Funny how life turns out. Since she opened Bluebird Arthouse in June, Emily Brookover has been teaching every day, after all. And she’s still working with art students from Wichita State – but as their boss, not their graduate teaching assistant.

Brookover finished her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2010, studying, painting and teaching her way through WSU’s School of Art and Design.

But Brookover has found that her art supply store is a continuation of the learning atmosphere she loved as a student and teacher at Wichita State.

“Being at a university is so fantastic because you are always talking about ideas, exchanging ideas,” she said.

Talk at the shop -- which also offers art studio space for rent, classes and a separate room for workshops -- is all about ideas, materials, techniques, creating art and opening doors to the community.

A learning environment

At 924 W. Douglas (the spacious old Kellogg-Buck Furniture building), Bluebird Arthouse is another new business for Wichita’s Delano district. It’s an area that has been turning over to young businesses for the past few years.

The shop has a growing customer base that includes artists, teachers, youth, parents, grandparents and neighbors.

It’s becoming exactly the kind of environment Brookover was hoping it would be.

“I love to share what I know,” she said.

She learns as much from her customers as they do from her, she said. Some questions require a little research; some customers educate her on products or techniques.

Bluebird also provides a related yet different educational environment for the art students she employees from Wichita State.

Hannah Scott, a third-year student in WSU’s undergraduate studio arts program, works part-time for Brookover.

“When I heard that Emily was working on the arthouse concept, I jumped at the chance to work there,” said Scott, who had developed a friendly relationship with her former teacher. “It’s an ideal job.”

Scott gets experience at the shop that is unmatched in the classroom, even in one of the most comprehensive College of Fine Arts in the state.

Brookover intends to hire WSU students as often as possible and hopes to create a WSU internship someday. She understands the edge that can come from off-campus work experience.

“Real-world experience is crucial,” she said. “It anchors you, gives you real goals. It’s essential. Because college can be LaLa Land – it’s what you make it.”

The teaching path

Before she came to Wichita State, Brookover had already earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the University of Kansas and was immersed in two careers in Lawrence – one as a working artist and one as a marketing assistant for agencies in town.

A single mom in her early 30s, she and daughter Alyssa moved to Wichita in 2007 to help care for her mother, Susan, who had breast cancer. Brookover started her graduate work at Wichita State the same year.

For the next two years, the family mixed caretaking, parenting, public school and university demands. Still, Brookover loved being in the program.

Her faculty, she said, were “absolutely incredible,” including Ron Christ, Robert Bubp, Levente Sulyok, J.B. Brewer and Annette LeZotte.

Then, the last year of Brookover’s schooling, her mother died.

“It was a life-stopping event and made it hard to finish,” Brookover said. “I thought a lot about the grand scheme of things.”

She went through a couple of thought cycles about her future. First, teaching positions at universities were tight with heavy competition and a rough economy.

But Brookover still loved the idea of stimulating other people’s creativity and had long thought about being her own boss someday in an art-related field.

“I was born arty; I was always drawing and making things, cutting things up, and I wrote a lot, too,” she said. “I love the arts in general, music, theater; it fills me up.”

She had noted Wichita’s need for an art store and was referred to Jill Miller for business advice. Miller, another Wichita State graduate, runs the consulting business that helped open The Donut Whole and Tanya’s Soup Kitchen in Wichita.

“It was like all the pieces just fell into place,” Brookover said. “Jill helped focus and put words to my ideas.”

Brookover is confident that she can weather ups and downs in the business. She grew up near Garden City around cattle, oil, land and farming in a family of entrepreneurs.

“That’s as grass-roots Kansas as it gets,” she said. “It’s hard; you have to be adaptable.”

So she is thrilled to let the business just happen.

“We know firsthand that art is a learning experience,” said Brookover.