25 Years of Growing the Arts in Wayne

Nancy Campbell is celebrating 25 years as executive director of the Wayne Art Center this year.

When she came to the art center in the mid-1980s it was a small cinderblock shack of 2,600 square feet, she recalled. Today, the art center gets international submissions of work and has made a name with its Craft Forms and Plein Air exhibits. It has grown to 28,000 square feet, and it may not end there.

"They opened up so many opportunities," she said of the center's two expansions. There are now two main art galleries, a gift shop, a ceramics studio, sculpture studio, jewelry studio, children's studios and a culinary studio.

People from all over the world submit works to the center's shows, and some artists even fly in to attend exhibit openings. They put on 20 exhibitions a year in addition to dozens of classes and brain injury and senior citizens programs.

Campbell, a Penn Valley native, studied crafts in Colorado, where she was first introduced to the concept of art centers. She can still remember the first time she came up with a promotional pitch—the kind of collaboration that is commonplace now.

She wanted to start a sewing class at the art center where she worked, but they had no machines and could not afford them. She had an idea: contact some sewing companies and offer promotion for their local stores in return for some machines. It worked, she told Radnor Patch. She was thrilled, and the center received its sewing machines.

Now, decades later, Campbell said the success of the Wayne Art Center proves how the community values the arts. She has made it "a place people want to be."

She does not have time to do the craft work that she used to, but that does not mean she doesn't have art in her life.

"I guess this is my creative outlet," she said.