“Art is all about the vision. Vision is everything,” said Christopher Rouse.
As he starts a new job as executive director of Plumas Arts, expect Rouse to use his own vision to see the possibility of art in every corner of Plumas County. He brings to the job two decades of experience in creative design that fostered new concepts of art.
“The work of art should be exciting, no matter what the genre,” he said.
Rouse, who starts work May 13, received a full endorsement from Plumas Arts Board Chair Sierra Blanton. “The board is thrilled to welcome Christopher Rouse as our new executive director. We look forward to the innovative leadership and fresh perspectives he brings to our organization, along with the exciting big plans and ideas he has in store for our future.”
The executive director position is not Rouse’s first job with Plumas Arts. He was working at the Town Hall Theatre in Quincy, which is managed by Plumas Arts, at age 15, learning, among other things, that the film projector had a mind of its own. Rouse eventually rose to the level of assistant manager. Despite the allure of a movie theater in downtown Quincy, when Rouse graduated from Quincy High School in 2000 he left town in a rush for Los Angeles.
Rouse spent 16 years in downtown LA. After graduating from Santa Monica College he worked in interior design for companies that include Restoration Hardware, an upscale American home-furnishing company now known as RH. These were multimillion-dollar projects in the high-end homes of celebrities, he said.
“I’m drawn to spaces because people live there. That’s my form of art: putting spaces together with or without an abundance of materials,” he said.
It was ultimately space that lured Rouse back to Plumas County. Early in the COVID pandemic he planned a week-long trip to Quincy to visit his parents. One week became two, then three … On the trip back to LA he stopped in Lone Pine, where Rouse realized he did not want to go back to the city. He moved in with his parents and began working for the Plumas County Public Health Agency.
“When you’re younger, you don’t appreciate all of this,” he says, waving a hand toward the meadow that stretched across Indian Valley to Mt. Hough and Grizzly Ridge beyond.
Rouse, who now lives in Indian Valley, was sitting in The Pallet Palace. His latest artistic creation is an outdoor courtyard of cushions, covered in colorful fabric and piled as seats and backs on wooden pallets surrounding a massive fire pit. Pallets turned on end form a rustic fence graced by oversized planters of welded metal awaiting spring plants.
As executive director of Plumas Arts, Rouse envisions putting art everywhere that people want to see it. A vacant lot in Greenville? Fill it with musicians. Main Street, Quincy? A community art “happening” every first Friday.
Rouse will steer an organization that has grown from a subcommittee of the Plumas County Board of Supervisors in 1982 to an independent nonprofit organization, said Blanton. Past executive directors Roxanne Valladao and Kara Rockett-Arsenault created and nurtured programs that are now the mainstay of arts throughout Plumas County. Plumas Arts manages California Arts Council grants that support Plumas County school arts programs and aid countywide artists through a diverse range of initiatives, including the recent Creative Upstate Corp Grant.
It also orchestrates numerous countywide events aimed at promoting Plumas County and the talented artists within and surrounding the region. The staff includes five team members plus seven theater clerks working with its members to cultivate communities in which arts and culture flourish.
“Plumas Arts has great bones,” said Rouse. “Our challenge is to add to what we already have to get art into every nook and cranny of Plumas County.”
He welcomes every idea, every artistic passion, he said. Art should be exhilarating and it should be accessible. “Art is not something exclusive and remote. It’s for everyone,” he said. “And it’s already here in Plumas County — all around us. I’m excited to jump in.”
Information provided by Plumas Arts