With a new month comes a new crop of featured artists at local art galleries, a number of whom are highlighted by the “First Saturday” Art Walk.

AURORA LOOP GALLERY

Not only will Sally Cleveland’s art be the subject of its own exhibit, “Sketches of Home,” at the Aurora Loop Gallery from July 3-27, but Cleveland herself will be on site to meet and greet the public during the “First Saturday” Art Walk from 5-8 p.m. on July 5 at 971 Aurora Loop.

“My work is essentially a collection of my days, and in this exhibition, the work spans several years,” Cleveland said. “Some of my paintings are about memory, and sometimes they are simply a new look at something right in front of me. The work often holds more emotion than I intended, but because of my connection to the subject matter, the emotion seems honest to me. Sometimes my paintings can seem dark because the darkness is beautiful.”

GALLERY-9

The Gallery-9 featured artists for July are Nancy Rody, with her stained glass and jewelry, and Gary Rainwater, with his oil paintings, prints and carvings.

Rody has been a glass artist for 29 years, starting during her 10 years living in Alaska. She found parallels between light refracting through multicolored glass and the spectacle of the aurora borealis.

Rody has developed her own process of combining glass with metal and crystals, which includes sterling silver, metal leaf, and stained, fused, copper and beach glasses.

Her display at Gallery-9 includes earrings, bracelets and pendant necklaces, as well as night-lights, stained glass hangings, mosaic tabletops and containers, and “whimsical” glass sculptures.

Rody’s art draws from her imagination and emotions, with concentrations on nature, fantasy and abstract art.

“I explore new directions in art glass,” Rody said. “Experimenting becomes play. Pieces do not always reflect my original concepts, but may take a different direction as I work with them.”

Rody credited her training at Pilchuck Glass School and Bullseye Glass with teaching her glass engraving, painting and fusing design, from well-known guest Italian glass masters.

Rainwater is a self-taught artist, who works primarily with oil paints and wood carvings. After rebuilding his Danish fishing boat, S.V. Ladyhawk, and sailing back to the Pacific Northwest with his wife Barbara, Rainwater reconnected with oil painting.

He enjoys exploring the contrast of light and dark, and his diverse visual subjects include boats, nature and animals, with many of his paintings capturing “the relationships of people to their environment.”

Rainwater’s diminished vision has inspired shifts in his subjects and techniques.

Featured this month is a giclee from his oil painting of monarch butterflies entitled “The Gathering.”

“They come from far away,” Rainwater said. “Look closely at the white dots.”

You can also find Rainwater’s carving of bison on a redwood slab at the back of the gallery. “There are too many people,” he said. “The petri dish is overflowing. Profit and politics mean nothing on a dead planet.”

Gallery-9 is home to the North Olympic Artist Cooperative, and is located at 1012 Water St.

PT GALLERY

Port Townsend Gallery’s featured artists for July are Melissa Bixby and a number of the gallery’s 3-D artists.

Bixby is an Alaskan-born-and-raised artist, “intensely inspired” by the ocean, whom gallery spokesperson Mitchel Osborne credited with creating “a connection with the ocean and its creatures through her avid tide-pooling, daily cold-plunging and a few other aquatic-based hobbies.”

Through her batiks and “personality-capturing” photographs, Osbourne said that Bixby aspires to inspire her fellow humans “to live in awe of this incredible ecosystem,” with the hopes that her art “might help communicate the importance of protection and conservation of our most sacred oceans.”

Meanwhile, the gallery’s 3-D artists will be displaying outerwear fabrics, ceramics with Celtic stamps, Ndebele-style beaded jewelry, collages, “whimsical” wood constructions, unique glassware, soft fabric-beaded critters, laminated wooden bowls and Japanese-style-designed handbags.

Additionally, the outdoor garden patio features metal sculptures, large and small, and art glass.

The Port Townsend Gallery is located at 715 Water St.