Artist Phyllis Chaney shows some of her work. Her art is on display at Community National Bank on FM 518.
More than six years after Phyllis Chaney helped form the Pearland Art League, the Pearland artist is playing a role in giving the organization a new beginning.

Chaney is the first person to be recognized by the art league’s new artist of the month program, an effort to make the organization a more visible presence in the community.

“The arts are alive and well in Pearland,” program chairwoman Margo Green said.

The art league has been dormant the last couple of years, Green said.

After Pearland Mayor Tom Reid encouraged it to be active in the community, members developed the artist of the month program. Reid serves as an art league board member.

Each month, the organization will display the work of a different Pearland artist at a local business.

Green is responsible for selecting the venues and the honorees.

“We are looking for Pearland artists only,” she said. “We do have quite a few professional artists in Pearland who show their work in Houston.”

Chaney’s watercolor and oil paintings, are on display throughout the month at Community National Bank, 9605 Broadway.

“Phyllis has lived in Pearland a long time, and she’s active in the community,” Green said. “She is a fabulous artist, very talented technically.

“She’s been active in the art league from the beginning. We felt she should be the first artist of the month.”

Chaney, who also is a past president of the art league, began painting lessons at age 4, Chaney continued her lessons until she was 10 and then painted on her own.

“I’ve painted off and on whenever I had time,” she said.

“It was just a soothing, stress-relief time. I could get involved and not think about anything else.”

The Pearland Art League was intended to benefit the community and the artists it represented.

“We started with just a handful of people interested in promoting community cultural art,” Chaney said.

“We had a couple of events to promote the organization.”

During Party on the Grand in 2004, league members displayed members’ art in old Pearland.

Aims to promote artists

The club also has strived to help member artists find venues where they could show their work. And it has promoted theater and dance group presentations.

Chaney would like to see more people get involved in the group and is hoping the artist of the month program will stimulate interest. Being the program’s first artist is an honor, she said, and she thinks it’s fitting that her work be displayed at the bank.

“The bank was the first to offer (the art league) a place to meet,” she said.