Virginia Avery and Wilma Knies enjoy attending Zumba classes, thrifting, mountain getaways, hiking and making art.
The friends of 12 years first met through the Wheat Ridge Art League. Both were attending their grandsons’ bike race in Granby when they realized they had more in common than both being artists. From then, their friendship grew through bike rides along the beach and Wilma cooking Virginia meals.
Both remember a time when Wheat Ridge was mostly dirt roads and farmland, and both share a lifelong passion for art.
Avery was a teenager when her family moved from Denver to Wheat Ridge. She attended Wheat Ridge High School. She belonged to the first graduating class of the new Wheat Ridge High School building in 1959. She enjoyed all her teachers but really enjoyed her art teacher, Mr. Wetherbee. Her love of art only got stronger as the years went by.
“Art, in some way or another, has always been in my life,” Avery said.
Avery’s family enjoyed spending time at home, and she remembers her love of painting or drawing was welcomed in the family.
“None of us were very athletic,” Avery said. “Our activities were mostly indoors.”
After graduating high school, Avery got married and moved to Durango with her husband, where they both attended Fort Lewis College. She fell in love with the scenery of the area. She studied in the highest-ranked art program in the school, Staton Englehart, under the head of the department. Although she was thrilled to experience the program, she didn’t finish her degree and instead focused on raising their children. The experience stayed with her nonetheless.
“I never pursued a job in the art field,” Avery said. “I just enjoy the love of working with art, and I am inspired whenever I have the opportunity.”
Knies was born in 1934 on Jason Street in North Denver. Her family moved to Wheat Ridge, back to the city where her father grew up, in 1940.
She remembers her childhood home was surrounded by farmland, a nursery, greenhouses and only a few other homes. Wadsworth was an unpaved, two-lane road. The home, located on Quitman Street, is where Wilma currently lives.
She loved to draw and color as a child. She remembers spending a lot of time coloring on the floor on any paper she could find. She usually won poster and costume contests. She sewed many of her clothes starting in third grade. A sewing machine was her first adult purchase out of college.
She attended UNC. She started as an art major but changed to elementary education because there were fewer art teacher positions back then, but she took many art class electives.
After graduating, she taught second grade for three years in Aurora and taught third grade in Prospect Valley. She had three children and lived in Keenesburg during the ’60s.
In 1976, she and her husband sold their house in Keenesburg and bought cabins in Grand Lake.
Together, they managed ten vacation cabins. Due to the short summer season, her husband taught school year-round. Her sons started a pinball machine and pool table business when they were teens. That evolved into T-shirt shops and ski wear shops in Winter Park, Breckenridge and Estes Park. Knies helped with the heat transfers and screen printing.
They sold the cabins and the businesses in 2000 and moved to a Sun City home in Henderson, Nevada, where they spent winters and stayed in Wheat Ridge in the summers.
her stove when creating this art piece.
PHOTO BY ZOE JENNINGS
She became a member of the Wheat Ridge Art League during her summers in Colorado. She hadn’t had much time to create art since adolescence.
After her mom passed away in 2009, the couple moved into her childhood home, and she could attend the monthly art league meetings year-round.
Both Avery and Knies enjoy the programs offered by the art league, especially a pastels class taught at the adult center by Courtney Armstrong.
They are thankful for the Wheat Ridge Art League for providing opportunities to enjoy not only the art but also making art with friends. They find each other’s support of their art to be invaluable.
Knies’ art accolades include placing first, second and third in the Wheat Ridge Grange Sewing Contest and winning best in show at the Carnation Festival for a painting, despite only spending 15 minutes creating the piece.
Avery and Knies both don’t take themselves or their art too seriously. They’ve done some quirky experimentation that has led to some cool pieces. Knies has a painting painted only using a credit card. She also enjoys finding junk treasures around and making them into art and mobiles. One day, Avery created art by making patterns in the white cleaner she put on her stovetop.
Their love of the outdoors is seen through both of their art. This fall, they’ve enjoyed watching the leaves change at Prospect Park and hope to paint the scene into their art pieces. Knies plans to paint some skiing photos inspired by her grandson’s love of extreme skiing.
