One of my favorite charitable projects is the annual gala for Chase’s Place, a school for students whose needs require more support than what is available at a traditional, public school. The students paint canvases, then local artists pick up the canvases and finish them off. All the artwork is donated and put into an auction at the gala in February. Proceeds go towards tuition relief for the students.

The canvas that I picked this year has beautiful swirls of blue and green, interspersed with metallic copper and a few pops of orange. It reminded me of the excitement I feel whenever I get to go out to the theater: evening settling over the city and the bright lights of the marquee. The vertical orientation of the canvas seemed especially suited for a night scene of the Lakewood Theater.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ve probably noticed that I have quite a few paintings of this theater in particular (and many Dallas theaters in general). Lakewood holds a special place in my heart. Though I don’t technically live within the bounds of this neighborhood, when I first moved to Dallas more than a decade ago, it was under the lights of the iconic Lakewood tower that I first felt at home.

My family and I moved from Austin back in 2008, and I had my daughter just a couple of months later. As a young, new mother in a new city, I struggled with feelings of isolation and adjusting to life after college. I had no friends within the city, and knew no other moms my age. In Austin, I had been active in the performing arts and I was a regular at various theaters, dance classes, and arts gatherings around the city. At that time, Austin still felt like one, big neighborhood. I had lived downtown, where I could walk to Tapestry on West 6th for tap classes, or north to Ballet Austin at 38 1/2 street. While we lived very close to downtown Dallas, in an old townhouse off of Cedar Springs, the city seemed a concrete maze.

Once the midwives gave me the all clear, I began searching for dance studios that offered adult classes. I quickly realized how spoiled I was by Austin’s art scene, which flourished in part because of the college culture there. One of the few studios that even offered adult classes was the School of Contemporary Ballet Dallas.

One evening in November I gathered up my courage, stuffed my postpartum body into an old leotard, plugged the address into google maps, and drove to a little pocket of East Dallas that I had never seen before. It was that time of year where evening comes early, and the sky was already a half-lit shade of urban nightfall. I drove past small houses, over winding roads with potholes, and into a neighborhood filled with Arts and Crafts style homes and enormous live oak trees. I turned a corner and saw the Lakewood Theater for the first time, just down the street from Contemporary Ballet Dallas. Its tall, blue tower (cobalty-ultramarine; a color I’ve always thought of as “Lakewood Blue”) was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The neon lights and little shops around the theater showed me a side of Dallas- a local, neighborhood, almost hippie vibe- that I hadn’t known existed. Dallas on a human scale; who would’ve thought?

That drive across town was the first of many, and the friends I made in modern dance and intermediate ballet were my first in my new city; I associate that view of the Lakewood Tower at night with my first feeling of being at home here. I loved that East Dallas vibe so much, I moved across town and I’ve lived over by White Rock Lake ever since.

Although I have painted the iconic Lakewood theater many times (and followed it as it went from concert venue to abandoned building to historic landmark before becoming a bowling alley), I have never painted the theater at night until now. I’m having a lot of fun playing up the swirling brushstrokes made by the student-artist at Chase’s place with the linear, neon of the tower and the fluorescent shadows the lights create on the building’s exterior. I hope y’all enjoy this painting… and I encourage you to check out Chase’s Place. This piece will be auctioned during the “Viva Las Vegas” gala at the F.I.G.downtown on February 15, 2020. I love the glamorous vibes of our own, Dallas Art Deco theater for this party. If you can’t make the gala, but you would like to support this wonderful school, consider making a donation at http://www.chasesplace.org/support/

Cheers!

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