Community Thread :: Stillwater MN

WHAT IS COMMUNITY THREAD?

Community Thread is one of eight regional Volunteer Centers connecting people through service. We make volunteering easy! We serve 17,000 people each year through the Volunteer Center, Senior Centers in Stillwater and Bayport, Neighborhood Service Exchange, Transportation Program, Holiday Bureau and Medical Reserve Corps.

For more information, select a program listing to the left, join us for a community event, or visit us during weekday business hours.

UPCOMING EVENTS

AARP Tax Preparation Program
February through April, Call today to make an appointment, 651-439-7434

Spring Into Service, annual day of volunteering in the St. Croix Valley
Saturday, May 5

BE PART OF THE STORY

Don Neurauter is an artist who pushes boundaries. Take a walk through the art gallery in his home, and you’ll see everything from oil paintings, to sculptures, to silk screened prints, to a picture of a Siamese cat made with roofing granules. In art school, he created a sculpture that his teacher believed he wouldn’t be able to cast. He proved her wrong, and cast it anyway. “I got a double A that time,” he joked.

Don has even invented a brand new way of making art. He combined two of his passions – sculpture and oil painting – to create sculptural oil painting. Features in the painting are raised giving the painting depth, like a 3D movie.

Since 1959, Don has taught art in adult education. Now he is a volunteer oil painting instructor at Community Thread’s Stillwater Senior Center. With such a broad range of artistic skills, he doesn’t just pick one concept to teach at a time. Students come in with a plan, a sketch, a drawing, a picture – whatever it is they want to create. Aside from advice about what paint supplies to start with and the mechanics of how to get something down on paper, one of the most important things that Don teaches in the class is that anyone can learn to paint.

“I can teach them how to get some paint from palette to canvas, how to go about it. I can teach them about sketching,” he explained, “But if it’s not quite right, I can make an adjustment or help them make an adjustment. There are no mistakes in my art class. No mistakes are made. Only places where there might be some slight adjustment here and there.”