those. great things start in small places! and a pad of
Watercolor paper and I took that home and I painted three pictures is all I could get out of that set because there's so little pigment in them. But one of them... that's still pretty amazing! What were they of? What did you do? I did one of a deer in the woods. They all had to be three different colors because I used up one color on one. That's a really cool exercise. But Granddad got one of my very first paintings and it's of the deer in the woods.
Granddad has it? Granddad Balyeat. Where'd it go? I don't know. is was at his house. I told somebody it was mine. Okay. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.
I started painting to help buy music equipment so we could so I could sing.
I wanted a piano.
And to begin with I had.
Johanna was three years old. Johanna was three? Yeah. Wow! she's born in 81. So in 84... so you had three kids and they were ages 345? Yeah, something like that when I started painting and I started painting... Seems crazy; just goes to show don't wait until you’re less busy. Until your kids grow up.
The leader of the Republican women's when I did the float for the Republican party for the Fourth of July. couple weeks after I was born. Yeah, I guess a month. Yeah, July 4th, July 4th. You were barley a month old but we did the whole thing before that. You had to build. Yeah build the float for the parade. She said it just goes to prove ask a busy person to do something and it'll get done. Yeah. So anyway,.
It’s not always The people that aren't doing anything that will get anywhere. That ask a busy person. Yeah, that's Crystal for sure. Yeah. Um, so you're saying you had three kids and you wanted a piano. three kids and I wanted a piano. we sold my guitar so we could buy one for me to learn on I bought it like an $89 little Casio about this big. you sold a guitar to buy a piano? Yeah. It's a little electric piano.
People buy them for their kids these days but back in 1984. It was a Casio little battery operated... it wasn't a $20 piano? No, now they are! but,
I sold my 12-string guitar so I could afford it. You had a 12-string? Yeah, my dad bought it for me for Christmas. Oh.
Before I was married. wow! and Daddy and I had invested money in it to get it worked over at a shop to make it nice and playable and everything, but I wanted to learn piano. So I taught myself Suzuki book 1 and 2 on this little tiny Casio that I was able to buy because I sold my guitar and then I started selling roses for Valentine's Day that year.
1986
REACHING REALITY
first year it supported them went on world of art tour did christmas shows began doing prints
so the world of art, you know, raised the standard for us, I went to bigger pictures. They wanted some showpieces. That was one of the requests. So that's when I started painting 20 by 30 s. What year was that? 1986? Wow, that was a big year for you and 1987. Well 1986 is when we joined in 1987 with when we started developing. because that show
1886 that we did with them in October was their last one of the year and then they all went did Christmas shows for six weeks.
So they were all like dividing up and going different places to their malls where they could just set up from Thanksgiving to Christmas and we're like, oh that's interesting. So Daddy talked to the mall. We happen to be in at that moment in Billings Montana, which was not the big one but the other mall on the north side of town.
And they leased a store for Christmas. at a reasonable price that we could afford to to pay for after we just did a ten day show and made $3,000 in that mall. that was our biggest show ever. We were just like... we went out and bought Baskin Robbins ice cream cake celebrate with Brooks and Frankie Marsh and you know what?
That show is kind of tricky because on our way there we had serviced the account in Kalispell that we had opened when Daddy was selling my art to the stores. He'd already started selling wholesale that that was it was. Yeah wholesale Consignment. Yeah, so it was Consignment not wholesale both both. They had already given you money. They give ya be given a smile but those are the ones that.
That we'd sold out when we were living in Hungry Horse and we stopped there on our way back from Washington and Sold pictures to the Christian bookstore. Now, that's wholesale, Christian bookstore bought wholesale and he forgot the entire box of Originals there.
In their store and then we drove to this brand new big art show with no paintings., so we set up our display and found out all the boxes. We had where empty frames and we had no pictures and it was just the most devastating realization. So Daddy set me up out in the trailer painting a Originals again soon as we got all set up, so I was painting.
Fast as I could six paintings up at a time. this one would dry and I would do the next one that one would dry. I did the same color Motif and I did a lot of simple sceneries just so I could fill the tables., because they gave us a prime location in the mall. right across from the mall management. right across from the tour manager
So I painted 11x14 Originals all day long filling those tables. How do you do that with the kids? How old was Johanna? this was 1986. She was 5 years old. So
They're five, seven and eight or something like that. it was a good age. Also, we have these wonderful friends that came by the karstens, whom we know from the assembly of God, came by and said,can we take your kids to our house to play, you know, and they had kids so, you know, it was really awesome. With autumn and Holly.
Kirsten and all of them. Wow, so our kids went and played with them while I was painting like crazy. Wow. How many paintings did you paint a day? Do you think? 20 paintings a day? Yeah. And what were you selling them for? $25?
And then as soon as I got the tables pretty much filled, I started painting Wildlife i started out with simple sceneries all in monochromes and Duo Chrome's. So then I started painting wildlife and florals and to give some variety.
And they started selling for like forty dollars for Originals. So anyway, that was pretty cool. And then from there we got the gig with the Christmas show the mall manager gave us a huge store. All we had to do is make it secure at night. So we bought a bunch of doors like closet doors and made a wall.
Closure that we could lock up at night and then Daddy made lots and lots of displays to hold framed pictures to give the floor some Contour and he started buying prints.
I had at that point sold a thousand original paintings that year. I was painting like crazy. when was that that you started buying prints? the end of 1986 in December. Yeah November we had a few in October,
We did photographs of them and have them printed at a place that did photography and made prints in the mall. They used to have those. Yeah, you go to a photo lab and get an excellent price on 5 by 7.
Prints. how many did you buy? like a hundred. He matted and framed everything at this point and he got really nice oak frames. so then the originals got a little more expensive and the parents became $20.
So we started selling the frame prints for like $20 framed Prints for $10 and all there was some different prices in there and then we had all the originals and so then in that space between in the Christmas show. He sold a thousand prints. so that year we sold a thousand originals and a thousand prints in the last two months.
It's so that was our first year as hidden verse art. And we we definitely had a full-time job by then. we didn't have a business location. So it wasn't a real big deal. We didn't have a business name. We just called ourselves hidden Verse Art . We didn't have business cards. So all we had was we had flyers for the back of my pictures
The first one of those was a picture that we took of me standing in our Campground. Up in Hungry Horse and then I wrote all of the stuff out by hand and then we printed those. and then got Xerox copies and put those on the back of my prints so that there was a little story about the artists on the back and some contact information and the picture of me.
That was all that year. like the year 85 86. so we traveled with world of Art and then filled in with a couple other tours. We took on tour in Florida and took on another tour in the.
Midwest we did Tennessee, and Alabama and Arkansas. so that was that that first year so Susanna on was born in 19.
87 so 1986 which is our finished here big gear. And then we thought oh man, we could have more kids so as soon because I took more financially for you put up my spine and we secure. I mean, we've been out of debt. Yeah, it was just hard to survive but now we were at making enough money to travel and.
And improve our situation improve our product moving forward. We didn't make a huge amount of profit every year but our expenses were all covered because our food and our gas and everything was covered because we worked constantly and everywhere we went was for the purpose of the job location. That's how we made it around
The country we just found more tours and toured and showed in a lot of malls and we tried a few other upper-crust art shows and and found out that it costs so much to get in them and we didn't make any more money than the others and they were very uncertain we had to pay for them before they even accepted you and then you couldn't book something else because we're waiting to find out if you were accepted in this one you already paid for it. So we stuck with Mall shows.
They with the most financially secure for us because we weren't doing art shows for the purpose of building a name for me as an artist. It was just it was a way to provide for a family. So It was that most important that it provided an income. Well, how did you keep going you like must have had a pretty good pregnancy? Oh, yeah pretty good pregnancy.
Did you paint while holding a baby?
we took turns turns taking care of the kids and dad would be in the mall so I could be with the kids and then the kids by then also by the time Susanna was born Jonathan was 10 and that really helped. Jonathan was really really responsible.
I trusted him. and then the kids also got involved. They all had their own little art business Jonathan did wonderful ink drawings and colored it with colored pencils and he made money and then Joel did calligraphy and they both could put their stuff out and they would help do the sales. They learned how to do sales customer service and sit in the booth.
They come and you know one or two kids would go with whoever was watching the booth. The baby would be under the table right in front of me. car seats were awesome. So no it worked really. Well. I felt like it was really just great. It was somewhere in in the middle of that.
The third year maybe that I started like feeling like, you know, I started selling my pictures so I could do music and I don't have time to do music anymore. so that's when we started developing music again and ended up going to Estes Park Colorado and did a lot basically a lot of learning. just did a lot of learning on performance skills and songwriting.
we went wholesale so we did these retail shows until Jonathan I think turned 13 and then we started to look for options and Daddy went into wholesale and Consignment really big so that we can take more and more time off the road. Stay home. Build relationships with other homeschool families that is when we moved to Missoula and started going to home-school campouts.
So that's was the next swing that the business took we went from traveling. And what year was that when you switched to wholesale. So I'm trying to think that was the year. James was born.
1991.
So we started really pursuing Consignment and wholesale accounts then and then went in to gift shows went to the Christian booksellers International conventions, and we hired reps to sell then the 90s. We've really tried to expand because our boys were getting older and we were hoping to grow the business big enough that it could support more than one family.
I was doing pretty good for just our family, but we thought if we could grow it bigger than it could support maybe two or three families. Joel wasn't really interested in the art business. He wanted to do something more physical construction more exciting. You know, Jonathan was totally committed to the art business. He was between 13 and 16. He grew with the art business and
Into the wholesale and took over the office built us a website, you know as Internet came in. He he tackled that he did our bookkeeping he did he did the shipping and receiving and paid the bills, you know, he learned that whole business end of the business. The office end He could hold the office end down all by himself.
By the time he was 18, you know, it was pretty awesome. He helped me with taxes.. And then the younger kids just like the other ones when they were younger they help with production matting and baginh framing boxing shipping it got to where Jonathan did all of that.
You know, he could Matt frame bag box ship receive, Everything. I didn't paint as much as I did that first year when I did thousand paintings and we were getting enough prints. So I painted like a thousand original
Paintings that first year and then probably down to more like 500 and 300 and 200. So when did you change your printing method from just taking pictures and going to a local mall? That's another whole journey in itself. we started out with we didn't take our own pictures persay we would go to a photo lab with a professional photographer at the photo lab that would do.
Product photo of our painting and then print them for us. some of them were good at it. Some of them weren’t , you know, but they were willing to try it as a business thing. we found our first one that was willing in Washington state and we worked with them until we found another one that was good at it in Florida, you know, and we just find people that had bigger equipment did a better job that was more special towards.
Fine Art, you know and then we found a lithograph company that we could afford color Q I think was our first one that was out on the east coast and we paid them we would work with them and they had coupons specials buy a hundred prints get a hundred free. So we started doing that. So that was your first lithographic? Yeah. When was that?
that year. We printed the Christmas Bears. And they did gang separation. That was another thing that made it more affordable for us to do lithographs. They told us if we did paintings that were all basically in the same color palette and.
That we could gain separate them onto one big sheet and print that sheet and cut it instead of getting each painting color separated because that was expensive thing was getting that first plate for them to print them from so we do like 12 on a sheet and that's what grew our print record.
Christmas Bears I painted.
misses Pedro went with me to do an art show at one of our wholesale accounts Christmas bookstore in showdo and she had a gift shop and Christian bookstore and I did a demonstration and painted in her store for Christmas and she had Christmas bears and I set them up on my table and painted right there. it was fun. And so.
That was probably.
I don't know 87 89 somewhere in there. And another one of our big breaks that really changed my print record because I did florals and Wildlife and then I did those simple sceneries. Then I started doing bigger sceneries, you know for the world of art masterpieces and you know show pieces they like showstoppers that you can see all the way down the mall.
I started painting for Bear Crossings and they were Boutique show where they had rooms that were totally themed around like the log look, you know men's lodge room, French provincial room and so I painted for their rooms. That was when I was expecting Rose.
What did you do for those rooms? You did the bear. I did the iris in the fence the hummingbirds in the roses and you know, they were more combined things. Okay, you know like they were birds and butterflies and fences that were not really as they would be in nature. So they were a little bit more Victorian.
And I don't know a different style. Yeah, and they really like that. So I started painting, you know, picking up their colors from their rooms and painting the match. Them. and that expanded my print record again and those became so my standards. Well the chickadees In the Pines. that was for Bear Crossings
so I had my wildlife and florals and and then I did the really detailed sceneries for when I started doing them for the world of art. That's where I got the Teton geese and the buffaloes. The themed rooms was when we first moved to White Lane, so that's when Rose.
It was a baby. So that was 93. So I started painting for Bear Crossings in 93 and I did several years with them and increased my print record for to match their stuff and then it made our wholesale business more viable.
And then we traveled daddy pretty much covered Montana so thoroughly. He had repped the whole country and he also did Idaho and Wyoming and then we did those wholesale shows but he was finding that the farther he got from home and had other people sell them they didn't sell as much as he could sell.
So he bought the cube truck and we loaded the cube truck up with a thousand prints enough to open a lot of wholesale accounts and we would package them in 50s the wildlife 50... . So that's when we spread out and I started doing other things. We went to the Seattle area and I did lighthouses. I started a whole series of lighthouses.
1986
1986
Starting Out
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1986
New Horizons
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1986
The Dream
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1986
Reaching Reality
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1986
The Struggles
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1986
Back on Track
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THE STRUGGLES
1999
calanders, greeting cards, wholesale th buisnesss no longer was supporting itself and was pushing them deep into debt
We bought the cube truck. It was a brand-new 97 that we bought in 99. 2 years old. So we got a really good deal on it. That's when we started traveling in the cube truck.
To expand the wholesale with the gorilla racks in the back so we set it up to live in there and did our wholesale shows and conventions, but found that we needed to stay in closer touch with our customer base that reps had a tendency to pick us up.
As a new product but they didn't take care of us. They just used us as a new product. They didn't have a personal interest in investment in keeping our product long term. So we needed to get out and meet our customer base in the different localities and see if it was a sustainable business Nationwide that would support two families. So that was the rush, you know with the cube van to cover than the nation.
We we were paying Jonathan a bunch of money like 1,500 a month to cover that whole end He was doing that as a full-time job. we were doing that and trying to support him at home and still support us.
The problem we ran into with a wholesale is it cut our profit way down increased our expenses. We had to buy more invest thousands of dollars in displays and we tried to do good customer service. We always replaced damaged and shopworn we traded them out to keep the products fresh and we would do trades with.
our customers say “if you will fill up your rack back to 50 will trade you out of what it hasn't been selling for you and try something else”. you send back and we will credit you for everything You still have and send you a fresh stand. So when we started selling wholesale all over the country, there were some states that had different laws and were.
A little less friendly. I mean when you go east everything is less friendly. It's more regulations. And so we started bumping into those barriers. what we did back home was we did buy a business license. We payed for our name hidden verse art. We got a shop to give Jonathan a place away from the house that he could work.
We rented a location downtown and tried that for a while. And then we got another location when Charis was a baby. We moved into a location that was right on one of the busiest one ways in town. It was in the basement of a very nice business building across from Parks Bakery, which had another Art Gallery in it Harriet that we rented a
Booth from you know, table space at the CM Russell art show she had Harriet's Gallery. She was well known for selling art. She was an art dealer, but she had a place in that building. So we went there on a on a deal where they gave us a move deal that was really good to try us out. They were hoping to build an artist village right there.
And it didn't fly he ended up we couldn't even pay our cost without paying the rent that they were giving us a few months free. We grew to the point where we were struggling again. And one of our struggling things was we kept trying to expand our product line, you know, because people buy.
So many pictures their walls are full. Yeah, so then the customers that love you say, “Oh I have these I've given them to everybody for the birthday and for Christmas my walls are full, I just love your work, but I can't buy any more.”so we went into calendars. but we had no clue what the calendar business this going to be like and we were too late and people had already.
Ordered their calendars. We didn't know how to sell calendars and we ended up in debt so big we needed to get a credit card to pay it off. And It was supposed to pay us. When we originally got the contract with a company that set us up. It was a big it was huge for us.
It was super hard. like just the cube truck and going. Big on wholesale we prayed about it and prayed about it, you know trying to really seek council and talk to people. But it cost you years to regain your balance. So what happened is the wholesale business overgrew itself and couldn't support itself anymore. We couldn't support Jonathan we weren't.
Ourself we were going in debt bigger and bigger and bigger we could it was like. because when we were selling retail, we were not in debt, we could always pay net30 for A supplier. We never had anything that was beyond that we had to put on the credit. Yeah, but when we went wholesale we started having to pay our net 30s on credit because we were selling our product on net 30 and.
you have to buy your product before you can sell it. Yeah, you know, so our supplier debt got over a hundred thousand dollars and we couldn't pay it. and then we couldn't get a job to pay our debt. There was nothing we could do that we would make that much money this was this was by 2000.
2000
BACK ON TRACK
gave the wholesale buisness to jonathan
so we bought the bus because we could tell that we weren't going to be able to keep driving that truck forever. Daddy. Wanted to sell it while it was still in good shape and we can get out of it and we bought the bus and that was a disaster. We ended up paying i think $30,000 in engines for it, we lived in.
And we use it for seven years.
. It was amazing. But so then an interesting thing happened in the market we decided wholesale is not working. We would go back to retail and we gave the wholesale business to Jonathan. we had three months worth of receivables out there that we'd already shipped we had tons of product and we split it with them and let him take over the wholesale business and use it
To help support him and then we went back to selling retail.
We went back to retail and we started to make it again. We were able to sell the cube truck was like when we gave the wholesale business to Jonathan. We started to thrive again, huh? And he was able to use the wholesale business. He couldn't sustain it because he didn't do sales. He was he could not handle sales and we couldn't do both. Yeah couldn't be invested in retail and out there doing sales, Daddy.
Did sales, you know along the way but we were busy in the shows quite a bit. Yeah, and so that's when we started traveling and doing the world of art again.
So what happened was 2001 Twin Towers went down and the malls went dead business just went flat. I remember the first show we did after after the Twin Towers. There was nobody in the mall and we could barely cover a booth space and this is.
World of art tour in places where we had good customers and every thing. It was just people were very insecure and everybody changed how they spent money. so we had to make some changes pretty quick because we were still doing art shows but we were barely covering expenses something in the world climate,.
Changed and we needed to change with it and at the same time world of art had suffered, you know, because everybody was suffering and part of what they made was their commission off artist sales and when the artist could barely pair pay their Booth fee that meant that the tour could barely pay the mall fee. And so they were changing.
NEW HORIZONS
2001
got the bus and started fairs fading to music did some murals
So somewhere in there one of the artists in world of art talk to Daddy.Said you should try the fair's he said I I do the fairs a few months out of the year and they work good for me. Well, he's a caricature artist. So it did really well for him that was Owen . And so he got us the contact to get the trade magazine. That's had all of the fair's for the entire country and the managers and who to talk to.And so he got us connected to the fair managers and daddy started calling them and pitching to go sell our art it helped it was better but very expensive. 2001.so that it was by the next year. Linda bought us the hats and boots and costumes. when we started singing We did the did this thing we did the art shows at the fair and then Daddy pitched he remembered.Christian artists sing on free stages and he pitched to the them, our family band and we sangto begin with he just offered that we could sing on the free stage. So we did that because they couldn’t pay us anything and we bought a booth so we buy commercial Booth space and sell art and sing for free and then one of the fair's that year said we can't pay you to sing on the free stage, but will give you a commercial booth space and a place to camp.And he's like seriously sounds like a winner. he learned that he could call the fairs and trade commercial Booth space and a camping spot in exchange for us singing on the free stage and then we grew in our presentation and all the things we had learned at Estes Park, Colorado. We finally had a place to practice those things.and also we grew as a family band before that the family band thing had not really have a place to sing. the Calhoun's that were our first stage people in Bozeman. They didn't know any family bands and they were like, they said this would be really they used to be a family band. Yeah, they only had two kids and they grew up.We're gone, but he said you guys have something very valuable that it's worth investing the time in to improve that people would be blessed by seeing family work together in music. So you are still doing art at this time was it was it kind of still supporting you it was limping along but we starting to get into the black.But we were not there yet, but we were finally turning the tide and things were pulling out and we were paying off all our debts. Yeah, and we could instead of every year being farther in debt. It was going the other way and which was really encouraging because it's a sinking feeling at the end of every year be farther in debt then the year before., and that's just not sustainable.so we started doing that. I still painted originals, not nearly as many because I had a big family and we were really busy. so I didn't paint nearly as much. Probably maybe 20 a year., so maybe one week at the moment at the most. Yeah, and
2006
THE SUNSET
did the 20 year aniversary show.. stopped painting origonals trasnitioned fully to music supporting the family..
Because that was our 20th anniversary for hidden verse art. Oh, yeah. I remember that in 2006. we put ads in the paper. Oh, yeah, I remember it. We did every year. did like you print it out like art from all the different years. I brought back prints from every year that we did Art a lot of old older prints. and that was kind of I felt like that was kind of the end of your full-time artist career.
I hadn’t planned it to be that way, but twenty years from 1986 to 2006 full time
we got fewer and fewer prints new ones because it's expensive. Yeah, and we had a lot of print stock. So we didn't need a new prints.
so we stop stop printing New Stock and start investing more and more in the.
Music so we started transferring our Capital into the music equipment and in like when Linda and this is a thing that year was a turning point for us. Yeah, because here we've been we've gone to wholesale and saw that we've just got as far as we could go there and went back to retail. He brings you there and you would have stayed there forever if it had kept working
Yeah, you know but it starts to just pull the sticks out and you're going okay. We cant keep doing this so you're ready to move on We even said that, you know, we would have never gone into music because we were making good money in art, but once when we were barely making enough money to pay our booth fees and travel, well the music could do that, you know, so it was more feasible.
Yeah, so and then the last switch off so that was 2001 we kept doing art until 2006. So there was a trade over there. We did fares and faded it out.We did the fair's three months out of the year. And that's when we sang were those three months and then the rest of the year. We did Art, you know, but it got to be more and more.
More and more music less and less art until I got to the point where we didnt do. Art anymore. did the last show in 2006 and That was my 20-year Mark. I didn't expect it to be the last year, but it was like, okay, this is our last year.
A NEW DAY
PRESENT
teaching classes painting with the grandkids and enjoying taking pictures for my instagraam
people that were faithful customers. I did some dog portraits for them. I remember their dog in the cast. I did that for them. I tried art lessons, but I can't remember who and where I always thought I'd love to teach art, but I found.
And that I am really a one on one person. Yeah, so I have a very hard time with the class. and I don't like telling people how to paint something. I'd rather sit down and paint next to someone and then they can ask questions. We could even work on the same picture.
Well, I didn't do anything until charity wanted me to illustrate her book And you know, that was really awesome because for years and years I wanted to illustrate children's books. I had one that I made for Jonathan when he was a baby called red red’s shirt, and I had you know, Illustrated it and written the text and.
Everything but that was something that was never those product lines just couldn't expand my product lines, every time we tried it cost us too much money and was a flop., like the calendars this like, oh boy. I did carols.
I did one Charities when she found out she couldn’t do them in color. Anyway, I'm like why watercoloring? Yeah, you know, so I went to Ink drawings back to like I used to do and then she said she liked the water color black and white. So I went back to water coloring the ink drawings for some of them for her so that they would have that black and white look
the first one I did was probably 2015. I illustrated Matilda. I just did one last one of the cover for the new Eleanor
captive of klapolton., just to finish out that searis. The I did Emma goes on a trip and that was totally different art form. I printed them out. I did the ink drawings off of the photographs and then I did colors. Yeah, I did.
Colored pencil., and then put them all back into the computer and did composite so it was a lot more technical than it was. I found out it was very time intensive and very overwhelming I did.
Teach an adult art class adult education I think hired me for that. I take pretty pictures and I like painting and coloring with my grandkids and I'm really excited that my grandkids like to draw
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The Dream
Starting Out
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Reaching Reality
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The Stuggles
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Back on Track
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New Horizons
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The Sunset
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