(For a show preview click image above)

Animals in Art

November 5 – December 4

Artist reception: Arts! Arcata, November 13, 6-8:30pm

Derek Bond, Jim McVicker, Theresa Oats, Linda Parkinson, Rachel Schlueter, Patricia Sennott and John Wesa.

Our November show, Animals in Art, is a group exhibit benefiting the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center (HWCC). For thirty years this local volunteer organization has raised and rehabilitated orphaned and injured native wildlife. For the duration of the show, twenty percent of all gallery sales will be donated to the HWCC.

During our Arts! Arcata reception come meet the artists as well as some of the HWCC’s living birds of prey including a great horned owl, western screech owl, spotted owl and a red-tailed hawk. Additionally the Care Center will be unveiling their Windshield Owl Pale Ale produced by the Lost Coast Brewery as a special fundraiser for the Center. This specially packaged beer with artwork created by Linda Parkinson can also be found at some of your favorite stores.

The painting for the Windshield Owl Pale Ale label acknowledges the most common source of injury. “A lot of birds of prey are hit by cars; it’s the most common thing, especially with owls,” said Linda Parkinson, an HWCC board member and artist in this month’s exhibit. “People throw food waste out their car windows, rodents eat the food and birds of prey get hit while going for the rodents. It’s that simple.”

The painting depicts an owl on a windshield giving a surprised look at the driver. “I tried to present a cartoon-like quality, to take a serious issue and cast it in a funny light,” she said.

Other Artworks on display expresses a wide range of animals and interpretation. Artists such as Linda Parkinson and Derek Bond are best known for their scientific representational depictions of wildlife where the careful attention to biology and form are as important as artful interpretation. Other artists such John Wesa use their creative license to depict chickens piloting UFOs while others such as Theresa Oats and Jim McVicker paint the animals as they may have been in the scene during their plein air painting.”When a bird flies into an area I’m painting they exhibit the life of an environment while implying space and air.” says Theresa Oats.

Also in the show is a unique collaborative monotype by Patricia Sennott with an imprinted poem by Anthony Lucero. This monotype was recently part of show at Piante Gallery in Eureka featuring a rich mix  of collaborative imagery and poetry. We thought this artwork was a nice contribution to the animal in art theme. The Poem reads:

if you come back

from the dead

come back like a butterfly

come back like an

elephant come back like

a cricket come back

like a raccoon

come back like a wolf

with a shiny flower

behind your ear

if you come back from the

dead

put some heart into it

friend.

Learn more about the show by reading an article written by Andrew I. Jones for the Times-Standard:

Animals Inspire Artists

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“When you’re in a forest there’s a feeling of almost walking inside a living organism,” Harris said. “That life force that is the woods is the feeling I get when I’m there. It’s not a particular tree or river scene, but a sense of place.” It is that sense that Harris strives to convey through photography, an expression of what being in a place feels like. However, black and white images of forests never met his personal standards. Harris didn’t photograph them.

“Instead of a dark gray nearly black tree in a dark forest, that you would have with black and white, with color photography you’ve got a variety of reds and browns, even purples, in the trunks and greens on the ground that speak of life and the living forest that is the redwoods,” he said.Color also presents the opportunity to learn. “People are always looking to expand their abilities, to face a new challenge, and for me that is to now explore the world in color,” Harris said. “It’s a challenge to myself to grow as a photographer and image maker. My goal is to describe what it means to be alive, to be moved by the world around you.”

a Trunk show too….

During the evening of Arts! Arcata, local weaver Nancy Kennedy will once again display a selection of beautiful handwoven scarves and area rugs.

Nancy works with a loom using a range of fibers including bamboo, cotton, ribbon, silk, rayon and nylon. It’s that time of year for scarves and they make great gifts.

Kennedy has been a weaver for 20 years, showing nationally in galleries as well as juried shows of the American Craft Council and the Art Furnishings Show in Pasadena

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Our September show features artwork produced during a week-long trip to Mount Shasta where North Coast women artists captured lavender fields, lakes, rivers, lupine prairies and the mountain itself.

In the September 6th issue of the Times Standard a more informative article was published. The article written by Andrew Jones can be found by clicking here: http://www.times-standard.com/lifestyle/ci_13281693.

The same article was added to this entry one month after appearing in the T-S. See below.

For six years, a group of North Coast artists has gathered to spend a week together in nature and create, bonded by a shared loss and the joy of discovery.

The group’s new show, “Shasta Sojourn: Paintings, Drawings and Photographs by Six Women Artists,” is on exhibit this month at the Upstairs Art Gallery in Arcata.

Included in the exhibit are plein air paintings and photographs by Becky Evans, Judy Evenson, Carrie Grant, Linda Mitchell, Kathy O’Leary and Theresa Oats.

In June, the women gathered for a week-long trip to Mount Shasta where they captured lavender fields, lupine prairies, alpine lakes, rivers and, of course, mountains.

The story of this body of work actually begins six years ago with nine artists spending a week on the Mad River to paint and photograph nature. It was a trip modeled after some of the women’s husbands who were also artists and took a similar annual trip. Some of the women knew each other, some were friends and others were just familiar names in the art community.

”We bonded right from the beginning,” said Linda Mitchell. “We had different personalities, but similar interests as mature women artists. We understood each other.”

Days were spent painting or photographing alone. Evenings would wind down enjoying an elaborately cooked gourmet dinner — they took turns cooking — over laughter and a sharing of their day’s work as paintings were set out to dry.

But two incidents shook the group in its second year. First, painter Theresa Oats exchanged glances with a mountain lion while on the trip.

”We tended to split up and paint on our own,” Mitchell said. “We realized that could be deadly. We bought whistles and made sure to always wear them.”

The second incident was Ingrid Nickelsen’s death in 2005.”Ingrid was a person we all looked up to as a real plein air painter,” said Mitchell. “She would go backpacking to remote locations sometimes for days or weeks at a time on her own. She was comfortable in nature, more comfortable than she was around people or in the city.”

Nickelsen was a member of the informal group, but on a later solo trip that summer, a fall shattered her ankle and threw out both hips on a hiking trail. Stranded in a remote area of the Siskiyou Mountains beyond communication, the injury would take her life.

”The incident was such a trauma for everyone in the group it brought us closer together,” Mitchell said.

The next year, the women gathered again at the ranch house on the Mad River. The impact of Nickelsen’s absence was evident to photographer Carrie Grant in a seminal moment.

”I suddenly realized all of us were sitting in this little tiny backyard of the ranch house, women within elbow reach of each other and their French easels, all huddled together and totally comfortable, and it didn’t seem unusual,” she said. “We’re united somehow with no great need to be isolated. We’ve combined as a community.”

These days the artists will trek in pairs or trios with an awareness of the inherent danger of going out alone, but also the enjoyment of treasuring the moments they are together.

”This group of women is special. We don’t judge each other, no comparisons or criteria,” said Grant. “We can each be ourselves and do what we need to do.”

Oil painter Kathy O’Leary agreed. “Being an artist is a fairly isolated and lonely job, and these trips are a place where we aren’t lonely,” she said. “We share our experiences and fears and work in an atmosphere where we know we won’t be judged when we say, ‘Here is what I did today and I’m really excited about it.’”

Several of the artists are now trustees of the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust, which issues annual grants to Humboldt County women artists based on Nickelsen’s final wishes. Grants are awarded in the realms of fine art painting, sculpture and photography. More information about the trust can be obtained by e-mailing: intrust@humboldt1.com.

”We look for the same kind of drive and motivation that Ingrid had, the kind of woman who is so driven to do her art that she can’t help herself, and yet has some realistic plan about how to survive as an artist,” Grant said.

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Rachel Schlueter and Juno

July 2009

A selection of new alla prima oil paintings by Rachel Schlueter are featured this month at the Upstairs Art Gallery. Our opening reception will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 10 during Arts! Arcata at 1063 G Street inside the Umpqua Bank building.

Among the paintings of Schlueter’s exhibit are six plein air works of a young scrub jay she encountered while camping for several weeks near Helena off Highway 299 last month.

“A benefit of plein air painting is a sense of discovery,” Schlueter said. On her first day at camp she stumbled upon a fledgling jay she later named Juno that had fallen from its nest and was about to be devoured by a raven.

“We embarked on an adventure of bird rescue and within

three weeks we’ve seen a flightless ball of fuzz turn into a soaring blue angel,” she said. “He’s clever, delightfully playful and an accomplished thief. He has been a delight to paint and a wonder to watch grow-up.”

On display with Juno are paintings of roses, a pine cone and a couple of cats.

Artists also showing this month include Micki Dyson-Flatmo, Ken Jarvela, Ellen Land-Weber, Jim McVicker, Linda Mitchell, Theresa Oats, Kathy O’Leary, Amy Uyeki and Peter Zambas.

For more information about the exhibit call Meridian Fine Art, at 826-7184.

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Peter Zambas

June 9 – July 3

A selection of oil paintings by Fieldbrook artist Peter Zambas are featured this month at the Upstairs Art Gallery. Also showing are new paintings by John Crater, Beverly Harper, Michael Hayes, Jim McVicker, Theresa Oats, Rachel Schlueter and Stock Schlueter along with new photographs from Rick Gustafson and Michael Harris.

As part of our celebration of Peters artistry, we are delighted to share with you a three minute video of Peter talking about his art. The video is produced by Lynette Nutter.  A higher quality version and other videos by Lynette can be seen by clicking this link.

Zambas is a representational oil painter. ”I like to go into a place and capture the energetic truth that is there,” Zambas says. “It’s not so much story telling, but creating space through the relationships among objects.”

A public reception will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, June 12 during Arts! Arcata at the Upstairs Art Gallery, 1063 G Street inside the Umpqua Bank building.

For more information about the exhibit, call Meridian Fine Art, at 826-7184 or visit www.meridianfineart.net for a preview.

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As residents of the North Coast and Humboldt County we know we have great scenery and great artists painting it. We also know that Stock Schlueter is one of our stars with a national audience and from time to time he is acknowledged for it in a big way.

This time Stock can be found gracing the cover and six pages in the June issue of Southwest Art Magazine. Southwest Art is a premier publication covering the who’s who and what’s what for artists and collectors of “western art.”  The magazine covers most everything besides the New York art-world and is much more than cowboys on horseback and contemporary Native American art. The magazine even covers art of the Pacific Northwest and this month includes Stock’s paintings of the Humboldt Bay bottom lands, Alton, Hopland and Trinidad.

The article about Stock is written by Virginia Campbell as part of a collection covering adventures in plein-air painting and it is available at your favorite bookstore.

In the article Campbell writes, “Over the the last couple of years, Schlueter has deliberately retraced the ground of some of his earlier paintings. The venture has strengthened his long-held conviction that no intellectual concept can compete with plein-air painting for creating good pictures. ’Some of the things I’m painting  now, I simply couldn’t have painted the last time I was there,’ he observes. In the intervening decades he has acquired more and subtler ways of capturing that fresh sensation of the eye moving over landscape.”

For June we will have on display a selection of Stock’s paintings includeing the two seen here. More of his work can be seen at the websites of Meridian Fine Art,  John Pence gallery and Stock Schueter.

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For many years, she focused on local landscapes as an abstract impressionist, but two years ago Harper began following a parallel passion for what she calls “realism with a whimsical twist.” Local landmarks are depicted in bright punchy colors as if seen through a distorted lens. Everything within view bends in an arc one way or another, whether it’s the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse or the Arcata Theater. Invariably, a Volkswagen bus can be seen traversing the landscape.

A selection of her new works in both styles are on exhibit through June 8th at the Upstairs Art Gallery (1063 G Street inside Umpqua Bank).

Three of her new works focus on light-hearted views of Arcata and Humboldt State University which incorporate a collection of Victorian, art deco, and post modern architecture.

“The scenes I’m using in these paintings have stayed the same throughout my life,” Harper said. Her parents and grandparents lived in Arcata and she now resides in Freshwater.

“My life in Humboldt County is a major influence in my art work. That heritage is the soul of my paintings. You have to live somewhere long enough to love it and be inspired by it,” she said.

Also showing are paintings by Michael Hayes, Ken Jarvela, Jim McVicker, Theresa Oats, Kathy O’Leary, Rachel Schlueter, Stock Schlueter and Peter Zambas and photographs by Michael Harris and Rick Gustafson.

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