Avenoso named Arts Council’s artist of the month
The Bella Vista Arts Council is pleased to honor fine artist Jae Avenoso as the March 2022 featured artist.
Avenoso will be honored at a public reception from 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, March 17, in the Community Room at the Bella Vista Library located at 11 Dickens Place.
Avenoso is originally from rural South Dakota and had the good fortune of her family moving to sunny Florida when she was 5 years old. It was then she discovered drawing and became obsessed with putting images on paper. She told everyone that would listen that she would grow up to be an artist.
One summer, Avenoso received an oil paint kit while visiting relatives in South Dakota. At 15 years of age and without any instruction, she painted three farm landscapes for her relatives.
She finally took art classes while in high school. The classes covered a wide range of basic skills but never painting, so Avenoso instead took up crafting. She dove into sewing, knitting, crochet, origami, macramé, needlepoint, cross stitch and more. These crafts were a wonderful outlet but never satisfied her desire to become an artist.
Later in life in 1990, after marrying and having a son, Avenoso’s family left Florida and moved to 80 acres on the Kings River south of Eureka Springs, where they started a massage therapy school in Fayetteville and tourist rental cabins on the Kings River.
Avenoso began taking stock of her life and pursuing spiritual growth. She unburdened herself in 2005 from her given name Janet that she never liked and started going by Jae. In addition, that indwelling desire to become an artist burst into expression.
Since that time, Avenoso has been taking drawing and painting classes. She has experimented with ink, acrylics and watercolor, and then settled into painting with oils.
They later moved to Bella Vista in 2013.
She has participated in numerous art shows and art fairs, showing and selling her art, and won Best of Show in Holiday Island with her painting “Day Is Done.” She is a member of Artists of Northwest Arkansas and Plein Air Painters of Eureka Springs. She continues to study oil painting with Timothy Tyler at Studio 7 in Rogers, Ark.
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The Bella Vista Arts Council, an advisory board to the City Council, was created by the City Council in February 2016 to help promote the arts in Bella Vista. Board members are Demara Titzer (president) and Shelli Kerr, with one board vacancy. The board established an Artist of the Month program, in which selected artists and their work will be showcased and recognized for their achievements.
A committee will choose each month from qualified artists, who must be residents of Bella Vista. Events will be held in a location around the city. Submit nominations via email to artscouncil@bellavistaar. gov.