PORT TOWNSEND — Debbi Steele knows how much can happen when determined women get together.
Shows are put on, money is raised, women mentor girls, fun is had — and progress is made.
As steering committee chairwoman of the Fund for Women and Girls, Steele has a lot on her mind — and though she’s newly retired after a career in sales with AT&T, she working as hard as ever, for the causes she fiercely believes in.
One of the freshest successes for the Fund, formed in 2010 under the Jefferson County Community Foundation umbrella, unfolded on a Friday the 13th in May.
“From Beautiful Apparel to Beyond Belief” was an art show arranged on live women: models wafted across a runway at the Madrona MindBody Institute. They wore dresses designed by 18 artists, and together starred in the show to benefit the Fund.
“It’s fun, with a purpose,” Steele said of the event, for which tickets sold out.
“Beyond” came off gracefully, culminating in the presentation of people’s choice, best-in-show and best-student work prizes. These went to dresses that will be on display at the Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson St., through June: “Water Line Below,” an outfit Margie McDonald made entirely with a $1.99 roll of caution tape; “SlideDress.net,” Judith Bird’s ensemble of photo slides plus her silk tulle wedding veil; and 14-year-old Hana McAdam’s “Paper Sun,” a gown of bright-yellow paper squares trimmed with wood chips.
Behind the scenes, Steele and a small army put in weeks of work, as must be done for any inaugural event.
Steele, a feminist since forever, has wanted to have a wearable-art show ever since she moved from Ventura, Calif., to Port Townsend in 2007. Then she was invited to join the Jefferson County Community Foundation board of directors.
In May of last year, Steele worked with the board to bring together more than 100 local women to both establish a new program for girls and women and to prioritize the needs of their community. The women sat at tables of eight, and tackled a list that included health care, support for senior women, freedom from abuse and bullying, basic needs for food and shelter, economic opportunities for women of all ages, and education and training for school-age girls.
“It was so fabulous to be in a room full of energetic women who want to make a difference in our county,” said Steele.
The 100-woman forum was akin to a giving circle — a group that pools its resources for a chosen cause — writ large. Steele has been part of a 13-member giving circle since soon after she arrived in Port Townsend, and has seen how such a mix of people can reach consensus.
One key, she said, is to allow each person to give his or her opinion while the others listen — no eye-rolling — and then to realize that when one individual’s preference is not chosen, it’s not personal.
At the 2010 Fund for Women and Girls forum, “education came out on top,” Steele said. And so the new program was off and running. With $30,000 raised through that first gathering, the Fund was begun, with the Community Foundation poised to administer it.
This is an endowed fund, so the interest earned yearly will be used to make grants to nonprofit agencies; as the fund grows, so does the ability to award monies, Mayer explained.
The first Fund award went in 2010 to The GIRLS — Girls in Real Life Science — Project, which paired female scientists with middle school and high school girls across Jefferson County.
In a series of Saturday sessions, the girls worked with their mentors at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, developing their own research projects. They presented the results of those projects — and told Steele how inspired they were to continue exploring science — last month.
Earlier this year, Steele, along with the fund steering committee and community foundation Executive Director Kristina Mayer, again convened a group of 120 women to choose an issue to address.
Economic opportunity for women of all ages came out on top this time, and the fund committee will select a local organization to be its grant beneficiary by the end of 2011.
Meantime, Steele and Mayer are spreading the word about the Fund and its mission, summed up in the “From Beautiful Apparel to Beyond Belief” program.
The mission is straightforward: to help women and girls realize their full potential, through local investment in their future.
“Our vision is a world where women are safe, economically secure and free for discrimination of all kinds,” the program states.
Toward turning that vision into reality, Steele and her crew are focusing on the local, while taking a big-picture view.
“This is a field of interest fund, to broadly serve women and girls, not just one organization,” Mayer said.
The fund steering committee, which also includes Sharon Black, Anne Burns, Rebecca Kimball, Ruth Merryman, Carol McGough, Shelly Randall, Anne Scheider, Mary Ann Verneuil and Jan Whyte, seeks to speak with one voice, for local women and girls who are struggling.
“In Port Townsend, you may not see the women who are young, who have kids and are working three jobs. But they are here,” Steele said.
According to a Jefferson County Community Foundation report, 14 percent of women in the county live in poverty. Women head the great majority — 79 percent — of single-parent households. And 39 percent of those households’ children are living below the poverty line.
But the Fund for Women and Girls is finding support from a variety of neighbors. The “Beyond” show, for example, received contributions from donors including Edward Jones, the Madrona MindBody Institute, Paper Scissors Rock Studio, Akamai Art and Glass Supply, Marathon Wealth Management, Artisans on Taylor, Northwest Event Rentals, The Clothes Horse, the Textile Arts Co. and the Wandering Wardrobe, a Port Townsend consignment shop.
When Steele first embarked on this project, however, things weren’t looking good. Late last year she put out a call for entries to the wearable art display, which was originally set for Feb. 4.
She received only eight applications.
“I said, ‘We’re going to have to cancel the show,’” Steele recalled.
Then artists Judith Bird, Nancy Van Allen and Margie McDonald came to Steele and told her, essentially, that this was too good an idea to toss.
“They said: ‘We’re going to make this work; we’re going to get kids involved,” Steele remembered.
Van Allen, McDonald and Bird forwarded the wearable-art show idea to their network of artists, and McDonald, an artist in residence working with teacher Kathleen Burgett at Port Townsend High School, invited her students to submit applications.
Thirty-three entries came in, 28 were chosen for the show, and the women shifted into high gear. They gathered sponsors and models, found an ideal space in the ballroom at the Madrona institute and finally, a couple of days before the event, held a rehearsal.
As it turned out, though, 12 of the wearable works weren’t ready for that. The artists were still putting on finishing touches, and couldn’t rehearse with their models until the day of the show.
“Beyond,” it turned out, drew an overflow crowd, and netted $3,900, Steele said.
“We kind of pulled off a miracle in a short amount of time,” she added.
Steele has admired wearable-art extravaganzas elsewhere, from Ketchikan, Alaska, her former hometown, to Wellington, New Zealand, where the World of Wearable Art showcase has grown into a weeklong gathering that includes a workshop and division for brassiere art.
Steele, for her part, looks forward to growing the Port Townsend show.
The second annual “From Beautiful Apparel to Beyond Belief” is planned for May 2012, and McAdam, for one, has already said she has an idea for next year’s dress.
“I believe this could be a show that could attract people from all over,” Steele added. “It gives artists a chance to take art off the wall,” and bring it to life.
This is not, she emphasized, about women and girls only. Boys from Port Townsend High School worked on entries in “Beyond,” as did Michael Edwards of Port Townsend, who did the copper medallions on “Neptune’s Daughter,” a 16th-century dress his wife Anita Edwards made out of beach objects.
One of Steele’s most enthusiastic supporters, meanwhile, is Dennis Daneau, her partner of eight years.
He likes to wear a button that declares, “This is what a feminist looks like.”