Artist Newell-Reim savored her place, her time

I only met Lavone Newell-Reim once, but after immersing myself in the new show at the Skagit County Historical Museum, she feels like an old friend.

“Lavone Newell-Reim: A Life Well Lived” traces Newell-Reim’s journey from Kansas to Sauk Mountain and then, over the course of her 90 years, down the Skagit River to its mouth near Fir Island.

Along the way, her talents and interests, passion for life, art and cooking and knack for building community are celebrated.

Tougher moments are also included. Riding across the country sitting atop a 1939 Chevy her father had turned into a pickup was not comfortable.

Likewise, neither was living on a stump ranch and boiling water for a weekly bath.

Married three days after she graduated from Concrete High School and a mother of three by 21, Newell-Reim put herself through Skagit Valley College and Western Washington University. During 23 years as an art teacher at Cascade Middle School in Sedro Woolley, she pursued her own craft and shaped her own home and garden on Fir Island with second husband Ross Newell. His sudden death from a heart attack on their purse seiner in Alaska was a blow, but she persisted.

“Where can we live but days?” asks the poet Philip Levine. Even in hard times, Newell-Reim engaged her days on the planet with vigor.

About painting: “Painting is the experience of joy in being alive, in this place, at this time.”

About cooking: “Cooking is a way to express my love for people.”

About joining a running club, climbing Mount Baker and tackling the Seattle-to-Portland Bike Ride in midlife: “I’d rather wear out than rust.”

There’s plenty more to discover about a woman who tangoed at her third wedding ... whose Skagit City Fine Art Show, aka The Barn Show, lifted up the work of Skagit artists for 16 years ... whose cookbook Skagit Valley Fare brought together local cooks, artists and history ... who was a nut about the Mariners and curious about practically everything.

Materials lent by Newell-Reim’s husband Dick and her children and grandchildren helped the museum tell her story.

Museum curator Ann Maroney and executive director Jo Wolfe started talking to Reim last fall, soon after Newell-Reim’s death on July 31. They made many visits to the couple’s home and took copious notes.

“When we were ready to begin assembling the exhibit, Dick backed his SUV up to the museum, opened it and came in with paintings and baskets of objects,” remembered Wolfe.

“If we said ‘we don’t have much on this part of Lavone’s life’, Dick or Lavone’s daughter Mary Trueman Carter would come back with more. Archivist Mary Densmore explored folders full of her writing.”

The exhibit is one in a series that showcases Skagit “treasures” like band leader and music supplier Hugo Helmer and artist, farmworker and labor advocate Jesus Guillén. And like the 2017 exhibit “In the Valley of Mystic Light,” this one looks at the stories behind one artist, her work and her contemporaries.

“She loved life and she lived well,” said Wolfe.

“Lavone Newell-Reim: A Life Well Lived” is open Thursday-Sunday, 11-4 p.m. through October.