That golden and crimson image, posted in windows across the North Olympic Peninsula, bears one woman’s journey of sorrow and joy.
Look at the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts flier, and you see the key elements are there: beauty, harmony and the information you need to go to the festival this coming weekend.
Flowing from one corner is a blue river, with musical notes swimming alongside salmon; in the other corner, a woman dances, arms aloft, through a ribbon of sound pouring out of a saxophone.
This painting comes from the hands and heart of Anna Wiancko Chasman, an artist who usually works in clay.
Juan de Fuca Festival Executive Director Anna Manildi had seen her creations — always wild creatures — at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center and in downtown galleries.
“Right off the bat, I knew she was the one” for the 2010 festival poster, Manildi said.
“I was delighted, and honored,” Wiancko Chasman said last week in an interview at her home west of Port Angeles.
Poster stories
In the poster, she wanted to tell two stories: one about the music and dance that tumble out over festival weekend, and a confluent one about the Olympic Mountain setting.
A third story came forth, too: about Wiancko Chasman’s enchantment with this place, at which she arrived after a series of changes.
In a former life, Wiancko Chasman lived in Sisters, Ore., with her husband and three children.
Then her daughter, Erica, became ill with cancer. She died at 16. Wiancko Chasman’s marriage broke apart.
Devastated, she moved to Portland, Ore., with her two surviving children and started a new chapter in her life.
She went back to college, and spent five years first finishing a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology and then earning a master’s in art therapy at Marylhurst University in Oregon.
In Portland, she met guitarist and composer Paul Chasman, the man who would become her second husband. They lived in Lincoln County, Ore., just outside the coastal town of Waldport.
Both loved to hike in the mountains — Wiancko Chasman grew up exploring the Tetons of Wyoming — so one day in 2006 they drove up to the Olympics.
Discovered Olympics
On this day, Wiancko Chasman was so overcome by her surroundings that she asked Paul if he would spread her ashes here, if she should die before he did.
His response led to another bend in the road.
“Wouldn’t you rather be here alive here?” Paul asked.
Not long after, the couple came to look for land, found a spot with a view of Freshwater Bay, and began designing their home.
They moved in three years ago, and Wiancko Chasman added a pottery studio where she works and teaches classes.
Paul is a guitarist and composer, so the house is filled with his music and her art.
And last year, he was a featured artist at the Juan de Fuca Festival; he’s returning this year to perform with fellow guitarist Terry Robb.
The poster has references to all of the above, what Wiancko Chasman calls “the treasures we have here.”
Raven in flight
In flight across the mountains is a bird who often appears in her work: a raven, signifying intelligence and loyalty to community.
Wiancko Chasman has read much about the corvids, so she knows their characteristics — which, to her mind, include a kind of mystical quality.
Hearing a raven’s call brings her back to girlhood in an instant, back to the family hikes that introduced her to high mountains.
When Manildi first laid eyes on Wiancko Chasman’s finished work, she was thrilled.
The poster “captures a sense of place, and of music and movement,” she said.
For the dancer on the right side, the artist drew on a friend and a relative: She had her brother send her a picture of his saxophone, and her friend and fellow artist Cindy Elstrom posed with a scarf to help her shape the woman.
Wiancko Chasman chose deep blue and bright gold because, she said, they’re opposites whose light plays off each other; then she put in a scarlet sun, and framed it all in crimson.
“I love working red into a painting,” she said. “There’s so much energy in it.”
Which makes it the perfect hue for the Juan de Fuca Festival, she said.
“The festival is such a wonderful thing for Port Angeles,” Wiancko Chasman added. “I wanted to be part of that.”
For information about the four-day event, which encompasses some 125 performances of dance, theater and music from across the region, nation and world, visit www.JFFA.org or phone 360-457-5411.
To find out about classes for adults in Wiancko Chasman’s Freshwater Clay studio, phone 360-928-9632.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
