Governor's Gallery
Phillis Ballew
Country Roads & Country Schools
June 28 thru August 27, 2004
Raised
in the wheat and cattle country of western Oklahoma, artist Phillis
Ballew was always sketching imaginary scenes around her family farm.
During college she took oil painting classes but after visiting the
gallery of Vern Hippensteal in the Great Smoky Mountains watercolor
became her major medium.
When she and husband Dan moved from place to place it seemed natural to capture the colors of each region. “The Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee seemed made for watercolor painting, but so did the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Yosemite and Mt. Lassen provided boundless material,” said Ballew. While living at Ukiah, California, Ballew joined the Society of Western Artists in San Francisco and showed at the Mendocino Art Center and the Renaissance Gallery of Ukiah.
A move to Scottsdale presented its own challenges and oil painting
was added because the air was so dry. Ballew was juried into the Arizona
Watercolor Association where she obtained highest honors. Scottsdale
Art School made it possible to study with Wilson Hurley, James Reynolds,
Irving Shapiro and William Reese. She became a regular artist at the
Gold Nugget Gallery in Wickenburg and the Windrush Gallery in Sedona.
Now back home in Oklahoma, Ballew paints the scenes she knew as a child and has captured the essence of the country roads and the one-room schoolhouses that once dotted the state.
Over a two year period, Ballew searched and interviewed students and
teachers who were connected to those one-room country schools in Ellis
County with names like Ivanhoe, Welcome, Lone Bell, Sand Draw and Mt.
Hope.
Ballew’s studio, Wide Skies Gallery, is located on the 2nd floor of a restored grainery on a farm two miles west of Shattuck established by her grandparents in 1903. “In the early years, my grandfather, O.G. Gibbs, taught at Ivanhoe and Hembel schools and rode his saddle horse to school each day. My dad, being just school age, rode along on a donkey.”
The artist said that the Oklahoma winds offer a different challenge. “The
sunlight and shadows that float across our land and rise in the color
of the clouds are so beautiful. Add a small ranch house and a couple
of cattle or a hawk and you’ve just captured something unique
to this wide land.”
About the country schools of Ellis County:
Most of the Ellis County country schools no longer exist. They were built to fill a need for education from before statehood in 1907, continuing into the 1940s. Usually school houses were located about every three or four miles apart so the children could walk or ride horses to reach them. They were stretched from the far northern end of the county clear down to lovely little Lone Bell almost on the Canadian River.
It quickly became apparent that photographs from those days were only of the classes lined up beside the building and their pictures snapped showing very little of the school house itself. So I began talking with early day students and teachers. And, oh, the memories and tales that came from those conversations. The stories were the best part of this two-year search. It was surprising to me that several of the students reported that they played croquet. One teacher (who is now 94) remembers buying the croquet set from funds raised by a “prettiest girl” contest. Students had no trouble remembering the playground equipment and where the potbellied stove sat and even whether the chimney was brick or just a stovepipe!
About a half-dozen of these buildings have survived as garages or storage sheds. I’ve taken liberty with the Beum school in that it was not originally red as it is today. But otherwise, these ink & watercolor renderings are as close to historically correct as possible.
–Phillis Ballew, Feburary 2004
Sponsored by the Oklahoma Arts Council. For more information contact Scott Cowan or Karen Sharp at 405.521.2931 or scott@arts.ok.gov
Past Governor's Gallery Exhibits