Artist spreads splash of holiday spirit on local windows

Sarah Brown

As the holidays get closer, artist Jennifer Pulliam puts her mark on the season in Sweet Home by painting business windows.

Sugar Vibes commissioned Pulliam to paint a scene on its window last week for the Capitol Christmas Tree celebration, and City Hall and Sweet Home Library will also have their windows decorated this week.

As Pulliam designed the scene for Sugar Vibes of a truck transporting the tree toward Washington, D.C., she realized it’s a pretty big deal to be sending a tree from the Sweet Home Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest to the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, she said.

“To think that a part of us, in a sense, is going all the way there, it’s a really cool thing to be a part of,” she said. “We might be hundreds of miles away across the country, but we still bring things to each other.”

The artist was impressed that, beyond what we might see on television, “we all really are just neighbors and friends.”

Pulliam, owner of Willamette Valley Art Studio in Lebanon, hosts paint night events throughout the Willamette Valley, and recently expanded to painting windows.

She started her business, formerly Ready, Set, Van Gogh Studio, two years ago. After working in food and retail all her life, she wanted more time with her family, and she wanted an outlet for her artistic side.

“I’ve always felt like God gave it to me to do something with, but I didn’t know how to incorporate that in my regular, every-day life,” she said.

Instead of doing only wine-and-paint nights, Pulliam decided all people and ages should have access to paint events, so she takes her business into youth groups, schools, assisted living facilities, businesses and homes.

When Pulliam expanded her business to window painting, she found it was another way to spread joy, she said.

“Putting something fun on the windows really brings in business. I can’t tell you how many people get excited just watching me do it when they come in.”

And that’s exactly what she wants her artwork to do: create happiness.

Pulliam spent her childhood in San Diego with her mom. It was a period during which they didn’t have a whole lot, she said.

“I had to use my imagination a lot, and I kind of tapped into my creative side.”

When she was in the seventh grade, Pulliam won an art competition from the Balboa Museum of Arts of San Diego, which awarded her art classes.

“I think that’s where it really started for me. Going into a museum and seeing artwork and being taught by somebody like that, it really inspired me more.”

Of everything she learned in those classes, the one thing that really stuck with her was the lesson that artists should figure out how to make the artwork their own, to put themselves in their art somehow.

Since Pulliam is a “big fan” of life, love and happiness, she tries to incorporate herself with those themes somehow by painting a beautiful sunset, or adding animals or more trees and such, she said. She wants people to feel something from her paintings.

While she’s out painting windows, people often stop and express appreciation for what she’s doing. To see that excitement, she can see that her work “really does bring so much to people.”

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