MASON — “She has it,” said a man who bought a pencil drawing for $50. from Odessa Adams of Mason Township.

Adams, a fourth grader at Bethel’s Crescent Park School, has shown her work for the past two summers in Bethel’s “Shy, Novice and Closeted Art Show,” held each July at Janet Willie’s home. The first year, she couldn’t part with a painting someone wanted to buy. The next summer, she called her grandmother to ask if it would be all right to sell a watercolor she had given her that was on display at the show.

“It’s nice to know that other people like my art so much that they want to have it in their own house,” she softly says.

Inspiration from nature

The young artist has worked in watercolor, crayon, and with markers and lately has been painting in a miniature book her mother gave her, using a tiny brush and palette. She says she loves every medium she’s tried.

“I’m able to let my imagination run free and express all my feelings,” says Adams.

Her grandmother Sue Ellen Richardson adds, “She sees the world as her studio. She makes all kinds of things from rocks and leaves.” The woods and animals, especially horses, provide inspiration.

“She has been creative from the beginning,” says her father, Hakan. “Cardboard boxes were an obsession — we built things with them from dollhouses to a sleigh with paint stirrers and popsicle sticks.”

Hakan adds that Odessa has always had a creative drive, one that’s been nurtured by the community, especially by [CPS Art Teacher, Ashley] Broderick, [Indigo Artist] Rebecca Zicarelli, the ladies at the historical society, and by his mother, Sue Ellen Richardson.

“[My wife] Jess and I are always trying to get her to create and stay off the screen, too,” he said.

In the forest outside the family’s Mason Township home, Odessa has built fairy houses. Inside, her and her brother’s artwork decorates the walls. The family’s three-story house, that they built six years ago, features an artsy staircase Hakan made from hemlock and raw cherry boards.

A family of artists

At home, Odessa is surrounded by her family, all artists in their own way.

Through a woodsy path she sometimes heads to her grandparents’ house where she has her own corner studio. Her grandfather, professional artist and teacher Doug Topper with help from Richardson, taught art at the Andover Elementary School last year when the regular art teacher was out on maternity leave.

Richardson says she submitted artwork to “The Shy, Novice and Closeted Show,” for the first time, inspired by her granddaughter. “Odessa is teaching me things,” she said.

Jessica, Odessa’s mother, is a photographer, crafter, and “an incredible painter and baker,” says Hakan. She works at Gould Academy. Hakan, who manages Brooks Brothers Hardware, also in Bethel, creates with driftwood, sea glass, and fly fishing flies.

Outside their home, a large wooden platform sits in the woods near the end of the driveway. Odessa’s grandparents used it when camping on the land about 15 years ago during the time they were building their house.

Today, Odessa lives between the two homes on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest — where the family first came to camp, and stayed to create.