Inspired by a library book, Pam Kling aims to create a drawing in every Indiana county

Pam Kling is a scanner. 

By her own definition, she is someone who studies a number of topics but doesn’t dive deeply into any specific one. 

“I don’t know a great deal about any subject, but I like to dabble around them,” says the 80-year-old Cleveland Township resident. 

Since retiring from jobs in pastoral care at Goshen First United Methodist Church and leading activities at Greencroft Evergreen Place, Pam spends her time exploring a varied set of topics and hobbies. 

State and national history. Art. Nature. Religion. Biographies. 

“If you were to look at my home library, I have it organized according to my interests,” she says. Her late husband, Gary, used to joke their home could be another library branch. 

Inspired resolution 

Her interests intersected last fall when she picked up “Painting Indiana: Portraits of Indiana’s 92 Counties” at the Cleveland Branch near her home of 58 years. The book is a collection of art pieces painted in each of Indiana’s counties. With works from a variety of artists, the book includes essays too. 

As a New Year’s resolution, she set out to draw a picture in each of the 92 counties. Ideally, she will find a personal connection to the subject of her drawings.  

She started by sketching the Roosevelt Center. “It’s the only school still standing that I went to in Elkhart,” she says.  

She attended seventh grade at Roosevelt. And it was during an art class there she developed a core memory for her love of drawing. 

“The class went outside, and we were drawing the buildings, and I remember thinking I love this,” Pam says.  

Personal connections are a driving force behind the project, she says. 

“I guess one of my favorite words is connections. With the past. I like my family to know their family history,” she says. 

And connecting to the past is a way of learning.  

“I’ve learned a lot about my state, I’ve always been a lifelong learner,” she says. “It’s just another way I can learn. It’s so exciting for me. It’s opened up a whole new world of connection. Of connecting to me. There are 30 counties I have a connection with living in Indiana my whole life.” 

Drawing from history 

If there isn’t a personal connection to a county, she looks to history. Whitley County is one example. 

“My friend and I were driving through the rain, looking for a historical marker about Chief Little Turtle of the Miami people,” she says.  

While she eventually found the marker, she decided to make her Whitley County drawing of the statue of Little Turtle in Churubusco. 

She has plans to draw Knightstown High School (of “Hoosiers” movie fame). 

Pam says the project makes her think and learn about her state and areas inside of it. When she drew Horace Mann High School in Gary (where a friend of hers went to school) it let her see the changes going on in the city. 

“It’s more than the drawings, it’s touched my life in many ways,” she says. 

She and her son are going to Cincinnati for a baseball game later this summer and she plans to sketch a couple of things on that trip.  

“The other counties I’m having to choose what I find interesting to me,” she says. 

For her St. Joseph County picture, she drew the statue of St. Joseph inside the namesake hospital. Drawing onsite comes with unique challenges, and sometimes an audience. 

“It’s always humbling to draw (in person) because people come up and want to watch you,” Pam says. “And you don’t want to be rude and say, ‘Well I’m just doing this for myself.’ So you say ‘yes.’” 

When someone asked to watch as she sketched, she says her drawing was in a place she felt comfortable letting them see it. 

“Buildings are easier to draw than people and statues,” she says. “I had gotten it past the point where it looked like Planet of the Apes.” 

Like many amateur artists, there have been happy accidents. One of her first drawings was of her son’s home in LaPorte County. Since it was winter, she allowed herself to take a picture of the house, rather than draw it on site. 

On a dark winter’s night, she shaded in her picture with her colored pencils under lamplight. 

“I colored in his house, thinking I was coloring in brown for the roof and the trees but in the morning I realized I had grabbed purple,” Pam says. “My eyesight isn’t that good at night, I guess.” 

But she still liked the final product. 

Pam plans to publish the final work for her family, She has one living son, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.  

She has planned what she will draw in almost half of the state’s counties. So far she has checked off 19 counties. The project still excites her, as much as anything she has planned this year. 

“I look forward to all of them really,” she says. “In August, I am going to Alaska for the first time. And I have been every bit as excited to go to these places in Indiana as I have (to visit) Alaska. We have things right in your own backyard that we overlook.”