Children’s rock garden grows in Washougal

Washougal residents Kathy Dering and Rich Beck have operated The Paint Roller -- a mobile business that offers "paint party" activities at birthday celebrations, special events and local schools and businesses -- since 2015. "We really enjoy working with kids," Beck said. "We talk about it all the time -- when we do paint parties for adults, they're like, 'Oh, this is not very good, I don't know what I'm doing' and all of that, but with kids, they're excited. (They say), 'Look at this -- this is cool.' And it's just wonderful." Now, the business owners have helped create something the entire city can enjoy using children's art as an inspiration. On May 14, Dering and Beck joined Washougal city leaders at a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of the Washougal Children's Rock Garden, the city's first interactive public art installation created by children. "It's so thrilling," Dering said. "I'm so excited because it took a lot of (work) to get done." The garden started out with 115 painted rocks Dering and Beck have collected from children over the past two months, as well stones youngsters painted during the ceremony. Dering and Beck hope that, over time, the composition of the garden will change, with people taking rocks out of the garden and putting new ones in on a regular basis. Their motto for the garden states, "Leave one for inspiration, take one for motivation." "I think that's the culture of painted rocks -- it's like a scavenger hunt," Beck said. "You can take one or leave one for someone else." Dering and Beck started to think about an "interactive, rotating public art installation created by kids" after listening to a discussion about public art during a Washougal City Council meeting in 2019. "One of the council (members) said that one way Washougal can differentiate itself, as opposed to Camas and other cities, is by elevating public art -- sculptures, murals ... that kind of thing," Beck said. "We had been doing the mobile parties for a while, and we liked (working) with kids, and by that time we were working with the school district to do kid stuff. So we thought, 'OK, public art for kids,' because that was not brought up. It just wasn't on the radar from the way they were talking." After talking to then-mayor Molly Coston about their idea, they presented their plan, first to the city council, then to the city's parks board. They felt optimistic that it could come together quickly -- until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The idea stayed "on the backburner," Dering said, until last summer, when they approached Michelle Wright, the city's public works business administrator, to talk about Washougal's "Movies in the Park" events and brought up the rock garden. "I said, 'By the way, this has nothing to do with "Movies in the Plaza," but we want to do a rock garden.' And she said, 'How about the community garden?'" Dering said. When COVID cases and hospitalizations started dropping, Wright asked Dering if a spring launch might work. "And I said, 'OK,'" Dering said. Dering and Beck collected rocks at four events -- three "paint parties" held in conjunction with Washougal Youth Art Month in March, and the city of Washougal's Hello Spring Community Fair April 30. At each of the events, they encouraged children to pick two rocks out of a 5-gallon bucket, grab a paint pen and get to work, but didn't provide them with any further directives other than that they could take one of the rocks home and donate the other to the garden. "Going forward, we're going to do the same thing," Dering said. "Anything we do with the schools, any event we're at, we'll have them paint rocks -- one to take home and one for the garden." "It's amazing, some of the things they make. I could not have thought of some of (these designs)," Dering added. "It's been great to see how artistic the kids are, and how surprised their parents are with what their kids come up with." Beck said that the garden will be something that's "unique" to Washougal and "good for community-building," and re-emphasize the fact that Washougal is "a city of artists." "... it's not just for (the children) and their families," he said, "it's for everybody. If people are just walking past, walking their dog or going to the new playground right next to the garden or utilizing that space, they can look at it and can say, 'That's something cool that people in Washougal made."

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