Enter the intimate space of Port Townsend’s Gallery by the Bay on Water Street and you may be struck by a series of small images propped on a tiny center table.

Perhaps you will look at these images and feel that they emit history.

“There is an energy that is transmitted when you look at them,” saystheir creator, local artist Sofia Christine. “These icons are connected to centuries of veneration.” True as this is, there is another history these archetypal images are evoking – and that is the story of the artist.

Lifetime of work

They might not look like it at first glance, but the small, enigmatic icons created by Christine are the result of a lifetime of work.

After exploring myriad media and experimenting with a long history of production and reproduction, Christine has arrived at her current creations: the reproduction of her original icons onto materials including copper, paper and cloth.

Growing up a classically trained dancer, Christine stopped going to high school at the end of her junior year and began studying at the University of California, Berkeley. Knowing little more than that dance was her passion, she arranged her schedule around Berkeley’s dance program. This resulted in her taking whatever classes would fit her schedule and gaining the “default degree” of art history.

After graduating college, Christine did what any recent graduate does and explored a number of seemingly odd jobs; she worked as a thread-cutter, toured France with a Basque folk dance troupe, and eventually landed a gig as a stewardess.

“They were pretty much accepting anybody,” she says, with a laugh, of Trans International Airlines. Finding her work as a flight attendant unfulfilling, she took a leave of absence. Soon after, Christine reentered the world as an artist.

“I was walking down the street and saw a pottery class was beginning,” she says. “So, I walked across the street and bought an apron.” Thus began Christine’s start as a ceramicist. “I wanted to be a potter. The technique of throwing reminded me of dancing.”

Inner artist emerges

After studying at the Harrow College of Technology and Art in England and apprenticing with a potter in France for a summer, Christine’s inner artist began to emerge. Though she had entered school to learn the discipline of throwing pottery, she found that the less-structured craft of handbuilding, building pieces from coils or slabs of clay by hand, was what appealed to her more.

“Handbuilding wasn’t what I intended, but there it was and I really loved doing it.”

Christine found even more freedom in painting on ceramics and experimenting with glazes. “I decorated everything. I would sit on my bed and paint glazed pots,” she says with a smile. “It turned out what I loved the most was handbuilding. It's less structured. Glaze chemistry was also really helpful.”

After the strict disciplines of ballet and dead-center throwing, Christine began to find herself as an artist in the presence of this more liberal medium. “I think I’ve always thought of myself as really disciplined but actually, I’m not.”

However, more structure was to come her way. After her studies, Christine began making a series offaience (tin-glazed pottery)of white ducks when a buyer from I. Magnin & Co. approached her about producing for the store wholesale. It was here that Christine began a new discipline. She began making tile and honing the fruitful art often neglected by artists: reproduction.

Producing art for someone else and in large quantities led Christine to experiment with many mediums. She soon began silk-screening on tiles and selling trivets to stores (Pier 1 Imports among them), which eventually led to the start of her own architectural tile business.

Images of Mary

Thriving as her business was, by the time Christine had her second son she was exhausted and craving a change. So she sold her business and began spending more time at home with her sons.

Christine, who grew up in a household completely devoid of religion or spirituality, one day found herself drawn to the images of Mary on the walls of her son’s Waldorf school. Her attraction to these iconic images led Christine to eventually take a course from an iconographer in Holland – and from there started her ever-present relationship with icons.

Through her method of production (she first makes relief images in clay, then plaster, then composition paper) as well as reproducing them (copies of her icons now exist as mini-altars, jewelry and prayer flags), these icons have stayed with Christine over the years.

Why this is, she isn’t quite sure. “They seem to mean a lot to a lot of people. I like that about them,” she says. “They are universal images that reflect a divine energy…I myself need to be surrounded by that. They’re in my life constantly,” she continues. “Apparently I need those reminders.”

Need them though she may, Christine makes sure to maintain herself as an artist away from icons, difficult as that can be. “Icons are a hard act to follow,” she says. “The challenge for me is to do something for myself that is not a product – just for the sake of expression.”

That being said, Christine hones her creativity by carving into clay, arranging color, making jewelry and working with wood. What does she create with wood, one might ask. Totems – the age-old, enigmatic composition of iconic images.

Eleven Questions

Describe yourself in three words.

Energetic. Creative. Seeker.

Describe your work in three words.

Colorful. Archetypal. Spiritual.

Who or what inspires you?

Byzantine art, a lot of ethnic art and my two sons.

If you could have one super power, what would it be?

I’m not sure if it’s a super power, but to absolutely fully experience my own divinity and my connection to spirit. Maybe it’s something we can all do but don’t.

What, if anything, hangs on your walls?

My artwork, my sons’ artwork, and some prints and different textiles. Also various postcards and little fragments of pattern and color.

What is the last piece of music you listened to?

Astor Piazzolla.

If you could name a park, a street or a building, which would it be and what would you name it?

I’d name a park some inspirational word.

Are you creating what you want to create?

Mostly, but not always.

Are you making a living doing what you want to do?

Not really.

What medium would you like to try?

Wood carving. And I’d like to learn some metal smithing techniques.

How, if at all, does Port Townsend affect your work?

I really appreciate the beauty of the area. That’s really important to me. And, I really enjoy the spontaneous conversations I have with people that lead me on some other path. I enjoy that that happens so easily here.

Sofia Christine’s work can be seen locally at Gallery by the Bay and online at sofiachristine.com.

Jacqueline Mention has, too, been a dancer, potter, and art history degree-holder. Now she occupies her time rifling through the prints of Centrum’s artists in residence and writing extremely short fiction. She can be reached at jacqueline.mention@gmail.com.