Faith inspires Oakland art teacher Lana Wilken

OAKLAND — For Lana Wilken, it was paint and brushes that brought her through a dark time in her life. Her grandparents died within a year of each other, she and her husband were divorcing, her best friend moved north, and then her father died.

“I really felt like everything I loved was taken away,” she said.

So she prayed — hard and often — for a new way to support her three children, for simplicity in her life, for a place to live, for a closer church.

“Literally, I started to see the world in a different light; I saw it in two dimensions,” Wilken said. “I would be driving home and looking at the road and have to pull over because I thought I was hallucinating. I was seeing the world in flat shapes instead of three-dimensional objects. When I would get home, I would draw what I saw and, to my surprise, ended up with some pretty amazing artworks.

“I didn’t know it at the time that God was giving me lessons in perspective drawing and vanishing points, something I only came to learn later as I embraced my newfound art skills,” she said.

The changes Wilken prayed for were becoming reality, and eventually she was living in Oakland and painting murals at her new church, Mosaic, in Oakland.

“Painting and creating for the church was a way for me to thank and honor God for getting me through my hard times,” she said.

LANA’S PROTEGES

On a recent weekday afternoon, brothers Isaac, Joseph and Noah Griffin showed up at Wilken’s house to create chalk art and practice drawing. Also there were Laney and Cadence Cope, who worked with pastels, and Emily Powelson, who sat at a side table recreating a fruit arrangement in a glass bowl with bright colors on black paper.

Lana’s Art Studio is actually a converted garage. The young artists who show up can claim a kind of ownership since, chances are, they have added their personal flair to the random writings on the inside of the garage door or to the carefree paintings that cover the garage floor and walls. 

“It’s an evolving, eclectic art,” she said.

A huge board is filled with the children’s artwork, too, and they proudly include their afternoon work.

Why is this art studio so popular with the young set?

“I think because I really try to teach in the way ‘God taught me,’” Wilken said. “There is a forgiving spirit here that many kids don’t get when taking a more technical or structured art class. It’s a lot of hands on, trying out, experimenting with and then, finally, learning to see something beautiful in your art — even if it’s not how you wanted it to turn out.”

If a student makes a mistake, she said, “We call it, ‘Oops, I arted.’”

As the kids sat around the table last week, with pencils in hand, Wilken started the music, and they were asked to practice hatch marks, circles and swirls until she turned off the music. After this exercise, she brought out the pastels and had them coloring and blending.

The art teacher — dressed in paint-splotched, comfortably ratty jeans that complemented the casual atmosphere — walked around the room, offering advice, giving praise and sharing hugs. There is nothing formal about this impromptu lesson, and Wilken wouldn’t have it any other way.

 “I’m never going to be Crealdé, but some of these pieces they create could be from Crealdé,” she said of the Winter Park-based art school. “They learn how to do things and can do more because they can just play with it.”

Her hope is that children will discover their natural talents earlier than she did as an adult in her 30s. She wants them to have options in their extracurricular activities and to know that many professional careers require creative abilities.

The theme of this art studio is “Beauty for Ashes,” she said, and is based off a biblical premise that “if we allow God to guide us, he will make beautiful things out of our pain, mess-ups and failures.”

This premise holds true whether it’s the literal artwork that is created from recycled products or “a metaphor for the healing spiritual and emotional peace that the art studio inspires.”

Contact Amy Quesinberry Rhode at [email protected].

If you ever feel inspired to paint the sunrise in Florida, here are five things Lana Wilken says to pay attention to before you begin:

1. Before we can even see the sun, we know it’s coming because of the bright reflected light on the underside of the clouds. 

2. Once it appears, not only do we see the reflected light in the clouds and the obvious bright round ball of fire that is growing out of ocean along the horizon, but we also see a definitive “golden” reflection on the water. (What shape is it? Yes, kind of rectangular!) But it only looks like that at the shoreline! Nearer the sun, it is more of a broad gradient of golden pink that spills into the ocean. 

3. As the sun rises higher, this water reflection goes “up,” the water getting closer to the horizon line, until eventually it is a continuous “streak” of light from the sun to the shore. Notice they are still like little golden “rectangles.” Why is this? (Hint: It has to do with waves.)

4. Eventually the sun is high enough that the “broad gradient of golden pink” is no longer spilling into the ocean. The golden rectangles steadily climb into the horizon line and disappear. And a perfectly round ball of beauty detaches from the ocean. 

5. Finally comes the most important observation of all: God’s absolutely beautiful and majestic nature is revealed as His sun makes its appearance out of nowhere and rises high into the heavens, to bring us light to see.

CLASS ACT

Wilken has taught art at Family Christian School for two years and is also available by appointment to teach home-school groups.

She offers a variety of sessions at her home studio, too. 

She will teach “The Art of Sidewalk Chalk” to ages 6-12 on Tuesdays, March 10-31. The cost is $10 per class, or $29 when paid in full on or before the first day. This is in preparation for the Bloom & Grow Garden Society’s upcoming Spring Fever in the Garden, which has a sidewalk chalk art contest.

Teen and adult classes, “Set the Spirit Free,” will be on Thursdays.

From March 5 through May 28, she will open the studio on Thursdays to charter school students for $5 per student plus a $25 supply fee.

Once a month, she holds a Saturday specialty workshop, like learning to paint sunsets or making glass-bottle luminaries, at $25 per person or $40 per family.

In the summer, she holds weeklong camps for $150 and then has open-studio time on Tuesdays for children ages 6-12.

Another summer camp allows students to create a storybook cast of superheroes based on the words of God.

She also has plans to offer an art app camp “to embrace the electronic age by introducing the kids to artistic-enhancement apps to take the place of games.”

For budding Picassos who can’t pay the registration fees, Wilken has been known to barter services to provide instruction for recreational artists.

To connect with or learn more about the Christian artist and her artwork, go to lanawilken.tumblr.com or email her at [email protected]. Anyone who likes her Facebook page will receive her schedule updates.