We recently connected with Camilla & Dustin Frank and have shared our conversation below.

Camilla & Dustin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Camilla: I’ve always enjoyed being creative, and was lucky enough to have parents that supported me in that, but never thought I’d pursue it professionally until a few years ago.
I had unintentionally taken a break from creativity as we began to raise our children, and noticed something missing from my life. I began painting with watercolors, a relatively child-friendly medium, and found so much comfort and release through the creative process.
My husband/partner and I had a dream to someday open a cultural and event center, and eventually began a social media page to foster community awareness. I started posting my work, a friend asked to buy a painting, and I couldn’t believe it. Around the same time, a family member suffered a tragic loss, and I was looking for a way to express my sympathy for their grief. I decided to paint a painting for them. Dustin and I wanted to give a copy of the painting to our entire family to remember the loss, so he created prints from my original. Later, when I had other paintings, we realized we could create prints of my work, or notecards, or calendars, and we’ve been doing so ever since.
Those two circumstances, with others, too, helped us to see the possibilities of sharing our work with those around us.

Dustin
My mind was made up pretty early that I wanted to pursue a creative profession—thanks to my parents. I was fortunate to grow up in a creative house where my Mother was a professional musician, and my dad—while an engineer by day—he moonlighted in the creative arts supporting my mother with audio/video production. One project stands out in my memory where my mother had written an original Christmas song and she wanted to capture it in film. This was the early 80s and it just wasn’t something that was as easily done as it is today. The production wasn’t funded by any big pockets and yet somehow my mom had a way of involving the community to produce this video. I’ll never forget the sights and smells of being “on set” – even it was our neighbors backyard. My mom’s creative vision, mixed with my dad’s technical knowhow—and pure magic was born. I’ve been fortunate to make a living creating, and have been blessed with a spouse that is incredibly talented creatively. We make a great team and I’m excited to see what our next project will be.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I think the most important thing that I could tell anyone, concerning our business, is our firm belief in the power of creativity. Both Dustin and I stand behind the idea that we humans are meant to create. Whether that’s through painting, music, dance, woodworking, fashion design—it doesn’t matter. We genuinely believe that our souls receive nourishment and healing through the creative process. We want to send goodness out in to the world, and try to do so through our art. As far as our skill set is concerned, we are extremely lucky to compliment one another with our talents. We love painting murals together, which is always an adventure as our methodology differs so widely (he loves to plan, design, measure, and I usually just go for it).
I love painting bright and colorful florals that Dustin then turns in to stationary, calendars, wedding announcements, etc.
One of my favorite projects would be our Art Camps for Kids each summer. We’ve been holding them annually for 6 straight years now!
Dustin is a talented graphic designer, and can create just about anything you want digitally (I like to provide my input, of course:). Logo design, promotional work, large format print work; the list goes on and on.
Our true dream is to foster creativity in our community by building a cultural and event center called The Blue Barn. We will have a gallery to showcase the work of local artists and artisans, studios for art education, and event space for a wide range of community events.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

Excited about this! Admittedly the details are fuzzy, but any new avenue for a renewal of interest in creating art, owning art and collecting art is great news for the industry. The Blue Barn is exploring how we can be involved in creating our own and are glad to promote others in this vein.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

We both fell headfirst into our community and have a passion for elevating the tides, so to speak. We are both keenly aware of the power of art and creativity in our own lives and are very much aware of the benefits it will bring to our neighbors. There is an especially powerful benefit to children and hope to help develop confidence in art into as many children’s lives as we can.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thebluebarn.net
• Instagram: bluebarngallery
• Facebook: thebluebarngallery
• Twitter: bluebarngallery