If Skagit Valley’s community of artists could be considered a family, and if the family had a mother figure, she would be Lavone Newell-Reim. From 1987 to 2003 she annually hosted and supported this large, familial group at an event that brought the arts to the public in a reunion, celebration and sale. Newell-Reim, an abstract painter, together with fellow artist John Simon, hosted the annual Barn Show. In fact much of what kept the art scene moving forward over the past four-plus decades happened at her Fir Island home, formerly a farm operated by the pioneering Larson family.

So when she pa...