Honored for three decades of innovational leadership to the Island County Fair, now known as the Whidbey Island Area Fair & Carnival, as well as supporting the island’s arts community, Diane Divelbess was chosen for this year’s Fair parade Grand Marshal.
Celebrating her 90th birthday June 21, Divelbess’s art legacy was on display for the month of June at the Frank Rose Uprise Gallery in the South Whidbey Community Center. A revolving gallery of her prolific art career is showcased at her home now through September. Her art is for sale. Her book “A Lifetime of Art” details the evolution of being an artist, and is for sale at her home gallery.
As a leader of the Island County Fair Association for many years, Divelbess served as the fair association president, a role which found her overseeing all non-4-H animal and agricultural exhibits, plus all other fair entries and entertainment. She also served 16 years as exhibit superintendent of Fine Arts, several years with Adult and Junior Arts and Crafts, Quilts and educational programs. She streamlined and expanded the exhibits so that the experience would be a pleasure for the artist and the viewing public alike.
“As an artist people want their art exhibited properly,” said Divelbess. “They’re happy if the exhibit looks good and makes them look good. At the time the art was housed where Outcast Theater is now. What I did was paint the walls so they looked cleaner and I used a sort of color that was slightly aqua greenish. One lady artist was very upset, saying all galleries are white. I said that’s true, but with museums there is one color followed by another in the next room. I particularly wanted to cover up the marks on the walls.”
Expanding the Fine Arts categories from beginner to professional, Divelbess said the move increased interest in submitting work. What this did was open up ways for young people, neurodiverse artists and professional artists to submit their work at their level of talent.
“A professional entry was a person not under instruction and capable of giving instruction or had been in a professional gallery,” said Divelbess regarding criteria she created for professional artists. “To be in the beginning side of the displays was not an insult. It meant that you will be judged fairly. You wouldn’t want to be judged as professional. You have a better chance to get a blue ribbon in this category.”
As a former member of the Whidbey Island Arts Council, Divelbess knew there was a lot of talent whose art was not being submitted to the fair. How to give these artists incentive? Perhaps promise them a gallery showing following the fair?
“I thought OK…I wracked my brain,” recalled Divelbess. “Our local galleries are scheduled two years in advance. You can’t pop in to Museo or Rob Schouten’s galleries and say, ‘…excuse me, do you have an opening for a week?’”
So she contacted the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts and found it was receptive to hosting the best of the fair’s Fine Art entries. The arrangement has been ongoing a number of years.
“I make selections from the fair and they will be exhibited at the WICA gallery September and October,” said Divelbess. “I’ve been doing that quite a few years. I get a kick out of it.”
Divelbess, a retired faculty at Cal Poly Pomona who chaired its art department for eight years, is also a painter and printmaker. She has a keen interest in promoting the talent of neurodiverse artists and spoke about expanding the fair’s Fine Arts program to include our island’s sometimes overlooked population.
“The other thing I liked to do was encourage our neurodiverse adults,” said Divelbess. “I love them and many take art classes from Carol Way in Oak Harbor. She’s a fabulous artist. Her teaching motto is ‘…art is the way.’ People come to her to learn creativity. Students adore her and she adores them. I encouraged Carol to have her artists enter. When I displayed their work it was in the beginning and intermediate sections.”
How did Divelbess become involved with the Whidbey Island Fair? It started when she observed a misunderstanding involving the food booth for Democrats on the fair’s midway. It was a presidential election year.
Some kids who were acting students from the Whidbey Children’s Theatre took Democrat party candidate posters and sat on picnic tables across from the Republican Party ice cream booth waving and taunting the Republicans. The word spread, painting the Democrats as not playing fair.
“It got in the paper that the Democrats were not good sports and were sending the kids over to taunt Republicans,” said Divelbess. “The Democrats had nothing to do with it. Then, there was a bunch of angry people at the next fair board meeting. They decided to vote that no political parties with a food booth could have literature, but could pay $200 for a table out back to distribute their agenda.”
So Divelbess decided to get involved with the fair.
“I got active…I’ve always loved fairs,” she said. “As a kid I loved them. We went to the Arizona State Fair when I lived in Phoenix.”
Later, as a high school teacher in California, she worked at the Los Angeles County Fair to earn summer money to supplement her income.
“At the time we were paid for only for nine months of teaching,” recalled Divelbess. “The summers were hard. You had to save enough to get through with no pay check. The hardest was September. Pay came after you worked for a month. In order to get through September I worked for the LA County Fair refurbishing signs and murals, usually in an agricultural building featuring grapes, vines, grasses and grains. Then I come up here. Yay bo! Island County Fair, complete with parade and food booths.”
Along with other changes made to improve the quality of the fair’s exhibits, Divelbess also bought a pottery wheel and kiln, and invited a pair of out of town teachers to teach clay work at the fairs.
At the new Pottery Shack, the fair offered youngsters an opportunity to learn how to work with clay.
“At first I brought in a high school teacher from Oak Harbor and his students to throw pots,” said Divelbess. “It was as a demo to watch a potter throw pots. Eventually I found an unused Food Booth on the other side of the midway and moved in. I had seen online ads for a pottery wheel for sale and a small electric kiln. I bought all that. During the off season, I cleaned it up. We had a special 250 amp panel installed. We had a teacher available to teach folks how to try their hand at centering a pot to make a bowl. Kids worked with a wad of clay and made figures. We told them to leave them and we’d fire them up and they could pick up their clay piece after the fair. That was a big hit.”
She encouraged the Super 17 entry which was created by Tarey Kay—where folks entered all 17 categories from jellies and jams to baked goods and fine arts. A Super 14 category was also created by Chef Christyn Johnson for younger kids. Divelbess said this increased interest in fair participation. Through this work she learned from judges that in the preserved veggie category for instance, preserved asparagus had to be uniform in size and have the exact right level of paraffin to seal the jar.
Working with two different fair managers, Divelbess appreciated what she learned from Carol Coble—who retired two years ago—and Sandey Brandon who preceded Coble.
In a letter recalling her long friendship and work with Divelbess, Brandon noted: “Diane’s tenure as president of the Fair Association was marked by grace and fortitude through many years and many trials. Her smart, inquisitive nature and her ability to think both critically and intuitively have been invaluable. Diane colors outside the lines, viewing chaos with a refreshing calm that is soothing to those around her.”
Brandon and Divelbess took many a road trip together participating in the annual State Fairs conventions.
“Fun fun fun and busy busy busy,” recalled Divelbess. “Like any convention there are meet and greets and the vendors are there who want you to hire them for your commercial building, and the carnival representatives are there.”
Of the road trips, Brandon recalled: “Her brilliant conversational skills made the miles melt away, and her ability to ‘hurkle-durkle,’ a term meaning to linger in bed, added a touch of humor to our travels.”
So, look for Diane Divelbess as she is Grand Marshal of this year’s parade July 26th at 10 AM. To learn more about her current art exhibit and book, contact her spouse Grethe Cammermeyer at grethe@whidbey.com.