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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us May 12, 2005 All in the family By Cindy Blankenship For the Tidings When the 8-year-old pianist’s mother heard the teacher’s recommendation to buy a piano, she had no idea of her daughter’s talent — until she walked into the classroom at Lincoln Elementary. Eight-year-old Dylan Williams and her mother Lisa Sanchez-Navarro share a family history in the arts. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings “I thought she’d be playing something like “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” says Dylan Williams’ mother, Lisa Sanchez-Navarro. “She was playing blues jazz. I was blown away! And she was improvising on what she’d learned. This isn’t easy music to play. You have bass along with melody and harmony.” Lisa says her daughter’s piano teacher, Dave Scoggins (who teaches at SOU and volunteers at Lincoln) told her Dylan is “one in a million” and “a prodigy.” Dylan recently started playing classical. Since the family can’t afford a piano, Lisa takes Dylan to piano class in the morning before school, and when she can in the afternoon after her nursing classes at SOU where Dylan’s father, Jim Williams, works. “When I started on the keyboard I got interested in music. Now on the piano I like the way it sounds and feels,” Dylan says, adding “I hope others like it too when they listen.” Besides playing piano, Dylan loves painting and drawing. At May’s First Friday Art Walk, she and other Lincoln students participated in a fundraising art show for 16-year-old Whitney Chatfield and the treatment of a cancer she was diagnosed with three years ago. The work will be on display at Nuwandart Gallery on A Street throughout May. Dylan’s three paintings were among the fastest sellers, all bought within the first hour of the show. Asked how she felt about this success, she says, “That feels really neat. It feels good because it’s helping a girl who has had cancer for three years. It feels good to help someone.” A precocious and energetic child, Dylan is the youngest volunteer at Peace House. “She’s an old soul. I learn a lot from her,” says her mother, adding she intends to do all she can to support her daughter’s gifts. “I was told I could never make a living with art … I tell Dylan she can be anything she chooses.” Lisa says she’s just learning to accept herself as an artist and hopes to someday blend a psychiatric nursing career with art therapy. Lisa’s mother, Gwen Sandefur of Texas, also paints. It took her a while also before she accepted her gift. She began selling her paintings after she retired. Lisa doesn’t remember ever being encouraged by her family to be creative, even though when she was 7 a book she wrote was placed in her school libraries in her district and in high school, peers eagerly awaited sequels to chapters she typed. Lisa attributes this interest to her unsettled childhood. After her father died, Lisa was shuttled from one relative’s home to another making it difficult to build friendships. She also taught herself to draw after discovering some of her mother’s old art books. Later when her first art work was commissioned by a woman in Switzerland who had seen her work on a Web site, Lisa still had a hard time believing she was really an artist. I still didn’t feel that was a “real artist” so I threw in an extra one, a painting of the old Ashland library,” says Lisa. The woman insisted on paying for it and has asked for more, but for now Lisa is focusing on her nursing classes, completing assignments in art classes, and after not writing fiction for 20 years, she’s begun a spiritual/metaphysical novel. “Art taught me to accept my creativity,” she says. As for Dylan, she paints because “it feels good.” “When I start, I would get inspired by the idea of making beautiful art and that keeps me painting.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams