Life on BI captured in sketches at diner

As one of four owners of the Streamliner Diner, Irene Clark cooked at the Bainbridge Island restaurant a few days each week.

But she never put artwork, her lifelong passion, on the back burner. Clark sketched scenes from the diner for years, which became the illustrations for the Streamliner Diner cookbook that she and the other owners published. Drawing became difficult for about 20 years after the death of a son, but she stayed close to the art world as a founding docent at BI Museum of Art. She’s back at it now, and even had a recent exhibition at BIMA.

“I learned about this treasure trove of art — drawings hidden in boxes all of these years — through her friend Woody Kramm,” BIMA chief curator Greg Robinson said. “It has been a joy sharing her work with the public, and seeing her bright smile even more often.”

Clark’s initial training in the arts began when she enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan, where she studied figure drawing, oil painting and watercolor. After graduation, she moved to San Francisco, and continued her education at the College of Marin for nine years.

She has always been captivated by the human figure, and line drawing in particular seemed to be her best way to express that interest.

“When you’re drawing a model, there’s a certain energy in her body that you look for. That’s where I start: where is their expression, where is the tension, what are their hands doing, what is their body saying?” Clark said. “And then I take into account the format, which is the boundaries of what I’m drawing, by putting that body into a space where it will give the most expression.”

When she and her family moved to BI in 1984, Clark bought a share of the Streamliner Diner, a 1950’s era retro chrome restaurant on Madison Avenue, along with three friends. Each owner took a turn at cooking, but Clark always kept up with her art.

On her off days, Clark would come to the diner and draw. People were her main focus.

“I would set my purse up in front of my drawing pad, so that people didn’t notice that I was drawing them — because people kind of get upset when they realize you’re looking at them that intensely,” she said. “I also did drawings of objects—like two toasters, the waffle maker, the Hamilton Beach milkshake machine.”

Clark sketched dozens of images, and about 40 were used in a cookbook compilation of fan-favorite dishes made at the Streamliner Diner.

But Clark’s work was interrupted by the death of her son about 20 years ago. She lost the ability to draw and developed a tremor in her hand. With age, she worried that she would never draw again.

“But then this last year, a friend of mine said, let’s take a drawing class, and we did, and my hand is not shaky when I draw, which is—maybe it’s a different part of the brain—but it’s like a little miracle,” she said. “Those twenty years put me back a little bit with drawing, but it’s all there, still.”

At 84, line drawing has become a stand-in for activities that Clark once loved, like foraging and gardening. She anticipates many more drawings in the future with classes through the BI Metro Parks and Recreation District. “I can’t do all that anymore, but I can draw, so yeah, that makes me happy,” she said.