Memorial photography exhibit, driftwood sculptures to be at Blue Whole Gallery

Published 1:30 am Sunday, February 27, 2022

SEQUIM — The Blue Whole Gallery will feature in March driftwood artist John Bertholl and the work of the late Karen Rozbicki Stringer, a fine art photographer.

The show, Welcome Spring, is at the artist co-op gallery at 129 W. Washington St., Sequim. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The gallery is closed on Sunday.

Stringer’s work is being featured In Memoriam. A gallery member for eight years, she died last year after a prolonged illness at the age of 64.

A silent auction of some of Stringer’s art will be held during the month of March. All proceeds will go to the gallery’s student scholarship fund.

Included in the scholarship fundraising event will be the sale of a personal tribute book of photographs by and of Karen Stringer, and poetry by her husband, Ken Stringer. Mary Franchini and Lynne Armstrong. Veteran member artists will curate Stringer’s exhibit.

Bertholl spent his first 65 years in the state of Alaska. When he retired to Sequim, he became interested in working with driftwood. After learning some of the basics, he found adding color using resin and dyes brought a new life to this natural medium.

The artist will be present on Friday, starting at 5 p.m., during the First Friday Art Walk.

As a fine art photographer, Stringer sought to convey in her work “a sense of calm, tranquility, melancholy, rapture, or humor,” she said.

She pursued images that captured, it was said, “an appreciation of the essential in all its complexity and simplicity.”

The gallery adheres to Clallam County’s public health guidelines.

For more information, see www.bluewholegallery.com.