A Special Place for Connection

Dear Friends & Family,

For almost 20 years, I've worked at the Pence Gallery as the Director. The Pence has a special place in my life, as I've been here to see it grow and serve the community through its exhibits, programs, and outreach.  Although my job has changed a lot over the years, I still like to give tours to the students who come to our ArtSmart school program, as the photo above shows. Hearing their ideas about the art on view and seeing their completed art projects always gives me great hope and enjoyment. I see how building a sense of community engagement and connection begins with our youth. 

Recently, we’ve had to cut back our unique Art in Action program due to the loss of previous funding, making it happen only 4x a year. Many families in the area value the program as it gives participants a chance to learn together and spend time in a creative way. One of our staff members told me how two girls from different towns pictured above met through our program, and looked forward to seeing each other monthly at the Pence. A younger sister is finally old enough to attend, but now the program has been cut back. We'd love to make it happen again every month, so that local families have a safe space to connect and create together. 

Another important need at the Pence is securing our facility and the safety of our visitors and staff. We need to be able to install an automatic lock feature with ADA access for our doors, to protect our building from threatening individuals.  As a largely female staff, we often have just 1-2 people in the building, thus we want to make sure that they can restrict access to the building easily. We also want visitors with mobility issues to be able to access our gallery without hassle. Installing a new automatic door opening feature would greatly assist our visitors and teachers who need it. Joanne Andresen is one of our art teachers, and is providing a match donation for our door improvements! 

We're also trying to improve our energy efficiency by installing new blinds. Our energy bills have been truly shocking this year! To do this, and safeguard the building, and to increase our accessibility to local families, we need to raise $30,000 through the Big Day of Giving. We know that we can get there, and every donation, from $10 to $10,000, makes a huge difference! 

I’m asking you to donate to the Pence through the Big Day of Giving website, www.bigdayofgiving.org, which is now open for early giving. If you wait until May 1st, you can help us win big monetary prizes by just donating through the Big Day website.  All donations are tax-deductible and help us towards our goal. 

We have a generous match pool this year, including donors Les DeWall and Mary Stephens-DeWall, Joanne Andresen, Mike Crump and Stephanie Kocsik, and Amina Harris, so your dollars get matched up to $11,500, thus making your donation make an even larger impact. 

Thank you for your friendship and support! 

Natalie Nelson, Director 😀