4/13/2005 5:15:00 PM Jefferson County artists exhibit in 'Strait Art'
Port Angeles Fine Arts Center (PAFAC) opens the first of two successive shows featuring artists of the North Olympic Peninsula, 2-4 p.m. Sunday, April 17, with a reception for the artists and the public. Strait Art 2005 is the latest installment in a series begun in 1990 dedicated to artists of the Juan de Fuca region.
"The annual shows have taken many directions, presenting artists in assorted geographic, cultural and thematic groupings, says curator Jake Seniuk. "It has, however, been several years since PAFAC has issued an open call for a large group show, having instead presented a number of solo exhibitions by local lights, including a centennial celebration of the patron saint of strait artists, PAFAC’s founder, Esther Barrows Webster.
“Of the 72 portfolios we received, only a handful were alumni of past center exhibitions,” continued, Seniuk. “Most were new names, a heartening sign of the rapidly growing art scene on the North Olympic Peninsula.”
Beyond recognizing the intrinsic qualities of the works themselves, the twin exhibitions strive to represent the widest range of aesthetic viewpoints among the submitted works. While regional motifs are prevalent among artists using traditional approaches, the modernist and post-modernist sensibilities in play in many other works are attuned to more global visions.
“Visual or conceptual chemistry, or lack thereof, with other works in the exhibition often tipped the balance for or against inclusion,” confided Seniuk. “We favored showing several pieces by each artist over a scattershot approach. Multiple examples give the works more dimension and begin to brand an artist’s unique style in the viewer’s mind.”
Part I runs from April 17 to June 5 and features the work of 19 artists living in Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and their satellite communities. Works range from the highly representational – such as Karen Hackenberg’s bucolic oils of cows at pasture and Micheal Moshier’s botanical illustrations of plants discovered by Lewis and Clark – to the abstract, such as David Noble’s and Deedra Ludwig’s encaustics with their luscious surfaces of translucent melted wax, or Stephen Yates’s exuberant abstract landscapes peppered with a stream-of-consciousness parade of floating doodles and gee haws.
Photography is represented in Ernst-Ulrich Schafer’s stark high-contrast black and white images of Marines on parade and Doug Kurata’s haiku-like color studies of patterns in nature. Pacific Rim sensibilities are in play in the Japanese-style ink brush paintings of Heideko Goecker, in Jerry Busic’s spare pastel drawings of classic bird profiles, and in Karen Sistek’s diaphanous silk floral banners.
The single-mindedness of purpose and dedication artists bring to their work day-in and day-out is given graphic form by Kim Kopp in her Locaters and Encasers series. Kopp is in the midst of a year’s regimen in which she has committed to create one painting every day. Thirty of these small canvases are arranged here like a page from a monthly wall calendar, chronicling the evolution of Kopp’s creative process with a chosen vocabulary of forms, a path that guides every artist’s progress.
Most of the artists in Part I – which also includes Lynne Armstrong, Sharon Becker, Lois James, Carol Janda, L.D. Lawrence, Andrea Lawson, Maria Loe and Irene Yesley – expend their energy on style and vision, concerning themselves with strategies for representation or abstraction.
The 18 artists in Part II are more interested in content and emotion than in signature vocabularies. Narrative, social commentary, surrealism and deconstruction are all stocked in their arsenal. Strait Art 2005: Part II follows from June 11 to July 31.
It includes the work of Barbara Boerigter, Lucy Congdon, Wayne Coryell, Leon Crowl, Cory Ench, Caecilia Fryrear, Glenda Guilmet, Jacob Haverfield, Mike McCollum, Margie McDonald, Jeff & Stacey Nichols, Anna Nichols, Steve Reinhart, Loran Scruggs, Maureen Wall, Anna Wiancko, Marian Wiederrich and Patricia Zukas.
The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center is located at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd., one-quarter mile east of Race Street. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is free.
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