♪ Hello and welcome to this editio of Northwest Profiles.

I'm your host, Lynn Veltrie inviting you to settle in as we welcome the New Year with four new stories featuring extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, and right here in our own backyard, the Inland Northwest and western The profiles ahead will spotlight artists of all ty including a Russian trained arti who uses oil paint to express he A talented musical duo on the ri a remarkable Canadian artist who skillfully transforms paper scraps into beautiful land And finally, a moviemaker who says, Why not S So with all that, to usher in th year, let's get rolling, shall w We begin with a look at the arti of Spokane painter Victoria Brac who speaks what she calls a visual language with her creat Composition, Colors, Shapes and Feeling.

For Spokane artist Victoria Brace, these basic tenets are part of a visual language that creates certain emotions and feelings that she says are relevant to the arts.

Born and raised in Moscow Russia, and a graduate of the Moscow College of Art in 1987, Victoria moved into the computer graphics field in 1992 after participating in art shows in and around the city of Moscow.

After moving to the United States in 1997, she ended up in Spokane Washington in 1999, working for Cyan a local adventure game creator In 1993, when Myst came out and I was working in Moscow in a small startup company, we were creating game and we saw Myst for the first time, a whole group of us gathered in front of screen, trying to play game, and I looked at it, I saw how it all looks and the feel of it, and I thought, this is what I want to do in my life.

I worked in CG field oh, probably close to 20 years, I think.

It was amazing.

It was absolutely new at the time.

I mean, it was know nineties it was exciting, but I did miss the physical aspect of art, you know, oil paints, canvas brushes, all that, you know, that you can touch it I did eventually quit my computer graphics job and became a painter full time again.

With a bevy of artistic works in her rear-view mirror, Victoria manages to keep her paintings fresh, using skills she adopted early in her art career.

I have an image suddenly pops in my head, anything can spark it.

A piece of music, a conversation I hear a scene I see, something, then a little thing, and suddenly pop.

Now there's a I see painting.

It's not a precise idea.

Just the feel of it and where I want to go.

And I do a little thumbnail sketch, it's not a beautiful sketch it's just like a note to myself not to forget what I was feeling at the moment.

And then I start, shaping it on canvas.

I kind of blocking big shapes, big masses of color, and I start moving them around.

Eventually it forms certain things they show from the previous layers, certain things get reworked and it kind of builds up, builds up, builds up.

And eventually, I see it's there.

What I wanted to say is there.

I always was drawing and painting when I was a kid, I didn't think about being an artist.

I just loved to do it.

It was a good excuse not to do house chores.

Everybody leave me alone.

I'm drawing (chuckles)somebody said one becomes an artist because he or she wants to be all day, alone in the room with nobody telling you what to do.

And that's precisely it.

Although in many of Victoria's oil paintings, you can point to a certain amount of realism... she describes her works as contemporary realism, but she's very mindful realism is just a word.

I don't like isms.

Basically, you learn the rules, you learn how to do things, and then you start breaking the rules and then you start manipulate things into kind of like manipulating reality, creating your own place, your own world sort of things.

you know, it took me a long, long time to break out of this, just point realistic way of painting, because what I want is more what's beyond the realism.

Every good, realistic painting should have strong abstract concept underneath, otherwise it will fall apart.

Occasionally, when there needs to be a recalibration...Victoria turns to drawing and painting herself which she says gets her back to basics... For me, self-portraits are mostly very utilitarian to do figurative work without a live model, for example, you still need this grounding, you need exercise, you need to go back and sometimes paint not what you know, but what you see.

So Self-portraits, I always have myself if I need the model, if I need to see how the light hits you, how the colors change, you know, the anatomy and everything, I just, you know, paint a self-portrait.

Kind of get myself Back to basics.

Most of my paintings are painted without models, you know, sometimes based on life sketches, but quite often it's just, you know, constructing, building and creating a person.

My friend once told me, you create those people and then you befriend them.

I thought it was so sweet.

Victoria values working as an artist because unlike most jobs, where told what to do as a creative, it's her choice and she loves it Up next, we transition from art to artistry in music.

Jay J and Caroline Carlile are a brother and sister musical duo known as Small Town It would seem this dynamic duos talents run in the family.

And while they may be small town it's clear they're just getting Okay.

Take it away.

My name is Caroline Carlile.

I'm 15.

I live in Curlew and I'm a performer, a singer songwriter.

And I play music with my brother.

I'm JayJ and I'm a singer songwriter.

And our home is in Curlew.

Here's the bill you can keep the change for a thirty cent cup of coffee Windows down, Living on the road.

I have always really loved Dolly Parton.

There's something.

What you get really into Dolly Parton at nine years old, it never goes away.

And I love John Prine and I love the Indigo Girls.

I really love Dierks Bentley.

And I met him backstage once.

And just his personality, he became my all time favorite person.

He's just so cool.

And my second artist is probably the Indigo Girls, Speakers blown out On my radio suitcase packed with things that I don't need So I play banjo, guitar and piano and a little bit of like beginner slide guitar.

I'm learning.

I picked up banjo first.

Being the person I am, I wanted to do something different, original.

And so I picked banjo.

And this one plays everything.

I play fiddle, mandolin, guitar and bass and piano and slide guitar and basically anything we ask him to play, he can play, but he's...

He's modest My niece and nephew are here tonight.

JayJ, Caroline Carlile and my brother Jay Carlile Come on home come on home.

Our Aunt Brandi Carlile.

She is arguably one of the most important supportive figures in our music career because she's done this before us.

We get to kind of avoid toxic things that can happen in the music industry.

And of course, she's like, just like a cool person, you know?

And she's fun to play with and to write songs with So its a little bit slower than you're used to, so you'll take more breath Dream the music and our family goes back as far as there's ever been our family.

Like my grandma had a nineties country cover band.

And then of course, my aunt got into the industry and has been extremely successful in it.

And this summer, Dad, he got on stage with aunt Brandi and Wynonna Judd.

Something amazing happened and he got invited to go on that tour.

You got it.

So your chorus and I'm tired of feeling bad because I know you never did.

And I know we can't change who We are born to real quiet and I'm trying to forgive all the secrets that you hid Get the plank out of my eye Before it blinds me I go to Insight School of Washington and JayJ goes to Wava What does that stand for?

Washington Virtual Academy.

Being able to all just, like, sit in the tour bus and in the mornings get our school done.

It's absolutely necessary for our job.

I don't have to wait till 3:00 to get out of school and go home.

I can get done at noon if I wake up early enough.

When it comes to like, like touring, it was a lot different than I expected it to be.

It's a lot less like rolling into the venue and like there's fans throwing themselves at you and it's a little bit more like Walmart parking lot.

You know, you get to decide, What do you think about that?

I actually really love the idea of like a Walmart parking lot.

I always make the joke be like, Oh, we need to find a campground Walmart parking lot, lets do it And they're like, No!

We got in like our motorhome tour bus.

It wasn't just me and JayJ and Dad because driving it was us and it was like our mom and our siblings.

It was a really good family experience.

The community joy from it that we got because of our family, music has always been like there was nothing that our family did else.

And because of that, that's one of the biggest things that's always brought us together.

And I close my eyes and I see someone else's dreams.

Now, if you would like to hear more of small town you can stream their music onlin at Spotify, Apple Music or YouTu and look for their appearance on Inland Sessions in February.

So now that we're all in tune with the theme of this show, it' to head north to Oliver, British to meet another supremely gifted Her name is Katherine MacNeill, a paper collage artist who has a knack for turning tiny scraps of recycled paper into what appears to the untrain as a masterful landscape paintin [Music plays] I think the thing nowadays is that there's so many more people doing art and a lot of it is good art.

And that can be a little bit daunting too, because if there's too much out there, how do you feel that you're doing something special yourself?

My name is Katherine MacNeill and I'm a paper collage artist.

[Music plays] Since 2015, was when I started, and it was a combination of recycling, the fact that there were so many books that were being moved into the dumps.

I've been collecting calendars for years and I started recycling old magazines and then trying to put it into something else, having it reborn as something else.

[Music plays] It's such a good combination of tactile, color.

The way it it reaches out, it becomes three dimensional.

And one of the things I love about it is that sometimes I can like something across the room, but when I get closer, I kind of lose it.

I think with mine, if you like it across the room, you're going to like it even more.

[Music plays] I'll get my husband to take pictures of the composition that I'm interested in, and then I'll blend those things and use maybe four or five different pictures to create what I'm looking for.

And I'm never copying.

It's always about using a composition from a photograph that we've taken and then making it my own.

And usually I'm working from a top down, so it's almost always finished as I go down and it's about actually rebuilding from each layer.

I'm actually recreating the depth that I see in the landscape.

So the tree that's on top of that hillside, the bushes that are in front of it, the grasses that are right in front of that.

So everything's built on top of it and layered and I love the texture of that.

Just that's what drives me.

[Music plays] I love landscapes.

It's a First Nations background and it's the connection to the land, the water.

And the one I'm working on right now is the Beaver Dam.

That that intrigued me.

It was the idea that this is wetland that's being created.

This is new habitat for creatures that are moving into it, and that's our sustainable environment.

That's where the teaching is.

And always, I think our family has been environmentally connected.

I feel like I'm expressing something that's a part of who I am and that's where it's coming from.

[Music plays] I've been told over and over that it's something that nobody else has seen being done, and I don't think too many people would be that keen because it's it is a lot of detail and a lot of time.

I can spend six months easily.

This one.

This has been a bit too big.

It's awkward in size, so it's a little more difficult to position in my work area.

And it's just been difficult to find enough material in the colors I'm looking for at times.

And the fact that it's a much more subtle image as well um, that's harder to hold onto and make it the way I want it to look.

So I neglected it and came back to it and it takes a while to get engaged again each time.

So, I would say this one has been actually years I've probably been in the last year and a half, so, it's been difficult.

Challenging for sure.

[Music plays] It's been a labor of love, absolutely.

You can rely on somebody else to make the good art unless you find something that just feeds you.

And that's what I did.

I knew I wanted to do it, but I had no idea how really energizing it was going to be and how much satisfaction I would have in doing it.

I found something that just gave me that creative rush that I love and that I would hope others can find and enjoy.

Katherine finished her beaver Dam piece a month after o was there.

As for her next piece, she hopes more color and a variety of text Either way, it's sure to be magn Now for our final story.

We roll focus and shift our visi from canvas to the silver screen And for that, we introduce you t Cook, who has had a long and varied career as a talented director here in the Inland Nort proving that whatever your passi you can do it right here in Spok Pictures up.

Quiet on set.

We're rollin.

I'm sorry.

Theater, radio, television, film.

Spokane native Rebecca Cook has done it all.

I think I always knew I was going to end up in the entertainment industry.

I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid.

And then I discovered theater.

Was my passion.

And that's what I wanted to be.

But then Rebecca discovered radio.

In high school.

We took a trip to the Spokane Falls Community College radio station, and I walked in and it was wall to wall hair bands of the nineties.

And so that's how I decided to go to college.

While getting her radio degree at SFCC, friends convinced her to audition for a theater show at Eastern Washington University.

So I went and got my theater degree at Eastern.

I make good choices.

Yeah, I really did start out in acting, but I just think it's all magic.

So I like to know how it all works.

Im not good at all of it.

Rebecca's first job out of college was at a costume supply store in Seattle because she didn't think having a job in the arts in Spokane was even possible.

After five months, Rebecca decided that Spokane is where she belongs.

She was hired to costume a show at the Spokane Children's Theater, and in the process, got to know the woman who ran the rental shop.

A few weeks later, she resigned and offered Rebecca the job.

After three years at the Civic, she and her best friend founded Ignite Community Theater.

And I ran that for six years.

Unpaid, of course.

Eventually, Rebecca stepped away from the theater when she began her film career.

That was right around the time I was sort of transitioning out of Civic Theater.

So I ended up getting some work on a couple of films as an on set costumer.

So I was on set with the actors managing the continuity and that sort of thing, and had some great experiences and some awful experiences and I just went film is not for me.

I'm out.

After a plan to move to California was abruptly put on hold.

She ended up back in the Spokane film industry as a costumer making 4 to 5 low budget action movies a year.

And for every actor that I would say I would never want to work with again, which is maybe three, there are a dozen that are just lovely, like Antonio Banderas is one of the kindest human beings, you know, Peter Dinklage.

It felt like working with myself.

We have the same sense of humor.

And you know, there is a little barb here and there, but, you know, generally just easy going.

I learned a lot and, you know, really became a part of the film community and built it up here.

So costuming got me my start.

I didn't expect to come back and be as enmeshed as I am now.

Rebecca says Spokane's film industry is starting to boom.

Last year we had two television series and a feature film and one of the series and the film, we're running back to back, which is kind of unheard of around here.

But July 1st of 2022, a new film incentive increase went into effect from its original 3.5 million, and we got up to $15 million.

So there's a lot of things happening in the works right now.

I can't talk about all of them.

This is an extinction scale event The president is dead.

Do not approach the infected.

Z Nation is really what put us on the map.

But yeah, that show, it really it grew the crew base here and it was just really great for the whole state because we filmed mostly in Spokane.

Rebecca was part of the local crew for all five seasons of Z Nation, including wardrobe supervisor for season one.

It's the biggest, like numbers wise production we've ever done.

I love the process so much.

I hate to be that cliche, but what I really want to do is direct.

Most of what I do is for film competitions right now and there is a local showrunner who's well aware I'm itching to direct an episode of his next series.

Rebecca even created her own production company, Thundering Kitten Productions.

All right, I'm going to be honest with you.

My dream is to direct Hallmark style holiday films.

Another passion of Rebecca's is voice recording.

The chimes stopped.

Ms.. Mitchell let her hands fall, collecting a crystal glass with an inch of liquid in it.

So I always knew I liked talking, and I had a theory that people liked hearing me talk.

For better or worse.

She was asked to record an audio book by the owner of Books in Motion.

And that was my first audio book, and now I've just recorded my 109th audiobook.

I am the only Rebecca Cook on Audible, who is a narrator, so I think I have 81 titles there.

If you like what you've heard here today.

It's been a really great side gig for me.

Now I have my own studio at home in my basement, and I just sit in a padded room and talk to myself.

Another nice gig, is teaching an online film production and development course at Spokane Falls Community College.

So whenever you are enlisting someone to be a part of your production, it's good to have a contract.

Then you just lay everything out between you and your crew.

All of the steps are things that when you get out into the real world and want to work in film, they expect that you should know.

And I've just been kind of frustrated because I find a lack of that.

During the holidays, Rebecca is part of the Campbell House Living History program.

I said, come on in.

You must be friends of Mrs. Campbell ya?

Playing Hulda from the early 1900s, who was a cook at the Campbell house for several years.

So at the Campbell House, the secret to our cookies now you've got the recipe there But what they don't put in there is the special tip we use as you're cutting out your cookies.

I've done a lot of research for her over the years and had the pleasure of portraying her every holiday and occasionally for special events.

For Rebecca, she can't imagine not being a part of the entertainment industry in Spokane.

I think really in my core I'm a storyteller and I love hearing people's stories and telling people stories and walking in people's shoes to understand their stories and then sharing those stories with an audience.

So.

Currently, Rebecca is working on a feature film shooting right here in Spokane.

And with that, the end is here in time for credits to roll.

On this edition of Northwest Pro with the promise of more stories coming your way next month.

Until next time, this is Lynn Veltrie saying so l And remember living here in the Northwest in western Canada affords us plenty to explore and discover e So venture out.

And when you do, be sure you take time to enjoy the