Chloe Roth, new Arts Council head, is ready for new adventure
Chloe Roth, executive director of the Paris-Henry County Arts Council, checks over a chart showing the setup for the Downtown Christmas Open House coming up this weekend in downtown Paris.
She’s been successfully involved in competitive sailing on one of the country’s magnificent Great Lakes.
She’s been an art teacher, enlightening children from kindergarten through sixth grade about the joys of drawing.
She’s been certified as a yoga instructor after in-depth training — in India.
Now Chloe Roth is ready for her latest adventure, as the new executive director of the Paris-Henry County Arts Council.
The Ohio native has accomplished all these things at a young age and now is looking forward to helping the council provide more and more interesting events for local arts lovers to enjoy.
Roth moved to McKenzie recently to live with her grandmother, Judy Presson. In somewhat of a whirlwind of events, she quickly got a job at a McKenzie restaurant, then landed the Arts Council job in Paris.
Just as quickly, she was thrown into her first work assignment with the council, the Arts ’Round the Square event in late September, one of the biggest Arts Council events of the year.
“I was thrown in pretty quickly,” she said. “I had about a week to get ready for Arts ’Round the Square.”
A PEOPLE PERSON
Roth is from Vermilion, Ohio, about 35 miles from Cleveland.
Her upbringing may have foreshadowed what kind of interesting life she was in for. Her parents, Dan and Laura Roth, have owned a bed-and-breakfast, the Gilchrist Guest House, for 30 years and Chloe and her older sister, Mallory, grew up there.
“We always had customers staying there and I kind of learned to talk to people, these strangers, whether I wanted to or not. It really helped me become kind of an outgoing person,” she said.
She also became a competitive sailor at an extremely young age — 6.
Because of Vermilion’s location, right on the shores of Lake Erie, sailing is a huge sport there. Roth grew up competing in sailing events and worked for several years at a boat club.
“I learned water safety and respect for the lake at a really young age,” she said.
She attended Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, studying communications.
She also served as a librarian at Ritter Public Library in Vermilion, overseeing craft and book clubs and teaching yoga classes after a month and a half of training in India.
“I would go back right now. I loved it there,” she said of India.
Following in the footsteps of her father, who she called “an amazing artist” (he works professionally doing pen-and-ink drawings and as a cartoonist), Roth has been drawing since she was an infant. She likes to paint, especially with oils.
She was an art teacher for children in grades K-6 at St. Mary’s School in Vermilion.
GUIDING ARTS COUNCIL FORWARD
Roth made contact with the Arts Council through a classmate in a creative writing course she had enrolled in at the Paris Academy for the Arts.
This week, Roth and several council members have been getting the Arts Council office ready for the Downtown Christmas Open House this weekend.
She hopes to implement some new programs with the council as well as maintaining or bringing back some old ones. Already, the council has arranged a bus trip for community members to travel to Nashville and see “The Lion King” on Jan. 22 at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
“Those tickets sold pretty quickly,” she said.
She also wants to set up a performance of the children’s musical “Matilda” in April at the Krider Performing Arts Center.
The council’s trivia night events are taking a couple of months off for the holidays and should be back in January at Perrylodgic Brewing, 3465 Hwy. 79 northeast of Paris.
“I hope to take everything I’ve learned and put those things to work the best I can for Paris,” she said. “I’ve only been here a short time, but after spending some time here, I’ve really fallen in love with Paris.”