Crossing the Bridge to North Idaho's Artist Hamlet
by linda Hagen Miller
I came across that bridge 15 years ago and it was magic,” Barbara Janusz beamed. “The water, the mountains. There was such a special feeling.”
The accomplished watercolorist and world traveler had driven north from California looking for a new place to set up her easel. She wanted a town high on scenic stimuli and low on people, but one with a sense of community and love of the arts. She found it 60 miles south of the Canadian border in Sandpoint, Idaho.
“That bridge” sets the stage for this community. But even before you cross the expanse, you are primed for something special. Highway 95 transports you out of Coeur d’Alene (North Idaho’s premier resort town), past strip malls and chain stores into quieter, gentler vistas where the highway narrows to two lanes framed by wide, pastoral meadows. In a nano-second, you drive through towns like Careywood and Cocolalla, so tiny you wonder why they’re named.
Then with no warning, you’re on “that bridge” crossing the north curve of Lake Pend Oreille (Pon-duh-ray). In the two miles and few minutes it takes to traverse Long Bridge—a utilitarian concrete span that looks like a causeway and feels like a budget shortfall—you get a hint of the area’s wonders. Forty-three-mile-long Lake Pend Oreille, one of the deepest in the West and surely one of the prettiest, is flanked by the Cabinet and Selkirk mountains, their evergreen foothills sashaying along the water like voluminous skirts. Sandpoint, current population just over 8,000, lies at the end of Long Bridge, and there isn’t a high-rise in sight.
Wander into Sandpoint during the hot and happy lake days of summer as Barbara Janusz did 15 years ago, and you might be tempted to stay. But here’s a better idea: cross Long Bridge when the mountains wear snowy shawls and most of the visitors are skiers and snowboarders heading 11 miles up the hill to Schweitzer Mountain Ski Resort.
Locals have been trying to keep Schweitzer a secret for the past decade, but the mountain’s 300 inches of annual snowfall, 82 trails, 2,400-foot vertical drop and views of Lake Pend Oreille draw visitors from around the country. In the past decade, condos, lodges and high-speed quads have ratcheted Schweitzer’s image up a few notches, but locals hold their own here and you’re more likely to see kids in well-worn parkas than la-de-da skiers with expensive gear and coordinated outfits.
Below the mountain, winter is slow season in Sandpoint and the perfect time to wander the tidy town and poke into shops and art galleries. If you hit Timber Stand Gallery on Cedar Street, the man who offers to tell you about the paintings and sculptures is apt to be owner Jim Quinn.
Quinn and his wife Mickey are Sandpoint two-timers. Originally from the East Coast, the couple spent four years working for Sandpoint-headquartered Coldwater Creek. The phenomenally successful women’s clothing company had humble beginnings in off-the-beaten-track Sandpoint in 1984, growing from a catalog sales outfit with a single phone line to 300 stores and 10,000 employees throughout the United States. When you read Coldwater Creek’s catalog apparel descriptions (“…Moon shadowed blossoms meander across midnight matte jersey knit...”), you can’t help but believe the Sandpoint-based copywriters are inspired daily by the beauty surrounding their 20-acre corporate campus.
The Quinns moved back east when their children were small to be closer to family but boomeranged to Sandpoint six years ago.
“We missed Sandpoint and wanted to live in a tight-knit community, someplace safe, a good place to raise kids,” Jim said. Mickey went back to Coldwater Creek and Jim made a complete career change from corporate America to art gallery owner.
“Now I’m 10 minutes from work,” Jim said. “The kids love it here; we’ve got the beach, golf, skiing and a very supportive arts community.”
That support is evidenced by the quality and number of galleries in town, Sandpoint’s thriving Panida Theatre, an aggressive arts council and a remarkable number of visual and performing arts event throughout the year.
The nearly 30-year-old Pend Oreille Arts Council (POAC) spearheads an agenda of performance and visual arts programs that would put a much larger city to shame. Ballet, bluegrass and more punctuate POAC’s calendar, and many events target the area’s school children. When funding cuts stripped Idaho schools of their art curriculum, local art instructors approached POAC to help with an outreach program. Thanks to POAC’s leadership and 56 volunteers, Kaleidoscope is still going strong, reaching over 1,000 third through sixth grades in Bonner and Pend Oreille counties.
Even the local hospital, Bonner County General, has an artistic side with approximately 300 pieces of original art gracing hallways, patient rooms and offices.
“Patients love it,” sid Nikki Luttman, the hospital’s community relations director. She knows of only one other hospital in the country that has such an ambitious commitment to local art.
It’s a reflection of the community’s mindset. Some 20 galleries are scattered about Sandpoint’s 6.8 square miles, and uncrowded winter is the perfect time to immerse yourself in the variety and talent of Northwest artists.
ArtWorks Gallery on First Avenue will give you a perfect feel for the abundance of regional talent. The skills, quirks and passions of 40 artists are on display in a variety of media. Sandpoint’s snowy weather will tempt you to indulge in an original Sue Kohut scarf or shawl. From Lake Fiber Ranch overlooking Lake Pend Oreille and Sandpoint, Kohut raises and shears alpacas, then cleans, cards, dyes, spins and weaves their wool into her snuggly creations. Leata Judd’s personality-packed paper mache figures are modeled after friends, family and herself. Hands of Time could be a self-portrait of the elderly artist and Moose Head Husband leaves little to the imagination. Mary Alderete refashions scrap metal, old cars, appliances and buses into whimsical metal sculptures and lamps that have made their way to the homes and yards of visitors as close as Spokane and as far away as South America. Dozens of other artists show off their work in the bright and inviting gallery.
Across the street at Hallans, winter—and much more—is captured in Ross Hall’s evocative black-and-white photography. Hall lived in Sandpoint from 1931 until his death in 1990, drawing inspiration for nature and wildlife photography from the lake and surrounding mountains. Hall’s Forest Christening, an image of snow ghosts (the jumbled, Sasquatch-looking formations created when snow collects on trees) appeared in the New York Times in 1933 and elevated winter mountain photography to an art form.
Today Hall’s son Dann runs Hallans and creates black and white prints of his father’s intuitive work. Look for Great Notions and try to guess how the resting “river pigs” made their living.
Dann Hall was born and raised in Sandpoint, but like most small-town teens, couldn’t wait to get out. Austria, Vail and Sun Valley called the young ski bum but after a dozen years of seasonal zip code changes and stints as a smoke jumper and travel photographer, Sandpoint called the loudest.
“I love it here,” he said. “Sandpoint is full of great musicians and artists—most of them are hiding in the hills.”
Whenever Sandpoint’s venerated Panida Theater issues a casting call, however, those performing artists come in from the countryside and neighborhoods to audition. Regional patrons have, against all odds, kept the 550-seat movie and performing arts house alive for decades. This month the gracious lady turns 80.
In the late 1920s, Sandpoint was a lumber and railroad boomtown of 4,000 when theater builder and patron Frank C. Weskil decided it was just the spot for his premier vaudeville and talkie theater. Weskil ordered plush velvet seats, a pipe organ, gilded murals and state-of-the-art lighting while supervising construction of the Spanish Mission style building from a perch on a wooden crate. He named it the Panida, combining PANhandle of IDAho, and opened its doors in the fall of 1927. The Panida quickly bested its two competitors and became Sandpoint’s premier theater.
The regional economic downturn of the 1970s was tough on the Panida and by the 80s, demolition was on the horizon. No way, thought three Sandpoint women. At their rallying call, the community raised $40,000 in four months, enough to stave off the wrecking ball. Fundraising continued and the Panida reopened in 1985. Today it is on the National Register of Historic Places and hosts live concerts, art, independent and foreign films an average of 170 nights a year. Audiences from around the region pack the house for shows that range from Bonnie Raitt to Wynton Marsalis to the San Francisco Opera.
A theater, galleries, and plethora of annual arts events draw locals and tourists into town—a sure-fire combination to support restaurants, wine bars and boutiques. Starbucks is the only chain operation to make inroads into downtown Sandpoint; all the rest are locally owned.
Obviously, despite its far-and-away location, Sandpoint is not an isolated, backwater town. Magazines like Sunset, Men’s Journal, Outside and National Geographic Adventure have all gotten word of its charm and character, ranking it in their “best” categories. Such compliments draw hopeful residents, many who build second homes that are occupied only a few weeks a year, and real estate prices have skyrocketed in the past five years.
“The irony is that for a place like this to work,” Dann Hall said, “artists and musicians have to have a way to sell their work, a place to perform. I hope we don’t lose that through discovery. But, well, we know we can’t hide a 43-mile-long lake and a ski resort forever.”
For more information, contact the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, 208-263-0887, www.sandpointchamber.org.