The Wishing Spring Art Gallery on McNelly Road in Bella Vista celebrated their 35th anniversary with back-to-back events over the weekend.
On Friday, the Gallery hosted their first exhibition with two artists who are both nationally known members of the Village Art Club.
Patty Halley is well known as a pet portrait artist, but she calls on her years of living in Alaska to create landscapes. She moved to Bella Vista about a year ago to retire, but she's still working on her art.
"It's very progressive here," she said.
"That's one thing that attracted us to Bella Vista."
Crystal Bridges and Bentonville's First Fridays are two of the reasons she and her husband came to this area.
Retired as a registered nurse, she plans to volunteer occasionally.
Steve Horan sells his art in galleries around the world. He's been in Bella Vista for 13 years, but some of his art still depicts skyscrapers and urban life.
He's been an artist since kindergarten, he said, and sells some of his work in the Wishing Spring gallery. His wife is a former president of the Village Art Club.
"I enjoy the people here," he said.
The Wishing Spring gallery is 35 years old.About 50 artists display and sell their products and run the gallery themselves.
The Village Art Club now has about 125 members.
Xyta Lucas of the Bella Vista Historical Museum was on hand at the Saturday celebration with information about how the gallery got started.
The Village Art Club started in 1966, she said, although another organization, the Bella Vista Fine Arts Center, preceded it.
The Fine Arts Center wasn't actually a center, she explained.
They did not have a building. That group met at the Sunset Hotel which once stood on a hill overlooking Lake Bella Vista.
It burned to the ground.
The barn that is now home to the gallery was a dairy barn in the 1950s. When the Linebargers owned the Bella Vista resort in the 1930s and '40s, they ran a dairy farm there to supply their guests.
In 1968, after John Cooper received two buffalo as a gift, the barn and the area around it became home to a small herd of buffalo.
They numbered 13 in 1980, Lucas said, but they were gone by 1982.
The Village Art Club acquired the barn in 1982, according to historian Gilbert Fite, and spent two years renovating it into the gallery.
Saturday's celebration included plein aire artists, music, a food truck and a raffle.
General News on 06/21/2017