To your Health

Sometimes the place of unknowing pounces. I know now to wait and watch. Senses and association tickle then flow and puzzle pieces slide together. Artistry is a skillset for finding meaning at the edges of knowing.

   This practice can be our guide through grey skies and Winter’s damp cold. It’s the best time to promote art and communion with others making art. A goal for PNWS is that we all teach and learn and share the hardships and pleasures life provides in abundance.
   This newsletter, our website, social media, monthly live and online meetings, Calls to Artists, and art events like the Home & Garden show are all there to connect Members with opportunities for re-creation, lightness, humor and friends. These are stars in darkness. The gatherings of people both solemn and celebratory. This is a practice of making solid the fragile and priceless pursuit of making meaning for the world.
   I’m dedicating the rest of this essay to honoring those that came before, making this process of finding meaning for the world possible for PNWS and the broader arts community. Countless millions of beings have contributed to the quality of being for people now, and some these are folks unrecognized by other dominating classes and cultures. Recognizing the contributions of others to our culture is an ongoing process itself.
   Several people, who have contributed directly to the PNWS community, have been recently challenged by health and family issues, demanding they step back from leadership in our group. To those people, we wish you well and will carry on, with you in our thoughts.

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In commemoration: Tom Webb, once the director of the Newport Visual Art Center, passed on recently. I met Tom during the time PNWS had a show at NVAC in 2017. Since then I found out he made the ORLO (bear deluxe) magazine happen for 20 years, and contributed so much more to regional culture and progressive politics. While Tom wasn’t part of PNWS, I consider him a peer, recognizing his success and his struggle. A memorial and celebration of life will be held at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024, at Castaway Portland, 1900 N.W. 18th Ave., Portland. https://obits.oregonlive.com/us/obituaries/oregon/name/thomas-webb-obituary?id=53988501

Our sculptural tools of expression, our practice of community building and our mass media broadcast, all that PNWS is, can bring balance and well-being to individuals and society. With the holidays over and the Solstice passed, we’re coming out of Winter’s darkness, reaching towards that light. Art and human values come to our aid, re-creation, re-discovery, re-growing an image of self, bigger and broader than before.   

+++Andy Kennedy President, Pacific NW Sculptors