I’m a native Floridian living on land in Winter Garden originally homesteaded by my great grandfather. That’s right…my grandparents and parents subdivided and sold this land, and four decades ago, my husband and I bought back a lot from the contractor who built a house on it. As a child, I spent many days playing with friends and roaming this land looking for arrowheads left by the Indians before us. Still today, as I take my morning walk, I pass my grandparents’ house which was the original homestead. Yes, Winter Garden is not just my home, it’s my heritage.

I was always a good student. In fact, in the first grade, since I could already read, my teacher, Mrs. Henderson, put me in charge of teaching two other students using one of The Dick and Jane Books. You know… See Jane. See Jane run? Yeah, that one. Well, I was sure if my mother could teach me to read that I could most certainly teach two other little kids! And so, to Mrs. Henderson’s amazement, while the rest of the class was learning sight words, I was teaching my reading group duo how to sound out words, and before long, they could do it! I helped them learn, and it gave me a ton of joy to do so. The teacher in me was born.

Fast forward to the sixth grade. Still a good student, I often finished my work long before my classmates. And then, I just talked. A LOT evidently. So much, that my teacher, Mrs. Tomyn, sent me to the art room to keep me busy and get me out of the classroom. The art room was really just a storage room off the cafeteria where they kept the construction paper and tempura paint, but I got to go almost every day if only for a little while. Unsupervised! (Imagine that today!) I’m sure it made her classroom much more manageable, and for me…well, it was heaven! My older sister was an artist, and I pretended then, that I was, too. Such freedom to explore and create art on my own brought me absolute joy. I could do this!

Looking back, I realize I’ve always dabbled in arts and crafts. My grandparents gave me a Brownie camera for my eighth birthday, and I began taking photographs of flowers in their yard and sunsets on nearby lakes. In my twenties, I had my own darkroom at home and began dodging and burning images to accentuate what I wanted my photographs to say. Soon after, I learned to scuba dive, and underwater photography became my hobby.

And then there was sewing. My mother was an excellent seamstress. By the time I was ten, she taught me how to sew, and as a teenager, I made all my own school clothes. As an adult, I even made my husband a three-piece suit! At fourteen, my grandmother taught me how to crochet, and years later as a young mother I made baby blankets for my kids and all my friends’ babies, too. Today, I make super complex crocheted blankets for myself and my family. When I was fifteen, I lived with my older sister, the artist, for the summer, and she introduced me to acrylic painting. I fell in love. Now, I felt like a real artist with a canvas and real paint! Yeah, I could definitely do this!

So, it just made good sense to me that when it came time to go to college, I would study to become a teacher or an artist. My father was very vocal about not wanting to pay to educate “another starving artist.” He wanted me to study medicine. I loved school, but not that much! But with his blessing, and his money, I went off to the University of Florida (Go Gators!) for my first two years. I’m sure he thought I would change my mind. I took all the basic undergraduate courses, and when it was time to declare my major, I wrote down elementary education. When the university sent that to my father, he called me and said he wouldn’t pay for that! So, I quit and got married. Ha! I showed him!!! Ten years, two kids, and a divorce later, my father did, in fact, help me pay for my last two years at the University of Central Florida (Go Knights!). And you guessed it, I got my BA in Elementary Education after all.

I taught elementary and middle school students for twelve years in Orange County Public Schools. I loved teaching, (and as you can only imagine, after all that time I had spent in the art room as a kid, I had brilliant bulletin boards)! I also taught adults desktop publishing in the evening for a few years at our local community school. And it turns out, I was a pretty good grant writer, too. I wrote lots of grants to get computers for my middle school, and as a resource teacher, I got to teach other teachers how to use technology to enhance teaching and learning. I learned how to build and administer a network at the school, and that led to me going back to school to get my M.A. in Educational Technology.

About halfway through my second degree, I was introduced to a guy who was doing instructional design for corporations. Oh, I really knew I could do that! It had the science and the art of teaching all wrapped into one role! In just a few weeks, I left the school system and went to work at the Walt Disney World® Resort. Even though I had worked in one of the largest school systems in the nation, I didn’t know anything about working in a corporation. But I knew my best friend from high school, Bob Allen, was a VP at Disney, so I looked him up and asked him to mentor me. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in a couple of decades, it was like no time had passed at all. He helped me understand corporate structure and how it all worked as a system so I didn’t shoot myself in the foot. 

I worked at the Disney University for two years designing training and helping to build an intranet for Cast Members to find the resources they needed to advance their careers. I liked it, but at that time, the backstage technology dreadfully lagged behind the technology that Guests were offered. I realized I couldn’t do the job I had just earned my master’s degree to do! It was really frustrating, so I left “the culture” where I had to wear stockings every day and went to “the anti-culture” at Hard Rock International corporate where I could wear jeans and t-shirts…and oh, I could even use cuss words! Now, that might not sound like a big deal to you, but after years in the school system and at Disney, where I had to monitor every word I said, that was a fabulous bonus!

At Hard Rock, I was set free. I had the progressive leader to support me and the technology I needed to do my dream job. The first task? Design a course to be delivered in three days to teach the worldwide sales team how to do strategic planning. No problem! I could do that! I had led strategic planning efforts in both my prior roles in the schools and at Disney. So what if I didn’t sleep for three days? Easy peasy! It went so well, that my next assignment was to create a week-long course that would build Hard Rock’s bench strength. Say what? I didn’t even know what bench strength was, much less how to create it. But sure, I could do that! So, I shifted from designing training to organization development, helping leadership to strategically re-design the organization. I got a year to research and build that course, and with my colleagues in T&D, we delivered it to fifteen, hand-selected by leadership, up-and-coming leaders in the organization who would be their bench strength. It was a huge success, and that felt fabulous! 

But six months later, I found a lump in my leg. “Probably nothing,” my doctor said, but he sent me for an MRI just in case. Well, it was definitely something, but it took several doctors, myriad tests and scans, and a biopsy to figure out what.  When my orthopedic oncologist said leiomyosarcoma, I was in shock. It was the year 2000, and even though the internet was not what it is now, I had researched enough to know…this was BAD. When I got up the courage to ask, “What are my odds?”, and he said, “50/50 chance of six months.” I had to lie down.

My head was spinning. Six months? Geez. All I could think of was I hadn’t even seen my kids get married yet, much less had grandchildren. I couldn’t die! I needed to beat this! So, in just a couple of minutes, I sat up and asked, “So…how do we make sure I’m on the right side of that 50/50?” That’s when my doctor said, “Um, I need a minute to think. I never expected that question, that fast!” But then, we made a plan. Further tests to make sure it hadn’t spread, and then, chemo, then massive surgery, and then maybe radiation if they couldn’t get it all. Sure, I could do that!

And I did! Six months later, against not great odds, I was cancer free, and in another year, I had learned to walk well enough that I didn’t even need a cane. But my job at Hard Rock was gone, and so I called Bob Allen again. Bob was about to purchase his business unit from Disney and take it private. We had always talked about working together, and I decided this was our chance. At first, I contracted with his company, and nine months later, I became the learning person on the team. Things were going swimmingly. I now had health insurance, my next dream job, and my best friend as my boss. But cancer is an insidious disease. Even if it doesn’t continue to invade your body, it still invades your mind! 

Bob had started a mindfulness group at his house a few years earlier, and I had joined. We met weekly. It was that practice that helped me keep my sanity through all the cancer treatments. But this was different. The thought of cancer returning never left the back of my mind. I needed something else. To take my mind off my fear of dying, I took art lessons for the first time in my life. They say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and I guess that’s true. It was just what I needed at the time. When I was painting, my mind was fully engaged. I felt truly in-spired when creating art. That is, I found that it connected me to spirit and helped me to heal my body and my mind. Yep, I could do this!

And so, I worked with Bob at IDEAS designing learning tools for myriad organizations. There, I got to design the first e-learning tools ever offered by Disney to travel agents inside and outside the company. I also got to design other learning tools for Cast Members in Transportation roles to help keep them and others safe. I felt like I had come full circle! I also designed training for sailors to live and work on battleships, for nurses to operate complicated hospital beds to help patients heal, and for newly hired employees to thrive in the company they were joining. IDEAS colleagues and I traveled the world over helping people envision the best guest experiences or redesign their brands. I taught people in those organizations how to live their brand in their role. I kept painting on the side, and I took up crocheting baby blankets again, too, something I could do on long airplane trips where my mind would often go into what if the cancer comes back mode. It worked to calm my mind. After all, it’s hard to be fearful when you’re making something for a new baby!

These days, I have more time for my art. I have only just recently begun to share my art creations with others. I even built myself a website! Creating art brings me great joy, and I want to make the world a happier place by creating art that makes you feel good, too! My palette knife work depicts bold, vibrant color and heavy texture. It’s truly “Art You Can Touch!” I love to paint Florida scenes, especially of the beach, but l also love to re-create my vacation memories from all over the world. And I discovered I love to draw, too. I enhance my urban sketches with watercolor, and I strive to capture the essence of historic buildings here in Winter Garden where I grew up and others I’ve found throughout my travels. 

Making art that touches the heart and evokes fond memories or invites one to dream is my goal. I believe you can create what you want your life to be, and that starts with your dream. Applying the I can do that attitude and diligently following up with action, day after day, gets you there. Now, Bob and I are creating a workshop called Show Up, Create and Serve, so we can share how to make that happen. Yeah, I can do that!

Kelly lives in Winter Garden with her husband, Steve. Together they have three children and five grandchildren.

Website: KellyPoundsArt.com 

IG: @kellypoundsart

FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075946946138&mibextid=LQQJ4d