Watercolor painter Sandra Smith-Poling and jewelry craftsman Michael S. Kenney are Gallery 9’s featured artists for December, with Smith-Poling also set to sign copies of her book during its First Saturday Art Walk.

Both Kenney and Smith-Poling are founding members of Gallery 9, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Kenney also continues to play a part in the North Olympic Artist Cooperative.

Kenney’s handmade jewelry showcases rare and unusual natural stones, which he learned to appreciate while spending his childhood digging up rocks with his grandfather.

Kenney developed a passion for using gems to create “jewelry that endures,” collecting stones that he cuts himself, using diamond lapidary equipment to reveal underlying colors and patterns, before crafting precious metal settings to present the gemstones artistically.

More than 40 years of local rock-hunting have yielded an eye-catching array of such stones from throughout the Olympic Peninsula, which Kenney showcases as part of his “wearable art.”

Smith-Poling has likewise accumulated more than 40 years of painting experience, with her father, Southern California painter Craig Smith, serving as her strongest influence, followed by Arthur Beaumont, Sir William Russell Flint and John Singer Sargent.

Watercolors are Smith-Polling’s primary passion, albeit with oils, pen and ink close behind.

Smith-Poling describes herself as influenced by the English school of watercolor, as she strives not only to obtain the maximum effect with the first stroke of her brush, but also to capture “what the eye and mind see and feel” in a scene.

Smith-Poling’s subjects draw from picturesque cities, natural landscapes and marine environments, complete with boats and historic wooden sailing ships.

Smith-Poling credits her 20 years in the U.S. Air Force with furnishing her with a diverse variety of painting subjects, through deployments around the world, which feature among the settings showcased in her illustrated memoir, “A Life of Art, Medicine and Adventure.”

Smith-Poling summed up the book as chronicling her travels “around the world in 60 years, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and Europe to Asia,” and she looks forward to signing copies of it at Gallery 9 at 5:30 p.m., during the Art Walk on Saturday, Dec. 7.

Smith-Poling credits art with helping her find balance to counter the stressful work of providing medical care to others, but she also appreciates how both medicine and art have taken her on “exciting adventures” over the course of her life, including tall ship races as a physician.

“These adventures, including many fascinating and sometimes frightening medical problems, are presented and illustrated in her book,” said Katy Morse, vice president of Gallery 9. “She has paintings in galleries and private collections worldwide.”

An avid sailor, Smith-Poling was an artist, doctor and member of the “Youth Adventures” sail training crew aboard the 101-foot Schooner Adventuress in Puget Sound.

Smith-Poling also served in the Baltic Sea tall ship race aboard the U.S. Coast Guard tall ship, the Bark Eagle, as the ship’s surgeon in 1996, and as the ship’s artist in 1997, in addition to participating in the officer-of-the-deck training. She did that alongside the Coast Guard cadets, setting the sails of the square-rigged bark.

Gallery 9 is open six days a week, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed on Tuesdays. It stays open until 8 p.m. for First Saturday Art Walk.