Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Shop will offer photo
classes, sell mixed media art
A combination of 140 years of farming and 122 combat missions have led to a new business in Palouse.
Michael Walters, a retired Naval Air crewmen from Nampa, Idaho, and partner Sarah Collins, from Palouse will open a mixed media crafts and gift shop along with a photography studio on Main Street in November.
It will be called Spring Wheat Rose and Rolling Hills Studio.
“It’s a lifelong dream for both of us,” said Walters, who went back into the Navy for nine and a half years with a plan to go into photography after retirement.
While the shop will be a business, it will be just as much a studio, a place for me to do my art and display it,” Collins said. “We’re more about having a creative space to do our work.”
Rolling Hills Studio will primarily focus on stock photography and editorial, while doing some portraits. He will also offer photography classes and outdoor workshops.
Collins will sell artwork she creates with mainly acrylics and found objects. She grew up in Palouse and lived in Seattle and Spokane before returning to Palouse last year.
Her grandmother Barbara Jean Clark Collins, who married Benton Collins, is the daughter of homesteaders who settled north of Albion area in the 1880s.
Walters located the space for Spring Wheat Rose and Rolling Hills Studio after talking to Jeff McLeod at McLeod’s Market in August.
Walters mentioned that he was interested in renting a small office space in town. McLeod said that Diane Cooper owned a few buildings in Palouse and that Walters should give her a call.
Walters spotted a “For Rent” sign in the window next door to Palouse Tavern.
“It was perfect,” he said. “We could have studio space too.”
So he pulled over and called Cooper. She came right down and they made the deal on the spot.
Walters retired from the Navy on May 1 at the Naval Air Station in Lemoore, Calif.
It marked the conclusion of his second span with the service.
He enlisted after high school in Nampa, served 10 years then left to earn a degree in Natural Science and Mathematics from Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J.
The majority of his studies took place at Iowa State, and he finished the laboratory work he needed while back in the Navy, after re-enlisting in 2002.
As a crew chief for P-3 C Orion aircrafts, he was soon in action in the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq.
The aircraft is a four-engine turboprop.
“Instantaneous power when you need it,” he said.
Last year, on his final tour of duty, he sailed to Japan on the USS Ronald Reagan for humanitarian assistance after the earthquake and tsunami.
Once he reached 20 years in the service, Walters proceeded with his retirement plan.
While back in college at Iowa State, he had begun to make a name as a part-time photographer, shooting photos for dog show publications.
“I don’t know about second only to Westminster, but it was huge,” Walters said of the popular pastime.
Collins works full-time as a licensed mental health therapist at Harvest House.
Walters brought back 5,000 images from Afghanistan. His favorite places to take pictures also came out of his Navy experience.
“Some of the small, tiny islands in the Indian Ocean we’ve landed on,” he said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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