Letting it flow: Bohemian artists living free in Palouse

David Wold, 42, talks art in his unfinished apartment above the Green Frog Cafe. Wold plans on making a music studio and art studio in the apartment.

Lauren McCleary, 26, poses with one of her paper cutting works, a day after she moved to Palouse. McCleary majored in art at WSU in 2009.

Mary Rothlisberger, 26, says she is in love with people and collaborative art.

Tiny antique dolls line the window sills.

Paper snowflakes, dozens of them the color of swans, flutter above the bedroom in Mary Rothlisberger’s apartment.

Rothlisberger and her visitor have curly, unruly hair and their clothes are colorful and patched affairs.

Lisa Lipton, 29, a adjunct art professor from Nova Scotia, poses mid-story for the camera.

Dozens of her snowflakes flutter above the room.

They share beers, a bunk bed, food, clothes, art materials. These artists are uninhibited and chatty and they believe their collection runs soul deep.

The art collects against the walls in the form of broken, second-hand guitars waiting to be refurbished.

It is grouped on the floor in body-like piles (used clothing bought for mere quarters from the rusty racks of antique stores in Palouse).

Mary Rothlisberger, 26, says she is in love with people and collaborative art.

Rothlisberger, 26, is, among many things in this life, a bohemian artist who moved to Palouse 10 months ago.

Over those 10 months, Rothlisberger’s artistic friends have been moving in and out of Palouse, drawn by Rothlisberger’s vision of “collaborative art.”

Total, five friends have visited from Nova Scotia, Colorado, Virginia and San Francisco to make art with Rothlisberger in Palouse. Two more are expected this spring.

Unmarried, without children or financial obligations, most of these artists spend a few years here and there around America, creating art.

They’ve taken over three different spaces in Palouse.

“Remember the story has yet to be written and has really recently begun. You are writing it,” reads a note tacked on the door to Rothlisberger’s apartment.

A tiny, delicate woman answers the door, smiling through thick glasses and an oversized snow cap. This is Lisa Lipton, a 29-year-old adjunct professor at an art college in Nova Scotia and long-time friend of Rothlisberger.

Lipton came to Palouse a month ago to begin working on a mini-film with Rothlisberger called “The White Voyage.”

Lipton said they oriented their lives toward all things white for the month, depending on the lightness to drag them out of some hardships they both experienced in the past year.

“We’re entering the new year with the idea of departing from the darkness and entering into a lighter space where things start anew,” she said.

So, they’ve been dressing in white, daily snipping up white paper for intricate snowflakes, and generally focusing on positive experiences.

“We absorb all colors to become white,” Lipton said. The White Voyage is snapshots of people in Palouse talking about things they love to do, or, “heroes,” as Lipton puts it.

Rothlisberger has a warm, comfortable presence with a bright and deep smile. Her apartment is wall to wall with the knick knacks of all sorts, many from Palouse antique stores. Many of them are gifts, she said.

“I feel collaboration invites an impossibility,” Rothlisberger said. Rothlisberger supports herself by working part-time at the Green Frog Café in Palouse.

Lipton said the time she has spent with Rothlisberger making art week after week has lifted her out of the depths and put her on a higher plain of peace.

“It feels more explosive than if people were just making paintings,” Rothlisberger said.

Down the hallway is Rothlisberger’s college mate, 26-year-old Lauren McCleary. Each studied for a master’s degree in art at WSU, with Rothlisberger graduating in 2008 and McCleary in 2009.

McCleary left for her home town in Colorado after graduation, worked a bit, then came back to Palouse a week ago. McCleary majored in installations, the art of intricately decorating a space or room.

Specifically, she works on paper cutting, the time-consuming art of meticulously taking an exacto knife to an intricate drawing and cutting out a design.

McCleary is excited to branch out by decorating venues around Palouse when she gets set up. Boxes of her art now line the walls in the apartment where she had resided only a day before the Gazette visited Feb. 5.

“It’s just a really good environment for being creative and encouraged,” she said.

And lastly, there is Rothlisberger’s long-time friend and former boyfriend, David Wold, 42.

Wold is renting the second floor above the Green Frog Café, currently a cold, warehouse maze of scarred plywood, ripped floor boards, sawdust and power tools.

His bedroom is no different except there are caches of art tucked everywhere. In a corner is a stack of coffeehouse cups, each with a pen sketch of the face of a different middle aged, American man.

When he goes to coffee, Wold sketches a face on his white coffee cup.

“Basically, they are unhappy and confused. [Men misled into living] life by rules of a society led astray to believe a successful life meant material things and imposing things on other cultures,” he said.

On the wall are some colorful sketches of the facades of Palouse businesses.

Scattered against the walls are a haphazard collection of beaten-up guitars.

“I like to buy any beat-up old guitar. I like ones that are broken,” he said.

Wold has plans for turning one room above the Green Frog into a music studio for Palouse artists and another into an art studio.

Wold is living off an inheritance from his father and said he is intentionally living his life to avoid commitments. No wife, no children, and no credit card have long afforded him the freedom to wander from job to job across America.

“I sort of live my life exactly how I want to and avoid any obligations that might hold me down,” he said.