‘Art is life’ for this Yucaipa resident
As Anita Six was growing up, she shared her mother’s interests in arts and crafts. This extended to repurposing things put out as garbage by others, sewing quilts and interior design. The two would often go to model home openings to gather ideas.
Six followed her own artistic curiosity during elementary school, which led to making such creations as mechanical pulleys and spray painted macaroni on cans. In first grade she was in her first art show. She began designing dress patterns in junior high. That is also when she began seriously taking art classes. Her love of the arts expanded into papier-mache, window dressing, clay and photography.
“I love photography,” said Six, who recently moved from Riverside to Yucaipa. “My preference has always been medium and large format. I could spend hours in the dark room. I like digital, but my preference is film, which is not so easy to do these days.”
Six began studying at UC San Diego, but took an extended break to attend cosmetology school. She became an esthetician in Los Angeles, where she also took a floral design certificate course. Over the years, she attended photography classes at community colleges in Marin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Riverside.
In 2009, Six began attending UC Riverside. She graduated in 2012 with a dual major in studio art and sociology.
Since 2013, she has served as the senior art coordinator with Art Works, a program of RI International that uses the arts as a tool in working with individuals who have been diagnosed with mental health challenges. In their downtown Riverside gallery and educational space, they offer free classes in a variety of art forms, including watercolor, acrylic painting, poetry and quilling.
“Being creative helps people get out of their heads,” said Six. “Using the creative arts for recovery empowers people by giving them independence. They make something that they have control over. It is ownership and pride in something that they created.”
That is what led Six to create an artist spotlight wall, she said, where people can choose a favorite piece to display.
“People like to be validated,” she said. “It is something that many with mental health and substance abuse challenges have lost connection with. For me, it is personally rewarding when someone comes in that is depressed and has been feeling invisible, ends up facilitating a class a short time later. A giant win, for sure.”
Six went on to talk about participants who have found that their new confidence has given them the courage to submit for art exhibits or audition for plays. Some have begun selling their pieces, while others have gotten jobs or enrolled in college with the goal of becoming art teachers.
Six remembers well the feeling of when she sold a photo at the Riverside Art Museum’s “Off the Wall” exhibit and fundraiser. And she remembers how it felt to have a solo show in the campus gallery while at UC Riverside and to be in the undergraduate art show at the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts. She knows the power that the arts can have and is happy to play a role in providing opportunities for vulnerable people.
“The arts enhance a community by bringing people and diverse cultures together,” she said. “Art is life. It brings color, spirit and joy to our collective canvas.”