Two Artists in a Tiny House

Nov 30, 2013 | People

[title subtitle=”story: Marla Cantrell | images: Jeromy Price”][/title]

In a house that’s only 700 square feet, in a town that’s yet to surpass the 400 mark in population, two artists with big ideas are settling in. Not long ago Dianna and Allen Price were living in Amarillo, in a much larger house. And in that house were many things. Letting go of most of it opened up their world, clearing a way for a much different life.

Dianna talks about the process inside her immaculate little home. She stands near the counter Allen made, a beautiful work of sheet metal and wood that separates the kitchen from the living room, where a handcrafted cedar bench made by a local artist sits near a handmade rocker they brought with them from Texas. And everywhere is art. One of Allen’s specialties is lamps. Several of his pieces light their home, one with two wooden boxes fitted one atop the other to serve as the shade. Dianna’s paintings show up in almost every room.

Most of her work is done in acrylics. She likes to get messy with it, dipping her fingers in paint and doing away with the brush at times. In one piece you can see the way she’s used this technique to get Albert Einstein’s hair just right. “There’s no other way to paint Einstein,” she says.
In other works, she uses pages of her journals, cut into pieces, and affixes them to the canvas and then paints over them. That’s one of the great joys of her work, to have these hidden bits of her life used as the foundation of a painting, even though the words don’t show through.

All the way back in junior high, her dream was to paint. But then a school counselor took her aside and told her she might starve as an artist, and suggested drafting or engineering as an alternative. She listened, becoming a draftsman. But later she changed course, getting her nursing degree and working in surgery. She then when back to school to get her Master’s in counseling so that she could serve as the emergency mental health counselor at a Texas hospital.

During that time she worked and worked and worked. “You were there at the hospital for as long as you needed to be,” Dianna says. “It didn’t matter what the clock said. If you had patients in crisis, you stayed. I remember Allen coming by, actually coming to the hospital to make sure I was okay, because he couldn’t believe I’d been there so long.”

While Dianna was gaining experience in the medical field, Allen was finding his own footing. He’d been a ditch digger, a draftsman, an engineer, a radiation safety technician, and finally, a scientist in charge of disposing of hazardous wastes. “About every ten years I’d try something else,” Allen says.

As they talk about their life in Amarillo, the two often finish each other’s sentence. Their dog, Lulu, is nearby, watching the two, wagging her tail. Outside, the songbirds sing and the last leaves of fall flutter to the ground.

It is a picturesque setting, the small house with the red roof, their studio just across the way, where they make everything from tiny clay birds to herbal soaps to great works of art.

But their story takes a somber turn when they talk about their daughter, Mel. Dianna describes her, talking about how skinny she was, her grand fashion sense. Mel was shimmering, beautiful, bright. She’s also the reason Dianna ended up, finally, as a grief counselor.

“We lost our daughter in 2004, after a five-year battle with cancer. She was twenty,” Dianna says. “A counselor friend of mine told me something one day when the loss was pretty new. I said, ‘I guess I’m going to be an expert at grief now.’ And she looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘That’s a gift Mel gave to you.’

“At first I didn’t know if I could do it,” Dianna says. “But then it hit me, either people turn from God or they get more spiritual when something catastrophic happens. For me, I felt like she was closer and God was really, really close. And so I did it. I became a grief counselor.

“When I buried my child – she was my only one – I buried all those grandchildren with her, pretty much. That was the end. It feels like ‘game over’ once the shock lets up. Once the grief lifts just a little bit you wonder how you’re going to find your worth again.

“I started painting about six months after my daughter died. We were sitting at a restaurant and this young gal had this art show with big, bold paintings. I thought, I might be able to do this. My background helped. My family made everything. Dad made our furniture. Mom made our clothes. We always made gifts.

“I went to Hobby Lobby where these little gray-haired ladies teach you to paint for twenty dollars. They were so sweet and so non-intimidating. I needed that. I then took workshops with bold, contemporary artists.

“Painting helped. You’re just lost. You don’t know what to do with that energy that was spent on another human being. You don’t want to go hang out with other moms because they’re always talking about their daughter getting married, or their son graduating from college, and it just breaks your heart.”
At the same time, Allen was so low he didn’t have the energy to do much of anything. He’d sit and stare at the TV. He’d fall into books. And as Dianna watched, she knew he needed to get up. “I told him he needed to be doing something. He was this great welder, builder. He could do anything. We went and got these industrial parts and started making these funky lamps.

“And I painted and painted and painted, creating a new reality because I didn’t like my own. We got hooked up with a batch of artists working out of a mall that had closed down in Amarillo. You go to this mall and all the little stores are artists’ studios, and we were practically living there. We’d be there in the middle of the night. People were smoking and drinking and making art all night. Giving really blunt observations about the art. And when you got it right, they’d say, ‘That works. Walk away.’ It was a whole different world, and I needed to recreate my world.”

The two – married for more than thirty years – held onto one another, working their way through the worst time of their lives. Their art was gaining momentum. They started thinking about their future, about the big house and all the things they owned. Allen was retiring early, and that gave them the opportunity to consider other places. They’d come to Winslow periodically for Allen’s family reunions. His mother was born in this tiny town. They loved the hills, they loved the seasons changing. And so they decided to move. They began giving away things from their homes, even artwork. They bought the house they live in now, which had been home to a single mother and her brood of children for decades. It didn’t even have an indoor bathroom until the seventies.

The move, sixteen months ago, opened up their lives. They transformed the little house, filling it with color and light. They started selling their art at Ozark Folkways not far from their house. Now, on Saturdays, they meet downtown at the tiny mercantile that also turns into a coffee shop on Saturday mornings only. Their group of eclectic friends talks about art and books, and many belong to a drum circle. The leader of the group is planning a trip to Africa with Dianna and Allen, and several of the other members, in the near future.

Dianna can’t wait. She’s never been across the ocean. And Africa, for years and years, has been her dream. As she’s telling the story, the UPS truck rumbles up and leaves a large brown box. Dianna can’t wait to open it. Inside there is a broad fork, which looks like a giant metal fork, its tines spaced far apart. Dianna pulls the fork from the box and demonstrates how it works, how it pierces the earth and turns it over, so much better than a tiller, she says. It is another love of this couple, the opportunity to work the earth, to plant vegetables and herbs and flowers.

Allen smiles at his wife, happy to see her so happy. It’s been a good, long marriage, full of love, filled with hope. And the best is still ahead, just over the horizon, in a little town called Winslow.

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To see Dianna and Allen’s artwork, visit, claybirdgoods.com. You can contact them at claybirdgoods@gmail.com, if you’d like to schedule a visit to their gift shop/studio.

Many of their pieces are at Ozark Folkways at 22733 North Highway 71 in Winslow. ozarkfolkways.com.

Do South Magazine

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