♪ Hello and welcome to this edition of Northwest Profiles.

I'm your host Lynn Veltrie.

Coming up we celebrate the arrival of spring with a wonderful assortment of stories, all freshly cut and ready to bloom with the sights and sounds of life in the inland northwest and western Canada.

Just ahead our stories will reveal big plans for area performing arts fans; share the secrets of building traditional native American canoes, open our eyes and heart to the true power of music; and expose us to the incredible work of a local artist whose work is inspired by her travel adventures.

With all that on the way let's get going shall we?

Here in the Inland Northwest everyone loves a great show, especially live drama and musicals.

But did you know, according to a national study that ranks 'arts vibrancy', Spokane doesn't even rank above "small".

Even our neighbors in Missoula rank higher!

Well, with the phenomenal growth of our region, one thing has become apparent, it's not if you build it, they will come, but rather it's we must build because they are already here!

The this is a legacy project.

It's a gift to this region.

The size and the scope of the pr that they're going through is going to really be a draw for out of town, And as well as regional and loca and performers.

This area is kind of thriving ri and they're developing it so muc that we're like, we need somethi It's going to be unlike anything we have here.

Yeah, super excited.

Spokane Valley Summer Theater is one of only two professional theaters in the The other one is the Coeur Alene Summer Theater, and we have been performing since about 2016 and done phenomenally up until 2019, which was our most successful se And our patrons kept saying, What are you going to do next?

And we were like, We can't do anything until next because we're performing in coop with the Central Valley School District in the high schools and kids have to go to school he So at the end of 2019, which was a very successful seas and Angel Donor came along and said if we bought the land, would you consider building a ye performing arts center?

And that was the beginning of th COVID, of course was a problem where we couldn't stage shows in 2020 but it did give us the time to do a lot of research to pull the entire project toget to go land shopping The Performing Arts Center will be located in a new neighbo called the Mirabeau Point Place Neighborhood It is the last piece of undevelo riverfront property in the city of Spokane Valley.

It should be a beautiful, mixed neighborhood with restaurants and retail and condos and retirement facilities.

And paths and parks and all kinds of great things.

And we'll be right in the middle what the Spokane Valley Performing Arts Center aims to d is to produce shows of the produ quality of the national tours, but produced entirely locally.

So local artists, musicians, tec staff, everybody will be paid.

But we aim to produce the highes production quality we can always This is unlike any building that exists in this area right n It really will probably be the m technologically capable building for professional performing arts between Minneapolis and Seattle.

The building itself is basically three pieces.

There is a main stage, very tech equipped main stage with audienc of somewhere between 475 and 500 Then there's the studio theater, which is a black box theater.

It has seating for 200, but the seating is movable.

So it can be theater in the roun It can have a traditional aisle.

You can take it out all the way.

This will be for smaller product And then the third piece of the is on the third floor.

The entire third floor is an eve It can hold groups up to 400.

And the reason why that's import is because in the Spokane market right now, if you wanted to have party of over 250, you're really limited to the Dav properties or to the convention We also have a conservatory for theater education for students in grades 2 through and we take that very seriously because it not only teaches acti but it teaches all aspects of musical theater.

So costumes and lights and sound and sets and stage man and all of those things My name is Amanda Guarisco and I am the theater teacher and at University High School.

I'm also involved in the conservatory program for Valley Summer Theater, and then will be part of the Performing A Center as well.

I love it.

It's so great.

I knew I wanted to do this some point in high school, I was watching my theater teache and I was like, wow, like I coul They are so creative.

And that's what's great about wo kids too, is their imagination.

The Performing Arts Center is going to be a great like avenue for those kids after high school if they decide whether they want to do acting professionally or do tech theate they can go to this theater that's close to our school and kind of make a little bit of doing what they love.

And those opportunities lead to other things as well, which i It's not just for us now, it's for us for the next hundred And that's why we're taking the to make sure every single aspect of the performing arts center is high quality because w to remain the government at various levels has not really invested i in this community for years.

The last time in Spokane County that there really was a capital project for the arts was the res of the Fox, and it's been almost and what a gem that is, but it's again to reboot the arts in this There is talent in this area hidden in and there just aren't enough pla to showcase it right now.

Stage Left theater is the Inland Northwest premiere progressive nonprofit t We aim to bring voices that are normally marginalized or brutalized and give them a fo for storytelling on the stage.

When my happiness is given me, life will be a nameless.... Our stage is only 20 feet wide by 30 feet deep.

So we're a small black box theat Your thoughts?

That must now deck our king.

I've lived and performed and designed all over the United In Spokane is so rich with talen in every aspect of the arts, and especially in theater that I'd have to say that Spokan ranks up there pretty high for m in terms of what we have availab Cooled to my friends... That doesn't always correlate to the support that the arts receive in our com Every theater in this region fil a niche that that the community I think that the new Performing Center is going to fill the need for a large venue here in our r that hasn't been seen in this area for a while.

It is a rising tide really does raise all ships in the region.

It is closer to home, and we want it to feel like that We want to feel like when you're you're in the valley, you're part of this community and you're giving back.

I tell people this performing ar center is not a case of if you b they will come.

It's a case of they're coming in and we have to build it to meet market demand.

Now, if you want to be part of this wonderful legacy project, there's still time!

For the bargain price of $5 million, you can name this new facility whatever you want, in perpetuity.

Up next, we meet a man who had a brutal childhood growing up in Africa, where he learned to use music to ease his pain.

Now he's taking those experiences and passing them on to at-risk youth in Spokane.

Everything's gonna be alright.

More than enough For everyone >>Omy Karorero is from Rwanda, and now calls Spokane home.

He's a musician who has faced incredibly hard times but has developed the strength to rebound.

His experience has helped him choose a professional music name, "Dreaded Warrior" American.

Indian.

African.

Caribbean.

Asian.

European.

All above, win win.

>>When Omy was 9 years old, he lost his entire family in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

He ended up living on the street.

>>Omy met his wife in Rwanda, and in 2014 she brought him to her hometown of Spokane, where they're raising their two children.

And Omy is honoring the words of his "angel dad" by giving Spokane residents, especially youth the chance to learn to express themselves through the arts.

To meet this goal, Omy started a non-profit called Impanda.

(DRUMMING) ♪ YIEL WUOL: I've already made two projects, you know?

And that's the most music I've ever made in my life, you know.

Just being able to be in here and have this kind of environment.

So it helps out a lot.

(Soft singing) >>Omy struggled with substance abuse early in his life.

He's now studying to become an addiction counselor.

His education helps him develop programs for Impanda.

>>Omy splits his time between Spokane and Rwanda, running Impanda in both places.

With help from Spokane businesses and volunteers, Impanda offers its services for free.

Omy is always looking for people who can share their creative and teaching skills.

Up next, we go from the sound of music to experiencing a functional art form, and for that head to the rivers and lakes of the Pacific Northwest to meet an artist who's inspired to reclaim his heritage by building traditional style canoes and fishing implements.

My name is Shawn Brigman.

I'm a Spokane tribal member, and I also descend from many of the regional plateau tribes so that means I descend from the Arrow Lakes, the Kalispell and the Shuswap.

And all three of those groups are actually documented as employing historical Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoes.

Well, I make two canoes, I make a Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoe, which was founded by the ancestors since time and memorial.

And I also make a contemporary canoe, which I have named the Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe.

And both canoes actually have two separate techniques with a Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoe.

The technique is you're basically harvesting and then hand splitting every material for that canoe.

Now, with my contemporary Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe, I'm using contemporary materials.

The technique I'm using there is kind of like a drum.

I'm stretching ballistic nylon onto a frame.

I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, and while in Copenhagen I visited the Viking Ship Museum for like a class project to write an essay.

And the moment I walked into that museum and I saw their Viking ships recovered from the fjord and then displayed in that museum of space and so I knew immediately that that's what I wanted to do was recover our plateau tribal canoe culture back home.

Well, without the canoe culture, we lose our ties to the land, to the waterways, to those marriage patterns those food gathering patterns.

And so to bring that back and starting in 2012 to now, 2022, that's what we're doing we're bringing back the memory of the food gathering patterns, our historical marriage patterns and our attachment to the geography.

With the Spokane River, this is one of the historical salmon fishing sites here at the confluence of the Latah and Spokane River.

And so some of the fishing implements that we would employ here would include the salmon dip net and the two pronged salmon fish spear.

Well, for me the fishing implements complete the circle.

The canoes were historically used to travel from village to village, and we would pack those canoes with all of our tools, our housing and our salmon fishing implements.

So everything would get packed into the canoe.

I actually view my canoes as adult baby boards.

I remember returning home from elementary school, like in the first, second and third grade.

And every time I would get home, I would pull my baby board off the wall.

And my baby board is one of the most important items of my youth.

And on that baby board, there was a piece, it's called a face guard.

It's like a wooden willow piece on there.

And I used to rub my hands on that piece wondering, wow, how was this made?

How was that piece of wood bent?

And then sure enough, you know, as an adult and when I started making canoes about ten years ago, the very first piece that I bent on my very first canoe was no different from that piece that was on my baby board hanging on the wall.

Well, since 2012, you know, my main focus was on the integrity of the Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoe.

My work has evolved since then by looking at opportunities to manifest our traditional Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoe heritage and a new art disciplines.

So for example in 2020 - 2021 I had an opportunity to be an artist in residence at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and then working with the hot shop team at the Museum of Glass, we were able to collaborate on glassblowing, a piece that really represented the Bark Sturgeon Nose Canoe, but manifested in a new media.

Well, I want people to know that the Plateau Cultural Heritage has sustained the indigenous people since time and memorial.

And I just want people to know that that our Plateau Culture is not this static relic of the past.

It's actually culturally relevant today in the present.

What keeps me going is just knowing that all of that material that I harvested and I spent all that love, blood, sweat, and tears and in processing that material, and it's now sculpted into a beautiful sculptural form.

It's amazing to know that all those materials were once alive in the forest, and now they've been sculpted into a new form.

They can live in a new way.

The canoe lives on.

In our final story, Spokane Valley artist Melissa Cole uses her love of art and talent as a vehicle to teach others how to open up their artistic sensibilities.

The cornucopia of art that flows out of Spokane artist Melissa Cole, can be described as multifaceted, colorful and prolific.

She has honed her craft by creating some of the Spokane area's most recognizable works that span close to twenty years and counting.

Coming from a well-traveled life growing up, as the daughter of an airline pilot father and an artist mother, Melissa has always had art in her life.

Melissa Cole: I come from a artistic family.

My mother is a painter, and most of the members of my mom's family, you know, make baskets or do ceramic sculptures.

And then my father's two sisters paint, too.

And so it was just one of the other things I did.

I've always created art.

It was just part of normal life, but I also really loved science.

I chased, lizards around, and I love to swim, in college I took sculpture along with zoology, and that's what I love.

And so, I just started learning how to do mosaics because I wanted to do artwork outside, and I learned how to sculpt in concrete.

And then I needed to do some metal sculptures.

So, I learned how to weld and do some bronzes and it actually has really helped me to be able to learn how to do all of those different mediums.

With the Riverdance piece, it was one of my first projects in the convention center and it was an interior project and I put a little bit of mosaic in it in painting, but then I realized a lot of the calls for art were exterior and so I thought, well, I need to learn how to do things that will hold up to our Pacific Northwest weather.

And so, I went to Oakland Institute of Mosaic Art, and I learned how to sculpt in concrete and do exterior mosaic that will hold up in this weather.

>>In Melissa's case you could say she lives in art.

Thanks to her working relationship with her husband Brandon, a prolific underwater professional photographer, Melissa occasionally lends a hand in their team effort to snap some gorgeous images.

Melissa: He photographs whales and sharks and dolphins and me with them actually, because a lot of the scuba diving magazines would like to see someone in there just for scale and he's lucky because I was a dive master, so I already was diving and I knew how to dive well, but it's been really nice because it's taken us all over the world.

It's been a really nice team work together because I get to go away and be with animals and be inspired and then come back and create those images on canvas and sculptures.

And so, it just is always filling up my cup to do that.

When I first started creating artwork, we had just been to Australia and I was really influenced by indigenous work I loved all of the dots and the stories and the way that they've created large artwork, but I didn't want to use the same patterns that they did because they're so meaningful to them.

I also grew up in India and I had a lot of the patterns in the ceramics and the saris that they wear So, I think all of those helped me create a bright, colorful, lots of ethnic designs But I had so many patterns in them that they sort of made people's eyes go crazy and mine too.

And so over time, I've started adding more texture and then larger fields of color where people are able to rest their eyes a little bit more.

Going to see Van Gogh's Museum in Amsterdam really changed everything because he has so much texture in his paintings.

And so that changed the way that I paint.

I add a lot more texture to things.

>>With stones and glass, both of which are either found or created in her kilns, Melissa has evolved from mainly doing animals to subjects that involve social change and figurative works.

Melissa: There are more calls for art that are asking for three-dimensional work, I went to Spain, and I saw Gaudi's mosaic work and just thought, oh, I would love to do that.

And so, I learned how to do mosaics because of Gaudi, really.

People always think that when I paint women and they're me.

And that's probably just because that's what I see every day in the mirror.

But most of the mermaids, I would say are probably me because I feel like I am a mermaid sometimes because I spend so much time and I'm so comfortable in water, it feels like another home to me when I get in there.

I started doing murals in Spokane, I think in 2009 with at risk youth.

And we did six different walls in the railroad underpasses.

But I've gone on to work in schools and libraries.

>>By sharing her talents and knowledge, Melissa has created opportunities for young people to learn from an artist and to help her create art, including student created wood panels of mixed media art in Anchorage Alaska, to performing as an artist in residency in Coeur d'Alene Idaho, guiding elementary students in the creation of an exterior mural.

More recently, she helped Tapteal Elementary students create panels of mixed media art throughout their school in Richland Washington, while working for the Washington State Arts Commission and the Richland School District.

Melissa: It was just really fun, so now they have 27 different panels that go throughout the school, and it's part of the Yakima River ecosystem.

I got to see the kids again, and they just love doing it.

And they all say, I did that flower, and I did that rock, and I don't know if they know which ones they did, but it's really meaningful for people to be a part of that.

And so that's one type of artwork that I'm definitely going to continue doing.

I think people see different things when they see artwork.

I want them to be surprised and to stop and actually look at the artwork, "These are all the things that send me down the rabbit hole" and I don't want everything to be happy, happy, but I do like it to be uplifting.

I like it to make people feel some sort of way, I just want them to stop for a second and actually look at it.

And on that note it's time to drop the curtain on this edition of Northwest Profiles with the guarantee of more to come next month on the final episode of season 35.

Until then, this is Lynn Veltrie saying so long and keep in mind, the beauty of living here in the Inland Northwest and western Canada is the fact there's always something to see and do so get out there, and when you do, take time to enjoy the view.