Flock to Toledo
The Labor Day Art Walk is summer’s nest big attraction
The mill town of Toledo has an enduring legacy of celebrating the arts and will do so again this weekend when the Annual Toledo Labor Day Art Walk returns for its 29th year.
The event boasts 25 artists featuring their work and connecting with the public from Saturday, Sept. 2, through Monday, Sept. 4.
In 1993, the late artist Michael Gibbons offered an open studio tour as part of the Corvallis-based Vistas & Vineyards program. Artists Douglas Haga and Ivan Kelly, recent arrivals to Toledo and neighbors of Gibbons, were invited to open their doors during the festivities. Several hundred visitors came for the event and, in 1994 and 1995, the trio staged a repeat. Each artist invited a guest artist, swelling the number to six. In 1996, prompted by the challenges of October weather, the event date was changed to Labor Day weekend, where it remains to this day.
This year, the self-guided tour boasts an array of artists from a variety of mediums along with displays, refreshments, demonstrations, lectures, scavenger hunts and more. Maps will be available at participating galleries and studios.
The Yaquina River Museum of Art will be featuring guest artist Casey McEneny, known for his vibrant murals found throughout Lincoln County. Born and raised on the Oregon Coast, McEneny earned a BFA and MFA in illustration in California, then returned to the coast where he teaches a CTE commercial art program at Newport High School.
McEneny will be giving public talks at the museum on Saturday, Sunday and Monday at 1:30 pm.
In the museum’s Schoolhouse Exhibit Space is the Founders’ Show, loaned to the museum by the Toledo Public Library and featuring the works of Gibbons, Kelly and Haga. Featured paintings are “Early Morning Riverbend” by Gibbons, painted in 2011 near the Riverbend Marine boat repair, Kelly’s “Cliff Top Garden,” an oil painted in 1998 off the Otter Crest Loop down the Cliffside Trail to a salal garden and a landscape by Haga, known for mixing surrealistic brushwork in his paintings.
Along the Legacy Art Terrace, Marion Moir will be displaying her watercolors. A lifelong painter and student of the arts, Moir is known for her iconic works of flowers, landscapes, puffins, sea life and maritime scenes, many done en plein air.
Also on the Legacy Art terrace, Seashore Family Literacy Center founder Senitila McKinley will be giving away school supplies and serenading guests with her ukulele. Through her own journey of learning English after emigrating to Waldport from Tonga and helping her children with their school work, she saw firsthand the need for family literacy services in the community.
The Yaquina River Museum of Art is located at 151 NE Alder Street.
Michael Gibbons’ Signature Gallery will be featuring select paintings from the late artist’s original works. Gibbons’ passion for painting the Yaquina Watershed, which he referred to as a sacred landscape, can be seen in his original works painted on location. One of his most iconic paintings, “Dockside Flowering Plums,” available as a print in the gallery, was painted in 1986 and features the flowering fruit trees along the bank of the Yaquina River amidst an industrial backdrop. The trees had been planted by a local mill worker to beautify the town, inspiring Gibbons to paint the scene, which in turn led the city to plant more flowering fruit trees throughout Toledo. Cherry, plum, and apple blossoms are now part of the town’s identity.
Michael Gibbons’ Signature Gallery is located at 140 NE Alder Street.
At Ivan Kelly’s Studio & Gallery, the artist will be featuring his original oil landscapes, big game, and maritime paintings. Growing up in the lush and varied Irish countryside instilled in Kelly a love and appreciation for the natural world. With several decades of painting on location across the Western, Southwestern United States and Canada his work exhibits a personal vision, authenticity and sense of place. His oil paintings have been juried into several national and international exhibits and art museums since 2000. Awards he has received include an Award of Excellence from the Oil Painters of America in Carmel for his on-location Oregon Coast oil painting, “Abandoned” now in the permanent collection of the Yaquina River Museum of Art.
Ivan Kelly Studio-Gallery is located at 207 East Graham Street.
Crow’s Nest Gallery & Studio will be displaying the works of more than 15 artists: founder Janet Runger’s storybook found object assemblage art; Veta Bakhtina’s striking folkloric paintings; Alice Haga’s fused glass works; Val Bolen’s tiles and ceramics; Paula Teplitz’ ceramics, mixed media and sculptural jellyfish mobiles; Jeff Gibford’s digitally manipulated photography; Tish Epperson’s vivid watercolor works; Sylvia Hosie’s signature nature, wildlife, and landscape photography and many visiting artists.
Crow’s Nest Gallery & Studio is located at 305 N Main Street.
During Art Walk, don’t miss the Phantom Gallery currently showing the photorealistic painter Kim Bush and exotic wildlife artist Daniel Toledo at 355 N Main Street.
Art walk will run throughout Labor Day Weekend from 10 am to 4 pm daily. For more information, go to toledoartwalk.com.