Lead curator at Everett’s Schack Art Center to retire

Published 1:30 am Thursday, October 29, 2026

EVERETT — Carie Collver started her career journey at the Arts Council of Snohomish County, now known as the Schack Art Center, as a volunteer.

Soon, she will retire at Schack, 35 years after she began working there, after rising to become the art center’s longtime gallery director and chief curator.

She got her start at the center when she was living in Stanwood in her early 20s, working at the Pilchuck Glass School as a glass artist. Collver would drive into Everett often to get glass supplies, and when she made the trip, she would often stop by the Arts Council of Snohomish County to buy gifts. At that time, it was “just a little hole in the wall,” Collver said, with only two employees working at the nonprofit.

Every once in a while, she would make the trek down to Everett to find that the center was closed, so she would volunteer to keep the shop open when the other employees were busy. She started working as a volunteer and spent about six months at the nonprofit. One day, an employee asked Collver if there was any chance she could take her job.

“She quit, that was her last day,” Collver said in an Oct. 13 interview. “It was hilarious, that’s how I started.”

Since Collver started working at the nonprofit, it has moved to four different buildings and changed its name to the Shack Art Center, named after philanthropists John and Idamae Schack. It now occupies a downtown Everett multipurpose building that opened in 2011.

That building also includes a “hot shop,” including a kiln, torches and equipment to make pottery and glass artwork. Collver said she helped push for the center to make the significant investment because it would be the only hot shop between Seattle and Stanwood. The hot shop has been “the rock star” of the building since it opened, Collver said.

In a September press release, the Schack Art Center wrote that Collver helped build the foundation of the art center and has provided a welcoming platform for artists to share their work.

“Carie has dedicated her career to artists,” wrote Shack Art Center Executive Director Raedle Alburn in the release. “She has opened doors for thousands of artists, curated exhibitions that have inspired our community for decades, and helped define what Schack Art Center represents today. Her legacy is not only found in the exhibitions she created, but in the relationships she built and the countless artists whose lives she has touched.”

During her decades working at the nonprofit, Collver has curated hundreds of exhibitions, including from artists like Guy Anderson, Alden Mason and Chuck Close. Sometimes, the arts center invites artists guilds to help jury shows. Other times, it’s all up to Collver and other staff at the Schack Art Center. Collver said she and the Art Center try to match artwork to the general theme of the exhibit while also making sure the artwork will work in the physical space of the building. It can be “like herding cats” at times, she said.

Retirement is bittersweet for Collver, who said she is looking forward to getting more cleaning done and tending to her garden — but leaving the arts center “feels like I’m leaving my child.”

“I know that we’ll be fine after I leave,” Collver said. “I just mainly feel like I’m leaving something very important to me, something close to my heart.”

After retirement, Collver wants to get involved with the Meyer Art Center in her hometown Stanwood, a new art center that is set to open out of a retrofitted furniture store that went out of business. But just like how she started at the Schack nonprofit 35 years ago, Collver said she would be willing to come back and volunteer.

”I told them, any time they need me, if they need me to do volunteer work or help curate a show, I’m happy to do it,” she said.

As a curator, some of Collver’s favorites were of glass shows because of her own work as a glass artist.

She got interested in glass blowing from a young age. Her father was an engineer and owned a construction company; he built her family’s house and always installed stained glass in their homes. As a child, Collver said she would lay down in the living room, below the glass two stories above, and watch how the light would shine into the building.

“That light came through and made the colors all over the carpet,” she said. “And I was like, someday, I’m going to do that.”

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.