Walk of the Town: Holiday Edition Award for Most Playful Display
Winners: Jennifer and Steven, at 920 Pomona Street, The Dalles
By Sarah Cook
When I discovered the abundant display at 920 Pomona Street, I was on my way to a Grit Row class and the sun was already up; I couldn’t believe how festive the whole thing was without the aid of nighttime. Most scenes fall flat during the day, but this one did the opposite: it came alive like a 3-D collage.
And while “playful” might seem like a generic award title, I like that it captures something primal about the creative act, because Jennifer, along with her husband Steven, are hands down the most creative people I spoke to this season.
Hello, World!
“Every year my husband—bless his heart—does the electrical for me,” Jennifer told me by phone one afternoon. “We just like to entertain the neighborhood and make people feel good. I love the lights myself, and lights always make me feel younger and happier. That’s why we do it. If we had a year-round Christmas store here, people would probably have a fit, and I would live there.”
Jennifer mentions that a lot of their pieces are handmade, and this is where our conversation really takes off. A self-proclaimed Hot Glue Queen (a title I’m sincerely jealous of), she and Steven keep busy year-round with endless arts & crafts projects that span mediums. For the past two years, Steven has tended his new passion for woodturning. And that angel on the northernmost end of their yard? They made it.
“I made the body two years ago, out of chicken wire,” Jennifer shares, “and my husband kept telling me he liked it, but it still needed wings.” But Jennifer kept cutting herself on the wire, so she tagged out and let Steven take over, who made the wings and finished the piece earlier this year. “He kinda bemoans me when I start something new…and then he gets into it. He laughs because I bring things home during the year from garage sales for Christmas, and he’s always saying that I’m running out of room—well, I am!”
By this point in our conversation I can’t decide what I’m most impressed by. It could be the story of husband and wife artist collaborators, their creative pursuits accompanying them through all 32 years of their relationship so far.
Or maybe it’s the unique role that Christmas has always played in their union. “My husband made me a Mr. and Mrs. Claus our first year together,” Jennifer tells me when I ask if there’s a piece she’s extra proud of. “He carved them out of styrofoam and I dressed them, and we made a whole little scene under Santa’s tree.”
Because of their delicate materials, the styrofoam pair have since been retired for safekeeping. “He’s had to put up with me and Christmas from day one,” Jennifer laughs, but it’s clear that her love of Christmas is a boon, not a bust, for those around her. She shares a story, for example, about a winter when their grandson stayed with them for the holidays. This was before Mr. & Mrs. Claus had been retired, so they set up the full scene one night around the tree. “Our grandson came in the next morning, put his hands on his hips, looked at grandpa, and said, ‘this is cool.’ He’d never seen anything like it.”
“Truthfully,” she adds after we pause for a laugh break, “I remember that as a kid, too: Seeing the lights, and being in awe.”
Jennifer also makes reindeer food—spoiler: it’s oatmeal + glitter!—which she sends to her nieces and nephews each year. “They get in a little panic if December shows up and they haven’t received it yet.” The panic makes sense: in Jennifer’s storytelling, it’s the reindeer food that helps Rudolph & crew find their way to your house.
As with my two other interviews this season, I wanted to hear Jennifer speak a little about her why, that thing that keeps her inspired and drives her holiday momentum. “There’s too much going on out there,” she explains, “and we need some space for cute and fun things.” The world is full of “hard corners,” to use her insightful phrasing.
Genocide, poverty, homelessness. What to do when the inequities and the violence feel like too much to bear?
For one thing: you create.
“We’ve both been blessed with it,” Jennifer tells me when I point out the major role creativity has played in her and Steven’s lives. And the more I speak with my neighbors, the more convinced I am that yard decoration in general, and creating holiday displays in particular, is a deeply creative act.
Maybe that seems obvious, but limiting expectations and hierarchical thinking have a way of sneaking into even the most sacred aspects of life, and creativity is no exception. For something so fundamentally fueled by playfulness and childlike wonder, a lot of us encounter a lot of blocks—and I say this as a person who talks to writers and artists for a living—that stifle what we think “counts” when it comes to our creative pursuits. Photography, painting, writing novels: Yes! But a chicken-wired angel and light-up unicorn?…
Well, besides being a Hot Glue Heir Apparent, I’m also a staunch advocate for toppling such hierarchies, which do nothing to serve the creative channel, and only keep us at odds with ourselves and our artistic impulses. When it comes to the question, “what counts,” the only answer I’m interested in is the most authentic one: All of it.
When I speak with folks like Patrick and Leroy and Jennifer, and behold the beautiful, interesting, and detailed work they devote themselves to year after year—work that is, for the most part, done for strangers they’ll never meet—I’m reminded that there's no wrong way to be an artist, and that everything we make for ourselves, we make for others, too.
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