Pencil and Palette Club seeks new creative space

You need more space? What about a larger room in a new location? No, you’re told nothing like that is available.

How about remodeling your existing space and rearranging furniture and equipment?

Yes, that might work, the Sun City Pencil & Palette Club decided recently as it tried to figure out how to accommodate its growing program of art and drawing activities in the Art Room in Prairie Lodge.

The Art Room is located in the middle of the lodge, next to the multi-purpose, or Card Room and across from the Sewing Room. Initially used by the Prairie Singers for choral rehearsals more than a decade ago, and later by several other clubs, it has become one of the busiest, but smallest, rooms in the lodge.

Growing club membership making workspaces cramped in art room. (Photos by Tony Pratt/Sun Day)

The current problem has occupied the Pencil & Palette Club for most of this year. The club has grown to about 100 members, and it offers classes and demonstrations in pencil drawing, painting, watercolor, acrylic/oil, and mixed media artwork four days a week. The club’s extensive art library occupies a portion of the room, along with chairs and tables for classes and related activities. The club also provides critiques of artwork submitted by residents on Fridays.

Some members of the club worked with the association and vendors in the placement of art works on the walls of Prairie Lodge rooms and hallways a couple of years ago. Two paintings created by club members for that project are displayed in the Fountain View atrium.

“We realized early this year that we needed more space to accommodate our expanding activities,” said Elizabeth Napora, immediate past president of the club. “At this same time, we learned that the association is planning this year to remodel the art room. We talked with them and found out about what they are considering doing to improve the space. We discovered that we will have more display space, a tack board wall, and smaller, portable desks instead of large tables. We decided that the remodeling will improve the room sufficiently, so we can expand our class sizes and not have so many folks left out.”

The newly elected president of the club is Teresa Chamberlin.

Later this year, the association will probably spend somewhere between $42,000 and $54,000 to hire a contractor to perform the remodeling as a part of the 2018 schedule of projects in Sun City’s reserve budget.

Deanna Loughran, executive director, said final cost figures and project timelines haven’t been determined yet but the design work for the project has been finished.

“Firm recommendations probably will be submitted to the board soon,” she said. As of this writing, the next board meeting is July 25.

Due to lack of space, a remodeling job on the artroom is planned for later this year.

Napora said the club will try to continue most of its activities in other rooms in the Prairie and Meadow View lodges while construction goes on.

Other maintenance/replacement projects completed or currently underway this year include the rebuilding of the Solarium at Prairie Lodge, replacement of refrigeration equipment at Jameson’s Restaurant, repaving of the parking lot at Meadow View Lodge and Arcadia condos, new flooring in the Fitness and Game Room at Prairie Lodge, and replacement of exterior doors at Millgrove Woodshop. Another project – conversion of two tennis courts at the Tall Oaks Courts from tennis to pickleball – was completed in June at a cost of $81,000, with the cost shared by the Pickleball Club and the Association.

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