Columbia Falls artist juggles career, travel and art

A painting of St. Mary Lake hangs on the wall of Three Forks Grille in Columbia Falls. David Lee Eubank is the artist and a local resident. But, he doesn’t get to create art as much as he would like. He has to pay the bills, so he works for the office of disaster assistance as a construction analyst. He travels across the country to verify damage to buildings after a natural disaster. He is called to work for a couple months and then is home for a couple months.

When he gets back home from a trip, he can’t go back to his art project immediately. He has to have a transition period to get back into the creative groove of making artwork. By the time he gets there, he is called away on work again.

“That’s like for the typical artist, the story of their life. You have to make a living, but that disrupts the whole creative process,” Eubank said.

To bring some momentum to his work, he is hosting Schizofrenzy, an open artist studio and sale this week at Dancing Bones Ink Tattoo Shop and Art Gallery. The open studio will be Aug. 27, 28, 29 and 30 between noon and 6 p.m. and is accessible from the alley behind 1011 10th Street W. His wife has owned the tattoo shop for about 10 years. He displays his colorful paintings on the high ceilings and his digital photography on a TV screen next to the front door in what is essentially the waiting room. His artwork is all over their house, which is attached to the tattoo shop and art gallery. It accentuates the hallways and living room. It is even stacked up in his art studio on the top floor and in a space next to the stairs.

Recently he has used his original photography training to create a new body of work called Skyland. He takes photos of the natural world then uses several computer programs to splice them together. The result is a fractal, which is similar to what one sees through a kaleidoscope. Unexpected images of faces and animals are created within the collage.

While Eubank was in college, a professor told his class of aspiring artists that the majority of them would not make it rich. If they wanted to continue doing art, the teacher said that it would have to be a passion and simply what they do in life.

Eubank has created artwork since that time in starts and fits. He used to work in the Glacier National Park and had the time to be more creative. He has not held an open house in the art gallery in over 10 years, probably more like 20 years, he said. For most of his life he said he has just been cruising and going the easy route of working at a job. It is time in his life to move toward doing what he wants to do, his artwork.

“I was in Oklahoma. I was pretty frustrated, I told my wife I got to do something … I got to do what I want to do. I turned 63 this year,” he said. “You either do it or … you just do it now.”