Some people create art for a living and others are living works of art.
Dawn Shute is the latter.
Shute carries the philosophy that you should dare to be different in your clothing and in your life, that you have to be satisfied with yourself and in what you create. She also carries a denim handbag that she created from a pair of old jeans, and glammed up with some glitz and color.
Shute is an artist who revels in what she does. Dressed in a brightly colored pink scarf and a pair of jeans reborn as a skirt with flourish, Shute makes a bold statement while still looking soft and feminine.
A mixed-media artist, she creates art from almost anything, which is apropos because she sees art in everything. Struggling to explain where her inspiration comes from Shute said, “I see things differently than most people, I’ve trained my eye to see things differently.”
That vision comes from her father, who restored cars when Shute was a child.
“He’d take a piece of rusting junk and restore it to this beautiful car,” she said. “So you learn to see something for what it could be.”
But seeing isn’t everything. Many of her favorite pieces appeal to Shute emotionally, according to what is going on in her life at the moment.
“I have pieces that are really light and whimsical and I have really dark pieces,” she said.
With the exception of some workshops here or there, Shute is completely self-taught.
She learned to sew when she was a child. Her mother taught her in the second grade how to sew aprons for Christmas gifts. The skill led to a lifelong love of textiles. Shute regularly redecorated her room and even made her own clothes in high school.
Though she works with everything from rubber stamps to mosaics, to watercolor, and fiber art, Shute still loves working with textiles, enjoying the feel and sound of fabric. Creating something new from an old piece of fabric is the ultimate in recycling, she said.
Though she finds inspiration all around her, Shute said she does admire and find ideas from the work of local artists like Dale Cornwell, who does collage work, and Caroline Reid, who works in watercolor. And, of course, her family is also a major inspiration. Shute’s husband is also an artist, her older son is a musician, his girlfriend is an artist, and her youngest son is a welder. They all inspire each other in their work, Shute said.
But regardless of what she’s working on or what she’s working with, it’s the process that counts.
“It’s all just play, you just play with something until you get something that’s finished,” she said.
It also provides some serious healing.
“It’s my therapy, I just put it all out there and I have pieces some people think are beautiful and some that people don’t like, but I do it for me,” she said.
But many people do like Shute’s work. Her art has appeared in several publications and she’s held several exhibitions at places like Town Center Gallery, Allan Hancock College, Tobin James Winery, and the San Luis Obispo Art Center. In 2005 she was featured in the HGTV show That’s Clever.
Shute lives with her husband on six acres outside of Orcutt. Her small house is colorful in paint and design. She said her home, her yard, and her life make up her canvas. In that respect, her art takes on a freedom of its own. There are no white walls, and color is everywhere. She has large ornamental art in her yard and scattered art materials in her house. Her outdoor studio is just as colorful outside as it is inside. The floor of her home has paint paw prints from when her cats got into the paint and ran across the floor.
“I could have cleaned it off, but found that I liked it,” she said.
The paw prints have now become part of the eclectic mix of art and joy and color that makes up Shute’s environment.
Now that her youngest son has recently left for boot camp and she and her husband have the ranch to themselves, Shute will have more time to devote to her art and to the idea that her life will always be ever-changing because of Shute’s other philosophy: “It’s just paint, you can change it.”
INFO: You can find more about Shute and her artwork at www.screamingdovestudio.blogspot.com
Arts Editor Shelly Cone paints by number. She can be reached at scone@santamaria sun.com.
This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2008.