Catching up with 4 artists and their creations

It’s always a pleasure talking with artists about their projects, but it’s especially nice to check in after a few years and hear about continuing growth and new directions.

- Susan Lagsdin

The current professional lives of these four, profiled in The Good Life in between 2010 and 2015, remind us that successfully making art in the Wenatchee Valley area, especially in this last perplexing year, takes a combination of love, labor, luck and a whole lot of creative talent.

Here’s wishing a good New Year to all our area artists!

Ana Marie Spagna’s current sojourn teaching writing in upstate New York lets her sample the hiking in older, gentler mountains than those surrounding her Stehekin home.

ANA MARIA SPAGNA

‘I’m lucky to be in a place that feels new during an era when others are feeling very stuck’

Ana Maria Spagna learned to love the mountains from her work for the Forest Service and the Park Service.

She writes from (and often about) Stehekin, where she’s lived since a summer job in 1990 turned into a home, a marriage, a new career and a lifetime.

In a The Good Life interview nine years ago, she avowed her appreciation of Stehekin’s solitude but said, “Sometimes I envy big city writers who can attend readings or workshops or just meet at a coffee shop anonymously. Most days, it’s just me and the keyboard.”

By then she’d written three books and several short essays in anthologies and journals, and it was clear that she and her keyboard were doing well.

Ana Maria successfully ventured from her home, leading writing workshops in Wenatchee and for the Whidbey Island Writers Program, but after earning an MFA, she went farther afield and taught at Whitman College for a year where she found, “I really loved teaching writing to college students in person.”