MARYSVILLE — Dinosaurs and trains might not seem like subjects that go together, but they somehow coexist quite nicely in the paintings of Marysville artist Jacques Drapeau.
Drapeau first took up painting in 1994, but the roots of his interest reach back much further. He’d dabbled with painting as far back as middle school, and had grown up in the country, where it was rural enough that the railroads were often the visible connection to the rest of civilization.
“As for dinosaurs, when I watched films like Jurassic Park, they were always pursuing people, but I thought of what it would be like if they were still around,” Drapeau said. “You see lions in the zoo, and they’re just laying around, so I figure dinosaurs would be a little more lazy.”
Drapeau’s whimsically imaginative paintings made him one of 15 artists featured at the Marysville Arts Coalition’s fourth annual “It’s Raining Art” spring art show April 24-25.
Beckye Randall, chairwoman of the Marysville Arts Coalition and secretary/treasurer for the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts, explained that each artist was selected to offer something unique from their peers, which included leather workers, pottery makers and copper sculptors this year.
“We wanted fine artists, which is why we made it a juried show, and we got the cream of the crop,” Randall said.
Randall estimated that the event generated as much as $6,000 in sales, but noted that it costs around $3,000 per month to keep the Red Curtain Arts Center running out of the former Dunn Lumber building.
Red Curtain had raised roughly $12,000 in 30 days to make the building its permanent home, but that was only a fraction of the nearly $100,000 that it would have cost to secure the facility from its owners, even after the renovations that she and her fellow volunteers invested.
“We keep getting asked how long we’ll be able to stay, but we’re living on a month-to-month basis here,” Randall said. “It’s hard to get grants when you can’t guarantee to people that they won’t be throwing their money down a hole.”
Randall chuckled as he deemed the thousands of dollars of electrical, plumbing and fire safety upgrades that Red Curtain funded to be “gifts to the next tenants.”
In the meantime, even at “It’s Raining Art,” she reported that she still meets people who are surprised to find an arts center in downtown Marysville.
“They’re still discovering us,” Randall said. “This is a resource the community needs. If we’re not able to stay here, we’ll find some other home.”
Arlington’s Highland Christian School was glad to have the arts center available when their other venue vanished. At 7 p.m. on May 1-2, the Red Curtain Arts Center at 1410 Grove St. will host the Highland Christian School production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mouse Trap,” with tickets selling $5 for students and $7 for adults.
