FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT: Linda Wallin

1. Eight years ago the kiln in the ODA art room malfunctioned, setting off the fire alarm and the sprinklers. The fire department came out to see what had happened. “It was probably the most embarrassing moment,” said Wallin.

2. Wallin is proud to say that many of her students have been chosen year after year to have their artwork hung up in the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. Each year the airport picks 100 pieces out of thousands of entries that come in from students from both Sarasota and Manatee counties.

3. Wallin has two pets – a five-year-old Golden Retriever named Halia and a 35-year-old double yellow-headed parrot named Chico.

4. When Wallin visited her son, Tommy, a United States Coast Guard pilot, for a month in Kodiak, Alaska where he was stationed, she went kayaking out in the Barring Strait and ended up 20 feet away from a 60-foot blue whale. “I saw all three blow holes and it actually spouted right in front of me!”

5. Last Thanksgiving, Wallin and her husband, Steve Schember, visited the Ghost Ranch of Georgia O’Keefe in New Mexico. The couple hiked around the landscape where O’Keefe did some of her work and visited her galleries.

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