Steel yourself
The Chessman Gallery’s new show will test your metal
Henry Hoovestal is a local artist, welder and metal worker, who has spent large periods of time working as a navigator on large ocean vessels.
He creates unique, hand-crafted stainless-steel sculptures while ashore, and visually stimulating ink drawings while working on ships away from his home and family.
His drawings and metal sculpture will fill the Chessman Gallery inside the Lincoln City Cultural Center through Sept. 12.
“My real love and passion is sculpting,” he said. “Drawing is a way to supplement that passion for creation.”
Hoovestal has been working with metal in different ways for roughly 20 years and discovered his love for pure artistic creation about five years ago.
This is his first show.
“I started out just wanting to see if I could do it,” he said. “Based on how much I enjoy it and people’s reactions to it, I guess you could say it has turned out really well.”
Prior to moving to the Central Coast in 2020, Hoovestal would come out to visit his mom.
“During the visit I met this guy named Russell Jacques and ended up talking to him for a long time. My mom came up to me later and said ‘Do you know who that is?’ Turned out he’s a big-time metal sculptor and painter. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I can do that,’ and five years later I am, it’s pretty amazing.”
Trying to describe his art, Hoovestal uses words like cubist, industrial and destructive, but doesn’t feel any of those words quite capture it.
“I feel like my art is more like the experience of humanity,” he said. “You start out as a perfectly shaped individual and slowly, life beats you down, but ultimately, that beat down creates the unique individual that you are. That's what my pieces are like; they’ve been through a lot but are each individual, just like people.”
Meet the artist at the opening reception, beginning at 5 pm Friday, July 29, with wine available and music from a local band Hot Club of Beachtown, a local gypsy jazz quartet composed of Jim Kuoni on vocals and guitar, David Jones on vocals and guitar, David “Peanut” Ousele on violin and Don Nelson on bass.
The quartet’s music ranges from jazz standards to classic gypsy jazz swing tunes and ballads.
Hallway Gallery
Currently decorating the halls of the center are paintings by local artist Victoria Biedron, whose work will be on display until Sept. 1. Biedron’s non-representational abstract forms convey feelings, moods and organic depictions of nature. Each is an expression of freedom, coming from deep within the artist and transferred to the canvas. She employs acrylics, charcoal, soft pastels, paper and mark making. The use of scraping implements give texture to the paintings and, hopefully, all these tools evoke emotion in the viewer. Her work grows through experimentation and being in touch with her inner life.
The Lincoln City Cultural Center is located at 540 NE Hwy. 101 and is open from 10 am to 4 pm, Thursday through Sunday.
For more information, go to lincolncity-culturalcenter.org or call 541-994-9994.