Introducing our new ‘Arts Around Terrace’ columnist, Lori Knight

Lori Knight during a Luly Yang model shoot at Yang’s downtown Seattle shop in 2011. Knight and daughter Briana were her models for the famous designer’s 2011 spring art original show featured at Cole Gallery in Edmonds. (Photo by Patty Linna)

MLTnews is proud to introduce a new column, “Arts Around Terrace,” written by Brier resident and artist Lori Knight, who co-owns — with her husband Eric — the Knight Visions Studio Gallery.

You can read Knight’s first column here.

Knight has been selling, promoting, marketing and framing art for 25 years. (She opened her studio at 19533 Filbert Dr., in nearby Bothell. in 1987.) Both of her children — Briana and Chris — are Mountlake Terrace High School graduates.

A native of rural Pennsylvania, Knight received her Bachelor’s of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Washington in 1984.
After graduation, she sold real estate and then decided to open her own business — just five weeks before Chris was born.

Here’s a Q&A with Knight:

Q: How did someone with an anthropology degree ended up selling art?

A: It’s how you choose to see the world. Art, like anthropology, is a renaissance field, demanding a knowledge base in many fields, disciplines and studies. I like complexity, layers, figuring out the past and how it is linked to the present and that is art. Art teaches us more about ourselves because it requires an opinion. It requires you to think. It may inspire you. It may repulse you.  It is all things… to any one given person… at any one given time.  Because of that, art places you in the community of humankind…where we are all linked together.

Q: What do you consider your best accomplishment?

A: Owning my own business. I was able to raise my family within the daily business structure, taking the children to work and involving them in all aspects of how an art business is run. The ultimate hope for anyone is that you inspire them, teach them to stand up on their own, believe in themselves, and contribute back to the world.  I consider myself privileged to have worked with our daughter Briana, who received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from East Tennessee State in 2009 and was my artist-in- residence at the business the past three years.  Our son Chris is currently achieving his Masters in Jazz Studies at the University of Indiana and was a part of the award-winning Mountlake Terrace jazz band during high school.

Q: How would you describe your philosophy on life?

A: My parents taught me to appreciate a life’s education. That it can be formal, or it can be through life experience.  To quote my father, “An education is something that no one can ever take away from you.”

Q: What’s your philosophy on work?

A:  I was raised in rural Pennsylvania on the banks of Brush Creek which is one of the beginning tributaries of the Ohio and ultimately Mississippi River, where I learned to garden, sew, hunt and fish. My first job was in our neighbor’s garden nursery at  age 5, where I would come to work in the summer each day with my empty little red Radio Flyer wagon and learn all about family business and community. I learned all about flowers and would teach anyone who would listen to me about flowers (eventually joining 4-H) and if you became my “nursery customer,” I would load up that little red wagon ( my version of the early garden cart prototype) with all sorts of flowers for your garden. People didn’t quite know what happened to them by the time they got to the cash register, and we all learned a lot along the way and there were many great gardens throughout the township. At the end of the day, I would barter for flowers for the garden that I shared with my father, that he made me work in and weed. I still work with a red Radio Flyer wagon (our son’s) on the studio property, as it is a symbol that has stayed with me to this day!

Knight invites MLTnews readers “to hop on the wagon and join me in this journey of exploring and writing about all forms of art!”

You learn more about Knight’s gallery via the website or Facebook page. The studio phone number is 425-487-3408.

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