Toledo back in First place
Toledo’s First weekend returns after COVID hiatus
For many years, Toledo has shown its artistic side every month during the town’s First Weekend Art Celebration, an opportunity for members of the arts community to showcase their work and connect with the general public. Out of concern for the well-being of the community, the event took a pause while Lincoln County worked towards meeting the state requirements for reopening businesses.
Now that Lincoln County has moved into Phase 2, the event is returning for lovers of the arts on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 7 and 8, at participating gallery locations.
Featured this month is the opening of the Gibbons Retrospective Exhibition at the Yaquina River Museum of Art, with 20 works by renowned regional oil painter, the late Michael Gibbons.
Across the street, the Michael Gibbons Signature Gallery will be featuring “Prelude to Spring,” a painting depicting both the remnants of the winter’s cold with still-bare brush, and the emerging spring of flowering plum trees along the banks of the Yaquina River in Toledo. Other original works of Gibbons’ art painted around the Yaquina Watershed region will be on display.
The Michael Gibbons Signature Gallery is located at 140 NE Alder Street, and will be open from noon to 5 pm on both event days. For more information, go to www.michaelgibbons.net.
See facing page for more on this treasured local artist.
Just a short walk from The Michael Gibbons’ Signature Gallery, Ivan Kelly’s Studio & Gallery will feature new works from this landscape and big game artist. A special spotlight will be given to “Setting Sun, the Rugged Coast,” a striking scene painted in Depoe Bay, showing the golden light of the setting sun flashing against the rocky cliffside and temperamental waves.
Kelly has participated in and collected awards from many national shows and exhibitions, including the American Society of Marine Artists; the Oil Painters of America; and Allied Artists of America in New York. The National American Society of Marine Artists juried “Sculptured by Pacific Storms,” an 8x16’ oil painting to be included in its 15th National Public Art Museum Exhibit Tour, which included eight public art museums throughout six states.
“I love the qualities and effects of light on my chosen subjects, be it a meadow, an ocean beach, a Teton peak or on the coat of an elk in the early dawn,” Kelly said. “My paintings are on canvas board and I use all manner of brushes and painting knives.”
Ivan Kelly Studio & Gallery is located at 207 East Graham Street, and will be open 11 am to 5 pm on Saturday and noon to 5 pm on Sunday. For more information, go to www.ivankelly.com.
On Main Street, Crow’s Nest Gallery & Studio, now in a new location, will showcase the work of nine artists, including the storybook, found-object assemblage art of founder Janet Runger.
The others assembled for the weekend show include: fused glass artist Alice Haga; tile and ceramic artist Val Bolen; ceramic and mixed media artist Paula Teplitz, whose works on display will include her sculptural jellyfish mobiles; Jeff Gibford, a photographer who digitally manipulates his images; Tish Epperson, a watercolor artist who will be featuring her painting titled “In a Jimmy Buffet Mood;” oil painter Yelizaveta Bhaktina; wildlife photographer Sylvia Hosie, featuring the powerful photograph of a pensive buffalo titled “Tatanka;” and fiber artist Susan Jones, who will be showing her woven jellyfish.
Crow’s Nest Gallery & Studio, now located at 305 N. Main Street in Toledo, will be open from 10 am to 5 pm on both days of First Weekend.