Artist Draws Olympic Date

When the Olympic Games open in Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 15, Gerri Wilson’s volleyball players, kayakers and swimmers will strut their stuff.

They’ll leap and flex and dig with the best athletes in the world without breaking a sweat or changing position.

They’re athletes on paper only, but they had to qualify for the Olympic Games just like all the other participants.

Gerri, 52, is one of 10 visual artists worldwide chosen by Quest Australia to exhibit at the 2000 Olympics.

“It’s incredible,” she says, arranging her artwork on the dining room table of her Coeur d’Alene home. “I haven’t done that much.”

Quest Australia is an alliance of Sydney’s Christian churches. It will host 3,000 Olympic athletes in church homes, coordinate three weeks of entertainment and supply hundreds of volunteers.

A convoluted path led Gerri to Sydney.

Her portfolio was nearly empty when the opportunity arose a year ago.

“I’ve managed to put this off for 52 years,” she says. “Now, I don’t want to let another day go by without drawing something.”

Gerri was a war bride. Art school beckoned her after high school in 1965, but the draft, her high spirits and a persistent boyfriend blocked her way.

“My parents thought artists starve. As a woman, I was pointed toward typing, nursing or teaching,” Gerri says. “In my heart, I rebelled.”

She decided to marry to save her boyfriend from the draft. A week before the ceremony was scheduled to take place, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he was ending marriage deferments that day at midnight. Gerri was married a few hours later. She was 17.

Her art slipped by the wayside until her daughter was born two years later. Gerri sketched her baby, then her second one three years later.

Friends saw her work and pressed her to do something with her talent. Gerri wasn’t sure what she could do that wouldn’t interfere with her job as a mother.

“I knew I couldn’t be a good mom and an artist at the same time,” she says. “I knew my girls would be my most creative project.”

She treated herself to periodic art workshops, but considered art an indulgence until her marriage fell apart in 1993.

She had no means of support and few job skills after 29 years as a wife and mother. A new craft store saved her. It tapped Gerri’s creativity. She mixed and matched craft materials to create designs no one had seen before.

Store owners were impressed and asked her to demonstrate.

“I loved it,” she says. “I’d prayed that God would help me use my art to get along. I hadn’t planned to be alone at this age.”

She submitted her designs to craft magazines, which published them. Her Christmas cookiecutter sweat shirt made the cover of Country Crafts. The same magazine also published her designs of giraffe-print earrings, tennis shoes and T-shirts.

Seeing her work in print inspired Gerri to develop her fine art skills. Her divorce settlement included money to send her to school. That money never materialized.

“I lost my husband, home, car, credit,” she says. “Either I moved back with my parents or with a friend.”

Gerri accepted a friend’s invitation to rest, relax and explore her art in Coeur d’Alene. She moved from Arizona in 1995, found a job decorating cakes at Safeway stores and began drawing.

She sketched parents cooing over their new baby and doe-eyed girls with soft, round faces. Then she filled in the figures with ink or colored pencil.

Friends suggested she compile her drawings into a coloring book. She took her book to a Christian counseling center, Elijah House, in Post Falls, and began volunteering there as an art teacher.

“We saw that she has something to offer, that she’s able to touch the hearts of people,” says Jeff Guyett, house director. “Her work is very unique and powerful.”

Gerri found a brochure at Elijah House advertising a conference in Canada for Christian artists in 1998. She decided to go, and ended up in Kunming, China, a year later with the International Festival of Arts, a Christian organization.

The 260 festival artists from all over the world are subtle missionaries. They showcase their talents as gifts from God but steer clear of proselytizing. Gerri wasn’t an exhibitor but a teacher. She shared art with disabled children in Chinese schools for a week.

A woman from Quest Australia met with the festival artists right before they arrived in China. She explained her group’s mission for the Olympic Games.

Gerri submitted examples of her work - a handful of drawings on cards. Quest Australia accepted her last July.

Since then, she’s scrambled to add to her portfolio.

“I figured I’m going to the Olympics. I want to do athletes,” she says.

Friends have shared photographs of kayakers, volleyball players, swimmers and baseball players with her. She copied the helmeted kayaker in acrylics and clay, for a 3-dimensional look. The yellow and orange kayak is pointed down in frothy white water. The kayaker’s arms are up, paddle in the air, for balance.

The other athletes are sketched on cards.

Gerri will take two paintings and about a dozen illustrated cards. She’ll travel to exhibits throughout Sydney during the games. Sponsors have helped her pay for the trip.

“I have to pinch myself,” she says, squeezing past old yogurt cartons filled with paintbrushes and stacks of art supplies to put away her drawings. “I just wish I had more time.”