Artists lay out their work in Manzanita
A celebration of nature will fill Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts Gallery for the April show, featuring artwork by Julie Johnson, Kirsten Blair and Anna Kaufman.
An artists’ reception will be held from 3 to 5 pm this Saturday, April 5, during which the artists will speak about their work and answer questions.
Johnson is primarily a plant-based sculptural artist with a background in basketry, papermaking and natural dyes. She gathers almost all of her materials throughout the Pacific Northwest. Respectful, sustainable harvests — from urban gardens and managed landscapes, to the wilds of forests, rivers and oceans — provide the raw materials for everything she makes. The technical aspects of Johnson’s practice are based on skills learned during decades of formal instruction and studio practice. She loves researching plants — including historic and traditional ethnobotanical uses in cultures all over the world. Combining materials and techniques in interesting ways is the result of endless studio experimentation. Her current work is inspired by movement and incorporates elements of myth, ritual and sound.
Blair is an artist living in Cape Meares. Her work is an expression of presence and aims to recreate the shapes and repetition found while exploring the Oregon Coast. Through immersion in nature and observation, her work explores the concept of space, rest and sense of place through abstraction. The subject is an abstraction of found eelgrass compositions on the beach. The foundation of linen is dyed with plant material she foraged along the beach and slowly coaxed the color from over her kitchen stove. They gave a delicate and rich palette of oranges, pinks and yellows. Adding things like baking soda or iron shift the color to the colors in the collection. The process of collecting, dying and sewing is slow and deeply connects Blair to the work beyond abstract visual expression.
Kaufman’s work “Memoriam” expands on a series of portraits about the residents of Peehee Mu’huh, or Thacker Pass, in Nevada. Currently, Peehee Mu’huh is being excavated and will become the largest open pit lithium mine in North America. The delicate high desert sagebrush steppe ecosystem has been home to many unique creatures for millennia. It is the ancestral homeland of the Shoshone-Paiute people, serving as a hunting and burial ground, obsidian collection site and a corridor for travel. Two massacres of the Shoshone-Paiute people have occurred here and are remembered by this landscape. The show has evolved from traditional scientific illustration to decorative mosaic portraits using acrylic paint pens on canvas and paper and invites you to reflect on the rapidly developing and changing world and to grieve the losses underway. It also is an invitation to celebrate the many colorful, animated residents of Peehee Mu’huh.
The Hoffman Gallery is located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita and is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 pm. For more information, go to hoffmanarts.org or call 503-368-3846.