Renovated Camper Goes Cross Country As Open Gallery
Nora Dougherty Drives and Operates Work.Shop. Art Gallery Inside A 1958 Kenskill Trailer Beginning Along The Pacific Coast Highway
As an artist, Nora Dougherty is multifaceted in her trade. Though primarily a jewelry maker, for the last few years she has also worked as a renovator, curator, and creator of collaborative artwork spaces. She has accomplished all of this from within a 20-foot, 1958 Kenskill trailer.
When Dougherty initially made her voyage to the west coast, she didn’t intend to become a full time artist.
“When I first moved to Santa Cruz, I was just visiting a friend who owned her own jewelry company…. I was studying to be a midwife while I was working for her. A year after that I took this other turn, I decided not to pursue midwifery, and started taking art classes at our community college…and working different odd jobs while I was pursuing that. It kind of evolved that way.”
Today, Dougherty lives with a few other artists on farmland that used to be for migrant housing. Located just off the Pacific Coast Highway, she loved the idea of having a small gallery there to bring her artwork and her fellow artists’ artwork to the Santa Cruz community. An opportunity presented itself in the form of a vintage camper trailer that was sitting on a friend’s farm.
“[The trailer] had been the tool shed for my friend’s farm,” Dougherty said. “It was leaking, so they ended up just setting it aside...and someone moved into it.
The acquisition of the trailer sparked the idea to make the small gallery mobile. The result was work. shop.
“Eventually the farm realized they needed to get rid of [the trailer],” Dougherty explained. “But by the time they did that, it had been very badly abused. The cleanup was pretty horrific. The squalor was probably more than I’d seen in my life. Very disgusting…. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to turn it around. I had this kind of weird momentum that I couldn’t stop.”
That momentum took her from renovations to the open road. For the first few years, Dougherty spent the summertime traversing the United States, parking and setting up shop at random places along the way.
“Initially, my excitement was about direct contact with the public and getting my work out and my community’s artwork out in this spontaneous, direct, playful way,” Dougherty said. “I made these signs...where there’s a poem that you read as you keep driving. And then you come upon this little caravan. Still to this day I love that idea, and I did that for about the first three years. I would do that on the weekend and then I would plan an event like poetry readings in parking lots with campfires and marshmallows. There are people in my community who make short films, so we would have these little film festivals where we would project on the side of a vacant building. This idea that art can happen anywhere and the element of surprise was really important to me.”
Throughout her travels, Dougherty sought to learn from her experiences. When her community of artists and friends learned she wanted to go cross country with the trailer, she experienced some raised eyebrows and sideways glances. And though the experience was rewarding, it became apparent that spontaneity is not always easy, and that parking a twenty-foot trailer is not always practical.
“In retrospect, I think someone who knew more about trailers never would have taken it across country the way that I did,” Dougherty said. “But I have this pride in doing things that aren’t reasonable and getting away with it. Truthfully, there was risk and some danger involved, and I’m lucky in a lot of ways. The way that I go about things is I learn as I go; I really believe in that. I think the most challenging thing is the towing and parking and being safe with it…. The biggest lesson I got in learning how to drive [the trailer] was that going slow was my biggest friend. That seemed to be the answer to everything. As long as I went slowly, it was much safer, so that’s what I did. I just moved really, really slow.”
After her extensive travels in the first few years of work. shop, Dougherty embarked on a second, smaller renovation of the trailer’s interior.
“I transformed the trailer again where I made a workspace that was available for the public to sit down and make art,” Dougherty said. “So I created this project called 'A Collaboration of Strangers'. The premise of that was to bridge the gap with the general public and the art world and really reconnect people with their own creativity and really make this stand [that art] belongs to all of us….”
'A Collaboration of Strangers' began with artists from Dougherty’s own community.
“Last year I created an art show with three local artists in Santa Cruz, and I showed their work in the trailer. They all started on squares of paper, ten to twenty pieces each, and then I had all these art supplies available. The idea was people could walk in, view the art, and be drawn to a particular person’s art, and I could invite them to collaborate with that artist,” Dougherty explained.
Now, five years since opening work. shop, Dougherty is undertaking a third renovation for the trailer. This time, she’s moved her entire workshop inside the trailer. From here, she can continue her own artwork: sculptural, three-dimensional jewelry made of sterling silver and bronze. She draws inspiration from nature, capturing movement in the forms she makes.
In addition, and in order to keep the mobile gallery alive, Dougherty is in the market for a bus.
“I’m shopping for a short school bus. And I’m taking on transforming a school bus into a live/work space. I want it to be able to tow the trailer. My goal is to be living nomadically by next summer.”
With the bus serving as a gallery, and her own studio being portable, Dougherty will take to the road again, ready to welcome more people into the work. shop experience.
Kailyn Clay
A graduate of Trinity Christian College in English & Political Science, Kailyn has written for Brilliance Publishing & GEMS' Girls Clubs among others. She enjoys hiking and cooking.
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Work.shop. mobile gallery, by Nora Dougherty, is dedicated to community, resourcefulness, and craft. It strives to cultivate an intimate and inspired space for deliberate viewers and unsuspecting passers.