Returning Home Through Art

When Claiborne Colombo walks back onto Collegiate’s campus for her 20th Reunion, she does so with canvas, brush, and story in hand. For this milestone weekend, she is presenting a solo art exhibition– a surprise invitation that pushed her back into the studio and reconnected her to where her creativity took root at Collegiate.

When art teacher Pam Sutherland called with the idea, Colombo assumed it would be a group alumni show. Instead, she learned the spotlight would be hers alone. “I thought, ‘Oh no, now I really have to be there,’” she laughs. “But honestly, it was the fire I needed to make the work I’d been wanting to make for a while.”

Sutherland has been central to Colombo’s journey– first as a teacher, then as her mentor during a Ford Fellowship year when Colombo returned to Collegiate to teach painting, drawing, and coach athletics. “Pam was probably my most influential teacher,” she explains. “She’s really intentional about showing students that there are many ways to live your life and be successful. That was huge for me.”

That openness gave Colombo the confidence to pursue her dual passions: art and athletics. At Collegiate she was encouraged to excel at both, eventually majoring in art while competing in field hockey in college. “The balance of sports and art at Collegiate taught me discipline, competitiveness, and how to go ‘all in.’ Those lessons carry through to my design career, how I build teams, and my personal art practice.”

Today, Colombo lives in two creative worlds. Professionally, she works in design and branding, most notably as art director for Nike campaigns— where precision, systems, and pixel-perfect execution matter. Personally, she holds space for her art, which she describes as fluid, organic, and a release from the structure of her design life.

“In design, it’s all about clarity and distillation. My art, on the other hand, is the opposite. It’s about slowing down, letting go, and feeling instead of doing,” she explains. Her current series primarily uses paint as her medium, a return to basics after years of labor-intensive, mixed-media work. “It’s a pause, really; allowing the work to move on its own rather than trying to control every detail.”

That sense of release is shaped by her current home that she shares with her husband and three sons on Lopez Island, Washington, a village of just 4,000 people surrounded by water. “This series is definitely about fluidity,” she reflects. “Living here, water is everywhere, and at this stage of life, when we have to be more fluid and adaptive, it’s become my anchoring element.”

Even as her career and family life have taken her far from Richmond, Colombo says her Collegiate foundation endures. The blend of rigor and encouragement, the support for both athletics and the arts, and the mentorship of teachers like Sutherland continue to shape her.

“Art has always been my space for reflection and sanity,” she reflects. “That duality I learned at Collegiate — to balance the competitive with the creative — is anchored in me. And I’ll always protect it.”

This Reunion Weekend, Colombo’s art serves as a gift back to the community that first encouraged her to embrace both discipline and imagination. It is a return home not only to family and friends, but to the wellspring of her creativity.