Albert Einstein is often credited with saying, “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”

If Einstein didn’t make that statement, he surely would have, if he spent a little time with Ali Shute.

Shute, 56, laughs easily and has a unique personal style. She equates creativity with happiness, and now she has a job in which she’s tasked with finding ways to “pass it on.”

Since August, Shute has been getting comfortable in her role as executive director of the Coeur d’Alene Arts & Culture Alliance, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting and establishing the arts in the Coeur d’Alene area.

An artist herself, Shute owns a successful graphic design business — sixtwofour designs, based in Post Falls.

As a former Arts & Culture Alliance board member, Shute was already working to advance the arts alliance’s mission when she stepped into the part-time director’s position.

But it’s her great love of the Coeur d’Alene area, and her journey here as a young woman, that perhaps makes her the perfect fit for her job.

After completing her first year of college in Virginia, Shute got what she calls a “wild hair” and decided to move West.

“Growing up in Fairfax County was wonderful. I had the Smithsonian in my back yard, so I feel I was really fortunate, but that was the time when the hippies were there, or the beatnicks or the yippies, or whatever you called them back then,” Shute said.

As a young girl, she remembers visiting Washington, D.C., and seeing a huge group of people camping on the National Mall, the national park in the city’s downtown area.

“They had their tents and there were little families and just individuals there. I remember thinking how peaceful that was and how I really wanted a life like that,” Shute said. “I think it was that desire that led me away from the East Coast and the nuttiness of that world, and the materialism of that world. It led me here to this community.”

Shute was 19 when she arrived in Coeur d’Alene with just $15 in her pocket.

“I spent that on a bottle of Blue Nun,” she said, laughing. “I had a friend here. I stayed with her for a little while, and I got a job, and I got my own place to live.”

Her father wasn’t keen on her decision to relocate to North Idaho, so he sent her a ticket for transportation back to Virginia.

“I remember that I cashed that ticket in. That was back when you could cash tickets in,” she said.

Shute used the money to pay her rent, and she stayed.

“The reason was because I could walk down the streets of Coeur d’Alene and smile at people and they would smile back, and they would say, ‘Hi,’” Shute said. “Everybody was so friendly. It just felt like a safe, wonderful place to live, and probably reminded me a little bit of that experience I had in Washington, D.C.”

Shute sat down with The Press last week and shared more about herself, her passion for the arts and about her work with the Arts & Culture Alliance.

In addition to supporting the arts, you’re an artist yourself. Can you tell us a little about your personal art endeavors?

I’m probably an experimental artist where I don’t have a specific medium, but I’ve tried so many different things — succeeded in some, and mostly bust in others.

I went to Montessori school, and I always go back to that. It was an environment that encouraged you to just try whatever. That’s why, I think, I just try. I love to say, one day, ‘OK, I’m going to try making soap today,’ and maybe by the end of the day, or a week later, I have a bar of soap.

I love textiles, and if I were ever going back to school or going to commit myself to be a certain artist, I would be a fiber artist.

I have this idea that one day, I am going to harvest the wool from an animal — a sheep or an alpaca. I’m going to treat the wool. I’m going to spin the wool and I’m going to weave it, and I’m going to ultimately make an outfit, so that I can say I did the whole thing from scratch.

And I’m a gardener too, and I think there’s a certain art to gardening.

Who or what influenced you to become an artist?

My mother. My mother is an artist. She got her degree from Ohio State University. She taught art. I’m the oldest of four kids, and the first few years of my life, my father was in law school at UVA (University of Virginia). My mother poured everything - all the loneliness she felt with her husband being away in school all the time — into me, and I have a solid art base from her. Probably, my desire to be creative — and do things differently than one would normally do it — is all from her. I got my sense of humor, however, from my dad.

My mother is still doing art in the Philadelphia area, and she is a very accomplished artist. Her name is Mary Kane.

And your dad?

He was an attorney. He died in 2002. He loved the arts and he used to read my mom Chaucer when they were dating. That’s why my mom married him. He was tough. I’m sure the law makes you tough, but there were times when his eyes would gloss over and he would look in that place in your head where you go find stuff, and talk about history. His passion was the history of our country, and I loved to listen to him talk about things, the facts that people don’t necessarily know about the way our country started. He would say, ‘It was an absolute miracle that we became a country.’

Do you think Coeur d’Alene is still the way it was when you first arrived here and fell in love with it?

Yes, I do, ultimately. I mean, it’s definitely changed over the years. There’s some new stuff — some positive, some negative — but overall, I think that you can’t take that basic core of warmth out of this area.

What do you like most about your job as director of the Arts & Culture Alliance?

I love everything about it, except for how messy my desk is, and I occasionally get a little overwhelmed because there are so many different aspects to it...but that’s also what I love about it because it’s busy and it’s active, and I get out. My husband calls me ‘the new streetwalker in town,’ because I get out and I just walk, and I visit with people and talk to people. That’s probably, I think, the greatest thing I bring to the job. I love talking to people and being around people, particularly people who are interested in cool things.

Are there any challenges in supporting and promoting the arts in Coeur d’Alene?

Well, there are people in our community who don’t believe that the arts give value to our community, or think that the value isn’t enough to fund. I think, probably the greatest actual day-to-day challenge is making sure we have enough money to do what we have set out to do, because we’re not only doing these programs. We want to step it up. We want Coeur d’Alene on the map as an arts community. I think we’re partially there, but I think you always can improve.

Why are the arts important in a community?

The arts are extremely important to a community. My art background is around children and the value of arts with children, and I don’t think many people argue the point that arts are valuable to kids, in establishing who they are.

Basically, the arts do for a community everything they do for a kid, except that it’s for a whole community. Our identity is all about what we portray, who we say we like, in the form of the arts and architecture. It is a statement about who we are, and for us to deny that part of us is tragic, and I think the Arts & Culture Alliance, I believe that this is where it came about. We are trying to make even bigger the idea of promoting the arts and understanding how they add to the vitality of our community, which increases our happiness level for being here. Ultimately, that makes us more creative. And research is showing businesses are actually wanting to hire creative people because they’re more productive. So it’s this big circle, and it’s all good for morale. It’s good for bringing the community together as a collective group of people, especially in these times, when people are so angry and ugly and hateful. To have something positive that makes people happy to be together, I think that’s really valuable.

For more information about the Arts & Culture Alliance and its many programs, visit artsincda.org.

Maureen Dolan is city editor of The Press. She can be reached by email at [email protected] or by calling 208-416-5104.