A social connection and a mental stimulus; two things art offers and two things that can help lead to a prolonged, healthy life.
This is what Ethel “Tink” Landers found out once she took over as the arts coordinator for fellow residents at Sunrise Terrace Mobile Home Park in Arroyo Grande. The park is for residents 55 years and older.
“My goal is just to stimulate more people,” she said. “We have some terrific artists in the park.”
Before she found herself living in what she describes as the “blue zone” of the Central Coast, Landers owned an art studio on a 1-acre property in Nipomo. At Tink’s Art Studio, she often encouraged community members to express themselves through art.
Once she moved to Sunrise Terrace, she focused on doing the same.
It began with a weekly Thursday art class to help get residents out of their homes and connect with one another to build community, she said. Like any new project, it started off slowly but steadily gained momentum as residents found excitement in expressing their inner child.
“We all had art in us when we were 5 years old, and I love to do a class where I say, ‘OK we’re all going to go back to being 5 years old,'” Landers said. “I do it at the big table and get big pieces of paper and lots of bright colors and I turn on some jazzy music. People do it, and it’s great.”
With artists slowly emerging in the community, it seemed like a good time for Landers to take over their small exhibition and turn it into something a little bigger.
Soon Hyatt Hall Gallery at the park was filled with a variety of art. Watercolor paintings, oil paintings, and textiles drape the walls, and every couple of months Landers changes up the theme of the gallery and puts up new art work. She said it’s helped to give residents a newfound purpose.
“Willow Dean Counts is 90 years old, and she can’t get out of her home easily. I went to her, and I said, ‘May I take these and show them publicly?’ And she was honored,” she said. “So, she had a birthday party about a month or so later and she had all of her relatives, and one of her 30-year-old grandsons says, ‘Grandma, I didn’t know you painted. Will you paint me something?’ And it lifted her heart and spirit.”
The gallery is currently hosting the work of Landers’ brother Bob Lahr, who recently passed away. His Western-style paintings hang alongside holiday- and nature-themed work from mobile home park residents.
Landers said she’s thankful to Hyatt Hall Gallery for giving her the opportunity to showcase Lahr’s work to other residents and visitors of Sunrise Terrace.
As soon as residents walk into the gallery, they’re greeted with Ready to Ride, a large painting of a cowboy in his worn blue jeans, with his large belt buckle and a rope held tightly in his hand as he leans against a wooden post. It’s one of the last remaining paintings in Lahr’s Western series, Landers said.
“Wherever he would go, if something touched his heart, he’d take a photograph and then he would start drawing from that,” she said.
Accompanying Lahr’s work is an interactive portrait of a peacock, a painting of a picturesque small town during the first snow of the Christmas season, and Landers’ own ceramic tile of a tree that she attached to a piece of old Nipomo oak.
“I met a young man who was tearing down one of the old barns in this area and I said, ‘Can I have some of that wood?’ And he gave me some of these pieces,” she said. “So, my inspiration was just that I love the tactile quality of the fact that you’ve got wood, you’ve got clay, you’ve got the glaze of the color, and it’s kind of a tribute to the tree.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Samantha Herrera at sherrera@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Year in Review 2024.