Over the next month, visitors to the Carbondale Arts Gallery will be welcomed by two solo exhibitions — “Oddly Familiar” by Chad Knowles and a vibrant installation of hundreds of brightly colored cartoon works, folk filigree-inspired patterns and intricately swirling abstractions in Vallee Noone’s “The Muses Don’t Tell Me Sh—.” 

It’s a heady combination of color, imagination and intrigue — one that Noone, a Glenwood Springs-based mixed media artist, can tell viewers almost nothing about. All she knows is that, for the past year and a half, her muses have insisted she draw with paint pens. 

The chronological installation, which runs until Aug. 14, consists of 800 to 1,000 of Noone’s paint pen drawings. 

The exhibition’s title comes from a series of humorous text messages Noone has sent to friends —  photos of her newest creations captioned with “today, on the muses don’t tell me sh—.” 

For viewers, the installation offers more than a showcase of Noone’s dedication and talent — it’s a window into her lifelong relationship with her “panel of muses.”

Since first appearing when Noone was in the eighth grade, these muses have guided her work, transforming her into the “machinery” that executes their artistic will. 

“Throughout history, humans have seen creativity as a force of some sort. I really feel like I have this panel of muses…” Noone said. “When they pop up, it’s very different from when I’m creating on my own. When I’m creating on my own, it’s kind of tortuous. I don’t like it and I didn’t like it growing up, but I kept doing it.

“The muses first popped up in eighth grade, just a quick little splash. They drew an eye, and I was like, I did not just draw that,” she added. “It’s this very weird feeling, like something is pushing through me and I’m not doing it.” 

Though Noone continued creating — and even minored in fine art in college — the muses didn’t return until a decade later, when she was in a postbaccalaureate program for painting. Over five months, she crafted around 100 cardboard cameras, filled with intricate artwork barely visible inside of the viewfinder. 

“At that point it was a little more rough, kind of wild, so they were fine with that, but then I think they were just really really frustrated with me and my skills,” Noone said. “Because I do feel like I’m more of an instrument, they just weren’t ready for me, or I wasn’t ready for them, and so then they left and came back and they did paper cutting.”

Since then, the muses have flitted in and out of her life, directing Noone’s work in months-long bursts of creative intensity followed by quieter periods of incubation. Together, they’ve created everything from paper cuttings and cardboard cameras to sculptures, and now, hundreds of paint pen drawings.

For the last year and a half, Noone has made two to three paint pen drawings daily, which range in size from tiny 2-by-1 inch pieces to larger 14-by-17 inch works. Many are done in a “cartoony, psychedelic” style that isn’t drawn from specific inspiration — Noone simply sits down and lets the muses guide her. 

“Sometimes I’ll decide on a color and I’ll draw and depending on the residual paints from another (piece), and it can be a different color than what I’ve chosen, but it’s the right color,” Noone said. “The muses are like ‘No, that’s not yellow, it’s pink.’ Then it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, you guys are right.'”

She’ll draw shadows before realizing they’re shadows and be halfway through sketching a landscape before understanding what it is. As she grew more comfortable with the medium, creatures began to appear — figures Noone sees as self-portraits created by the muses. 

Out of the hundreds of drawings, only one comes with a direct message from the muses: her self-portrait.

“Once I realized it, I was like oh my (gosh), that makes total sense,” Noone said. “It made me cry. That one is an important (piece) to me.” 

The completed installation marks the first time Noone has seen all her paint pen drawings displayed in a single room. After the exhibition, she plans to create made-to-order prints — just one of each piece — allowing her to share her work while preserving the integrity of the original installation. 

Noone hopes the exhibition will inspire viewers to trust their instincts. 

“It’s always amazing to me when people are self-conscious — about their creation, is one thing — but the art consumption?” Noone said. “The number of times that people have said about various art…’Oh I like it, but I don’t know anything about art,’ which you’d never say about music — ‘Oh I like this song, but I don’t know anything about music.’

“You know stuff…you do, you have eyes, you have a feeling inside of you,” she added. “Do you like it? Does it make you feel something?”