Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Amanda Lewis is the founder and executive director of Trillium Project, a public arts nonprofit in Portsmouth, Ohio. (A town we’ve talked about before, as it happens.)
Enjoy our conversation about Main Street murals and making a living as a small-town artist.
Olivia Weeks, The Daily Yonder: Wanna start by telling me about your background? Where are you from, what do you do? Are you yourself an artist?
Amanda Lewis: I am. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. My focus was watercolor and ceramics. I’m not a practicing artist anymore because I get more enjoyment and fulfillment from creating opportunities for other local artists. So I’ve kind of pulled away from design and creating myself to focus more on arts administration, which is where I’m more comfortable.
DY: Cool. Are you from Portsmouth?
AL: I’m actually not, I’m from just across the river in South Shore, Kentucky. So I grew up on a 280 acre farm in a rural place called Schultz Creek. So even though I’m not from Portsmouth, I went to school in Portsmouth and I worked in Portsmouth and I have a lot of connection with the community.
DY: And you mentioned that that’s where you got your BFA – I’m curious just about the arts community in your region. Was it always robust?
AL: There have always been programs and artists working towards creating opportunities for other artists in Portsmouth. It tends to fluctuate throughout a period of time where it’ll gain traction, and then falls by the wayside a little bit. I think we see that in a lot of different sectors in the community. But the arts have been picking up a lot within the last five years. A lot of that comes down to just local artists wanting to stay and create here and just trying to create those opportunities that they maybe haven’t had in the past. And then also a lot of movement and traction also came from the late Jeremy Burnside. He was a big community advocate, and he got a lot of things rockin’ and rollin’ in Portsmouth.
DY: I think that’s a good segue into the Trillium project. Can you talk about how it came about and what exactly it is?
AL: Yeah, so probably about seven or eight years ago, I got heavily involved in community and volunteer work, serving on boards for different organizations in Portsmouth to help address community needs. And from there, it was just kind of like, okay, well, I’ve helped in these spaces. So now how can I take what I know and combine it with what I enjoy, which is art and art history. So then I spoke to a lot of my friends who were also involved in the community, a lot of local artists who, like I said, want to stay and create here and make a difference here. Then in 2020, I filed for our nonprofit status and spent the next two years working out strategic plans and getting all the nuts and bolts together. And then by 2023, we were applying for grants and getting a lot of community attention for what we were trying to do. Over the last probably six months it’s kind of blown up. We’re moving a lot faster than what we thought we were going to be I’ll say that.
DY: And just to put it in more concrete terms, what are you moving really fast towards? What are the projects that are getting funded?
AL: Our primary focus right now is an initiative called Second Glance. That’s a two-year public arts push to create economic development and civic engagement in Portsmouth, by way of public art. We were selected as a 2024 award recipient by the National Endowment for the Arts, so with that funding we’re painting sidewalk murals, crosswalks, intersections, street murals. We’re doing collaborative community photography and installations on empty storefront windows, different projects like that.
DY: I noticed an emphasis on the website on making sure that you’re finding paid opportunities for local artists. Can you talk about that a little bit?
AL: Yeah, absolutely. Any artist in the history of time can tell you that it gets a little unbearable when there are lots of opportunities for art, but there aren’t paid opportunities. So then they have this talent and they have this passion, but they’re not able to sustain a living because they’re not receiving the kind of income that it takes to do what they love to do. So it’s really important to us not only to tap into the local artists here, but to create opportunities that will pay them a living wage so that they can stay here and create here longer and make more impact throughout the years.
DY: Have you seen people in your town be responsive and be understanding about that need for paid opportunities?
AL: Oh, yes. We’re getting a lot of interest from business owners who are now engaging us and saying they want to do some type of artistic collaboration with Trillium project. And that allows us to say, “Okay, well, here’s what comes along with that.” I think sometimes there’s a misunderstanding that the process of getting a mural on your wall is just pulling something off of Pinterest and slapping it up there for 200 bucks, no big deal. But what we make sure that we tell anyone who wants to work with our artists is they’re receiving custom artwork. And it does come at a cost because it’s a valuable service.
DY: What’s one of your favorite projects that you’ve been a part of through Trillium?
AL: I guess I would say, outside of Second Glance which we’re running right now, my favorite project has been the Appalachian Visual Poetry that was put together last year. That was not only an opportunity for artists to create murals, but about pairing local artists with local writers, storytellers, musicians, and poets to then bring their writing to life.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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