Art Outside display to open with new pieces today
Working from a hold in the ground, Deanna Pindell puts the finishing touches on "Juncture," an artwork made from wood, stone and concrete. -- Photo by Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News
By Paige Dickerson, Peninsula Daily News
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A total of 19 Northwest artists have created new pieces that will be displayed in the 5-acre "museum without walls" outside the art center's indoor gallery.
They join some 100 or so pieces that have been installed in Webster's Woods since it opened eight years ago.
From a saw entwined around a tree to a wall of wood "cookies," the projects all seek to explore nature, said Jake Senuik, curator of the center at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
The opening reception will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Senuik will lead an art tour at 2 p.m.
The tour is the first of the season.
Tours will be scheduled at 10 a.m. the first Saturday of the month, and at 2 p.m. the third Wednesday of each month.
Signature tree
The opening reception will include a ceremony to commemorate the center's "signature tree," which grows right outside the crescent-shaped building that houses the indoor artworks at the center.
The tree will be removed sometimes in the coming weeks because all of the branches have begun to split, and it is rotting at the roots, Senuik said.
Senuik wants to ensure that the heavy madrona to fall on the building.
"So we really want to have a ceremony for it," he said.
Local thespian Jim Stapleton will read a poem to commemorate the tree, he said.
New season
Artists new and old to the park have made projects for the new season, Senuik said.
Returning with new work are artists Dani LaBlond of Port Angeles; Shirley Wiebe of Vancouver, British Columbia; David Nechak, Alan Lande and Carolyn Law of Seattle; Claudia Lorenz of Victoria; and James Lapp of Mount Vernon.
New artists are Sarah Tucker of Port Angeles; Deanna Pindell of Port Hadlock; Gloria Lamson of Port Townsend; Chuck Iffland of Chimacum; Mary Coss, Buster Simpson and Julie Lindell of Seattle; Lin McJunkin of Conway; Margot Myers of Bellingham; Gregory Glynn of Bainbridge Island; and Ingrid Lahti of Mercer Island.
A piece by Sequim artist Viva Jones will be added to the display, but it may not be finished in time for the opening, Senuik said.
"She is firing a clay dragon, which will sit up in a tree and peer at people as they come around one of the corners," he said.
"It is a very complex design."
Wiebe's piece is a wall of wood "cookies" — or thin cross-sections of branches — arranged to look like a pile of logs.
"I was really inspired when I worked as an artist-in-residence, and I found this closet full of these things which were left over from a scientific experiment," Wiebe said.
"They were all labeled in this really meticulous obsessive way.
"I really started to think about how art is also this really obsessive thing, so I thought I should turn those into art.
"This is the first time I've actually made them myself though."
She sawed the cookies out of branches left over from winter blowdown — an appropriate incorporation of the surroundings into the art, she said.
Simpson's piece is of a saw twisted into a mobias strip that has a poem written on it, Senuik said.
It is wrapped around a tree, and as the branches grow the saw slowly will become part of the tree.
"It is a wonderful tribute to the logging history of the area," Senuik said.
A gift to the region from artist and philanthropist Esther Barrow Webster, the art center's gallery occupies her 1951 high modern house, designed by Seattle architect Paul Hayden Kirk.
Her wooded estate around the house was transformed in 2000 into Webster's Woods, with trails weaving in and out to form a web of paths.
The art center gallery, offers displays of paintings and sculptures.
The park — sponsored for the past five years by First Federal — is open throughout the daylight hours.
For more information, phone the center at 360-417-4590.
THE OPENING RECEPTION for the Art Outside exhibit at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. today.
The center is at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd., in Port Angeles.
The art center's indoor gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
Webster's Woods, a 5-acre forested area with a path that winds around outdoor artworks, is open during daylight hours year-round.
For more information, phone the art center at 360-457-3532.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: June 20. 2008 9:00PM