Trey Everett, Showcase Specialist
Trey is the Arts Council’s Showcase Specialist. He creates and installs all of our exhibits, including the annual NW Art Exhibit, the Traveling Art Exhibit, and exhibits at our gallery and in the display cases at Northland Community and Technical College in Thief River Falls. He also is part of the team putting on the Artist Spotlights.
Trey is a visual artist. He mostly works with pen and ink, which includes calligrams (images made with words), lectionary art, editorial cartoons, and commissions. He also enjoys indoor and outdoor mural work and is well-known for his murals throughout our region.
Trey grew up in the Missouri Ozarks and has lived in Crookston since 2006. He has worked in the religious world for much of his life. From 2006 to 2019 he was the Co-Director of the Minnesota Institute of Contemplation and Healing as a retreat leader and healing art instructor. He also worked in the Crookston school system as a long-term English substitute teacher.
Currently, Trey’s focus is on his spiritual direction practice, healing art workshops, graphic recordings, and his visual art career. He has volunteered and/or worked with the Queen City Art Festival, Crookston Youth Association (The Cove), Hope Coalition suicide prevention group, Crookston Library Board, UMC Art Committee, volunteer Crookston art teacher, and the Crookston High School Play and Musical Art Director.
Trey’s artistic abilities and creativity come naturally. He comes from a long line of talented artists. Nevertheless, he has studied, worked, and honed his skills over time and continues to develop them. He studies accomplished pen and ink artists, as well as world-renowned tattoo workers and muralists for inspiration, to learn techniques, and to help develop his unique style. His reading interests, meditation practices, and spirituality greatly affect his art. Listening to particular artists like Tom Petty, Josh Ritter, and Stevie Nicks, bring out the inspiration and creativity and helps transcribe the deep hidden stirrings of his heart and mind into visual images.
Trey has been called the “Tea Master” over the years. He holds the title jokingly, but he does brew jasmine tea almost daily in his little Chinese Yixing tea pot. He has developed a contemplative tea ceremony practice that he’s used with many groups over the years. The ceremony helps focus on having a welcoming attitude toward whoever and whatever life brings our way as well as being attentive to all our senses, i.e. living in the present moment.
Trey is excited to work with the Arts Council. “Art is so important to me and now I have the opportunity to assist and get to know artists in our region. The idea of collaborating with other artists and helping them with some of their art dreams is fantastic. Creativity is powerful! It moves us out of our anxious, neurotic minds into the deeper, calming place of our heart. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to promote and delve into creativity with others.”