Over the Hill and Far Away / New Art and Gallery Hopping

 

 

 

Well, it’s been an interesting week for art, art projects and adventures for Martha Flores and me.

Martha has needed some glaze and other materials including some fabric for projects here at home and the studio and I have wanted to check out some galleries in and around Seattle. So; we planned to make the rounds out there, but first we checked with our good friend and artist Terry Johnson to see if he needed anything from the Pottery Store. It’s always good to see what new and creative things he is doing in his studio.

And, so Friday we headed out to the west side of the mountains purchase list for she and Terry in Martha’s hand and the addresses of all the galleries we wanted to check out loaded into my new Smart phone. Included in the list was a glass studio in the Fremont District that we didn’t end up getting to, so that will have to wait for another trip.

First on the list the necessary materials from the fabric store and pottery store. That done we headed over to Alkie, where I have scuba dived in the past and was able to show Martha around as she hadn’t been there before. As we worked our way around the point to visit Alkie Arts, we were pleasantly surprised to learn the area there west of Downtown Seattle was almost named New York…are you kidding me I thought. It would have to have been called New New York. Well, I’m glad that cooler heads prevailed on that. But, perhaps because of that early historical quirk, there is along the walkway near the shore a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty.

Needless to say, I had to take some tourist shots of that, which I had some fun with back at home on the computer and posted to Facebook.

The gallery there in Alkie was very nice and we enjoyed visiting with the owner Diane Venti who allowed me to take some photos and to enter the inner sanctum where she was preparing to ship out the art sold at the previous nights Second Thursday Art Walk. We didn’t get to meet her husband and metal artist Tom Wyrick, but we did get to meet her son and all around helper.

We really like the venue and the art therein. We both really liked the original oils by Cheryl Zahniser and I especially liked the piece titled “Kim”.

 

I was very interested in what Micahael Birawer was doing with his paintings of iconic Seattle scenes in his own unique way. His work is ‘really hot’ right now according to Diane and his work is the only work she sells canvas prints of vs. original art.

We gave our cards with links to our new web sites to Diane and she told us about some of the other galleries in the area that are part of the West Seattle Art Walk and gave us a map to check them out.

So, at that point we decided to go up the hill to the area where most of the other galleries were located and we weren’t disappointed.  Our first stop there was the ARTSWEST Playhouse and Gallery. There we were pleasantly surprised to find a few paintings by local Wenatchee Artist Diana Sanford. This venue is mostly a local theater with a nice Foyer available for display of art.

Next and just around the corner was the Twilight Artist Collective. This was the kind of art gallery that really appeals to a younger hipper crowd or to an old guy like me that has found memories of little independent ‘record stores/head shops’ from back in the day. When I said this out loud to Cheryl Robinson, one of the three co-owners of the gallery, she liked that comment and I was glad of that.  Cheryl has a BFA from Arizona State and works in a variety of media herself from pencil and paper to metal and beeswax. I wish I could have seen what she does with beeswax. But, what she had on hand of her own work at the moment was limited to some cards with birds and such on a wallpaper like background.

She let us know the gallery is for sale, as her two partners are moving on to kids and family focus and it is priced at a mere $30,000. That would be fun but this gallery would do better with younger owners I suspect. All in all, though, our visit to west Seattle and a few of its galleries reminded us that this area is more of what we were envisioning when we took on the adventure of moving from L.A. to Washington. At the time, though, we were actively involved in our counseling careers and we went where we both found counseling work at the same time in the same town… which turned out to be Wenatchee. Wenatchee has been good to us, but it is very different from Seattle and West Seattle.

After, visiting just a few of the art venues in West Seattle we decided to forgo the Fremont District for this trip as it was getting late in the afternoon on a Friday and we really needed to get to Kirkland where we planned to visit the Parklane Gallery.

Those readers who know of my recent videos of the Table Top Mountain fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksqfemj6rCw and of ones mans effort to prepare for fire from the town of Liberty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmxPPE-fshI  may be interested to know that the owner of the property in Liberty from where I took my video from, is the son of one of the principal members of the Parklane Gallery. Her husband Larey and I have been communicating back and forth for a bit now and I was especially interested to check out their co-op gallery.

When we got to Parklane we stopped first to check out some of the art in the lane. There we found a beautiful bronze by Ross Mattson who readers in Wenatchee may know from his impressive “Petra” bronze in front of the Performing arts Center.

The first gallery we stopped at was the Howard/Mandville Gallery which is just a couple of doors down the lane from the Parklane Gallery. At Howard Mandville we were pleased to see a smaller version of “Wings Bronze” by Gary Lee Price. I have always appreciated the large scale version of this that is part of the Arts on the Avenue in Wenatchee. They also had a smaller version of his “Journey of the Imagination”. For the most part this is a very traditional upscale type of gallery. One that I imagine home decorators will take their clients to pick out art for their newly remodeled homes. The large collection of catalogues with artist’s names on them may have something to do with that assessment.

Finally, we made it to the Parklane Gallery. And, although we did not expect to meet Larey McDaniels, as he was to perform with the Seattle Symphony that night, we were lucky in that we got there early enough that we caught him there. It was great to visit with him as well as to check out the variety of art they have there.

In the front of the gallery was the 12x12 show which is one of the few shows they do each year that is open to non-members and member alike. Each piece in that show must measure 12” by 12” including frames to be in the show. We were invited to bring something in before it opened but we really had nothing available in those measurements... another time perhaps. The other show they do there that is open to non-members is a 3d show... the next of those coming up in 2013 sometime.

We really were intrigued by the “Lost Memories” digital art piece by Del Hoffman. In fact this piece really inspired me to venture into some further digital art experimentation myself.  

And so, the art continues at home in the studio for Martha where she is painting away and at my computer

 

"Cascadian Collage"  by Rod Daut

                                                  "YoungWoman" by Martha Flores

where I am ever exploring further into digital creations based on my ownphotos. Look for more along that line in the near
future at a gallery near you.                              

                                                                                        

Have a very artful day.

 

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