Donna Guardino and the Art of Becoming

I want to tell you about Donna Guardino...

Donna Guardino was the first art professional I ever showed my artwork to.

"California Poppies"--Artwork in Guardino Gallery's Little Things Show. December, 2018

I met Donna at her gallery in Portland’s Alberta Arts District in June 2018, when I was about two months shy of my nine-year anniversary working as a Registered Nurse. Honestly, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing—but my head had been so far underwater, for so many years, I was desperate for something to cling to. Thirty minutes before my appointment, I filled the tiniest duffle bag you’ve ever seen with six of my best beaded gourds and brought them into Guardino Gallery.

One of my early gourds shown at Guardino Gallery's Little Things Show , December 2019

I cautiously laid my gourds out on Donna’s counter and waited to hear her thoughts. When she finally spoke, she had one word for me:“Intriguing.”

Intriguing. What was I supposed to do with that?

I left the gallery that day with the word intriguing rolling around in my mouth like a piece of hard candy, and instructions to wait for her email if she decided to invite me to a group show. A month later, the invitation came: I’d be part of the Day of the Dead group show opening at the end of September.

The show inspired me to step away from the gourds and move to larger canvases and more surface area lead me down a creative path that would allow me to move towards the style you see in my artwork today.

The Guardino Gallery Day of the Dead show opened September 27, 2018. Seeing my artwork under gallery lights for the first time was a moment I hope to remember for the rest of my life. The show was a gift to my artistic practice and my soul—it felt like breathing air. I had been so busy drowning I’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe.

Eight days after the show opened I was alone in my Ocean Shores, Washington vacation condo when my right hip prosthesis that I received was in 2017 dislocated. It took hours before I was able to use my phone to call emergency services. At the hospital, following a failed surgical procedure to repair my dislocated hip, a medical error resulted in a my heart stopped beating for 10 minutes. When I woke up, a ventilator was breathing for me—something that was at the very top of my professional : Diagnoses and Treatments That I Want No Part Of List—inspired by my years as a hospital floor Nurse.. The years that followed continued to bring both trauma and exceptional growth—sometimes the two experiences felt indistinguishable from each other. All the while, I had my artwork to see me through the tough days and long nights.

Last summer, a lifetime and seven years after my first June meeting with Donna, I found myself laying out my artwork on the gallery counter for her once again. This time, I arrived with bubble-wrapped artwork tucked inside boxes and stacked neatly on a rolling cart.

When she finished looking through them, I sat beside her, and we fell into a long, easy conversation—about health, about life, about our individual journeys. Our offerings to each other drifted somewhere in-between the mundane and the deeply vulnerable.

Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, I realized I still didn’t know whether she planned to invite me for a featured exhibition. I wasn’t worried about whether Donna liked my work; I knew she did. But I did wonder if she thought I was good enough artist to merit a feature show.

So I asked, “Do you think I could have a show here?”

Without skipping a beat, she said,“Well of course you’ll have a show here. All you ever had to do was ask.”

Donna Guardino passed away on April 9, 2025. My feature show had closed just two weeks earlier.

My artwork—and my life—are unrecognizable from the day I first walked into Guardino Gallery with that teeny-tiny duffle bag. In the seven and a half years since, I have changed in many ways that I am still learning to understand.

Donna Guardino and the Guardino Gallery on NE Alberta Street in Portland, Oregon were instrumental in launching artist careers. Those artists have, in turn, touched and maybe even changed untold numbers of lives with their art. I am privileged to count myself among this special group of artists.

Donna saw something in my work before I knew how to see it myself. More than that, she gave me the space and time and opportunity to become another woman who can say, without hesitation, I’m an artist.

I am leaning into Donna’s final lesson to me: all I ever had to do was ask. My artwork isn’t finished. It’s becoming.

These days, that becoming looks like writing—page by page, story by story. My medium has changed, but the work remains the same: to embrace the light in my story with my whole heart.

If you’ve been here for the art, I hope you’ll stick around for the stories. I’d love to have you with me.

So… this is me asking: Will you come along for the ride?--No teeny-tiny duffle bag required.