Pacific Northwest Sculptors

Sculptors share knowledge and resources

Activities

September Meeting at Portland ADX

Portland ADX makerspace will host our September 2022 meeting.

Our meeting this month will take place at Art Design Xchange at 417 SE 11th Avenue, Portland.

The space is home too many creative types in many disciplines. We are invited to meet their members and see the space. Here some detail around Kelly and Blue the team at ADX

Kelley is founder and owner of Art Design Xchange (ADX), a Portland based makerspace and creative hub for artists, designers, builders, makers and innovators that has been going strong for over 10 years. She is the author of two books: Cartopia, Portland’s Food Cart Revolution, and Portland Made, The Makers of Portlands Manufacturing Renaissance.

Blue is a Portland based mixed media artist and the community manager of Art Design Xchange. Blue’s work focuses on the relationship between all things, activism, and social justice initiatives. His pieces range from realism, to gestural, and abstract. He strives to have his subjects embody the spirit of the thing rather than be a copy. Blue’s primary mediums are; acrylic paint, mixed media and resin on wood, wood-burning, and colored pencils.

Wander/Wonder: A Sculptured Dance Happening at Price Sculpture Forest

Wander/Wonder: A Sculptured Dance Happening at Price Sculpture Forest

You are invited to a Sculpture Forest first: an immersive professional dance performance interacting with sculptures along our Forest trails. We are honored that famed choreographer Eva Stone selected the Sculpture Forest to create “Wander/Wonder: A Sculptured Dance Happening” and present it for the public with a professional dance troupe. The dancers are national caliber professional dancers who perform at venues such as McCaw Hall, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and now at the Sculpture Forest, too! Each short performance is directly related to and inspired by the art and environment that surrounds it. The movement-artist dancers include Leah Terada, Mary Sigward, Zsilas Michael Hughes, Hannah Simmons, Joh Morrill, Julia Y. James, Hutch Hagendorf, Emily Schoen Branch, Kaelyn Lefferts, and Ivana Lin.

This event will occur Saturday August 27 from 1:00-3:00pm. You can arrive anytime during then since the dancers will be repeating their short sculptural interplays at each selected sculpture throughout the two hours, and you can walk from one to the other. We recommend showing up between 1:00-2:00 so you have enough time to see them all in action. Overflow parking will be provided at a generous supporter’s property across the street. A $20 donation is suggested, with proceeds to benefit the Good Cheer Food Bank and the Sculpture Forest, though it is also pay what you can and everyone is encouraged to come regardless of ability to pay.

Come and join us for a whole new experience Where Dance Enhances Sculpture and Nature.

www.facebook.com/events/378934390971174

www.SculptureForest.org

Dancer Julia James for Wander/Wonder: A Sculptured Dance Happening at Price Sculpture Forest

June 22nd, Wednesday Night meeting

This month we will meet one of our more Northern members, Ulrich Pakker.

Ulrich shares, on his website Ulrich Pakker Studios – Stainless Steel Fountains and Sculptures. ​”My artistic process creating metal sculptures, fountains and public art begins by visualizing the proposed artwork in as many ways as possible. With public art spaces, different hours and days produce different lighting and changing populations. Will collectors have a bird’s-eye view of the art or will it be a garden focal point? How will climate affect a fountain’s materials? What is the expected longevity of the installation?”

Everything influences me and my process.
​
See you online, via Zoom.

President’s Message: New Show Opportunities for PNWS Members

We have several excellent show opportunities taking shape: Newport Visual Arts Center, Oregon Society of artists, and Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River.

In September 2017, we mounted a juried exhibit at the Newport Visual Arts Center. It was an impressive collection of work by our members. We have been invited to produce another show at this excellent facility next year. Oregon Society of Artists has also expressed interest in a sculpture show. This will be our first show collaboration with them. It’s another excellent opportunity to share work and attract new members. Finally, we have initiated discussion with Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River for a show.

We need your support as these opportunities take shape. Shows, especially the out of town exhibits, require a number of volunteers. We have done this before. We have documented the necessary tasks. We have over a dozen volunteers interested in organizing shows. What we need: Three teams, one for each show; One leader for each team; One Show Coordinator to oversee dates, documentation and details. The team concept will distribute the time commitment fairly. The rewards outweigh the responsibilities.

2019 ISC - PNWS -4
Pacific Northwest Sculptors and Northwest Stone Sculptors Association show in 2019 at ArtReach Gallery included 40 sculptures.

We all benefit from these events. In the past, volunteers who helped create, transport and set up shows have enjoyed participation, camaraderie and connections made through their efforts. We need your commitment asap so we can move plans forward for next year. Contact Chas Martin to help us return to high profile public exhibits.

Bringing Sculpture to Future Frontiers in New Collaborative Project

Scott Price –

What if your sculpture could be seen anywhere, at any time? What if your sculpture could be experienced from all angles in 3 dimensions as if it was right in front of an appreciative patron or art lover, even though your original physical sculpture was still in your studio a thousand miles away? What kind of possibilities and opportunities could this create for you to get cutting edge exposure of your work through a whole new way to interact with 3D art?

Price Sculpture Forest, Pacific Northwest Sculptors, and Prefixa are partnering to push the boundaries of sculpture exhibition, technology, interactivity, availability, and viewer experiences.

Chas Martin, president of Pacific Northwest Sculptors, connected with Miguel Arias, founder of the California technology company Prefixa that specializes in new advanced visual and immersive experiences. In parallel, Scott Price, founder of Price Sculpture Forest located on Whidbey Island, was researching how to bring augmented reality sculpture for visitors to expand their onsite art experience in a big, modern way. Miguel was a featured speaker at a recent monthly PNWS members meeting, and that convergence sparked a great collaboration that is now growing.

The vision is for augmented reality renditions of sculpture to be displayed in a sculpture park on a pedestal. This will meld and blur the historical distinction between in-person sculpture experiences and detached, location-independent augmented reality experiences. An artist will be able to have their work displayed virtually for an audience that would otherwise never have experienced the artist’s work. With the increasing presence and computing power of mobile phones, augmented reality allows visitors to interact, control, and have fun with how they experience the art.

Prefixa has developed technologies and easy to use processes for a sculptor to convert their sculpture into the company’s format and customizable phone app. All the high-tech wizardry will be performed behind the scenes by Prefixa, requiring only minimal, non-technical steps to be performed once by the artist.

Then Prefixa will create a high-resolution, realistic representation of an artist’s work that can be viewed from all sides. At the Sculpture Forest, the visitor will look at their smart phone screen to see the augmented reality sculpture overlaid on a physical pedestal. The viewer can physically walk around your sculpture where it sits in virtual space, observing it from all angles up, down, left, and right from 360 degrees around in all directions. If the viewer wants to see the other side of your sculpture, they walk to the other side of the pedestal that your sculpture is sitting on in augmented reality, just like they would if your sculpture was displayed there.

This is an exciting new frontier for physical art merging with digital space and modern interaction modalities. It spans time and space, and this even opens up future opportunities for NFT (non-fungible token) art sales. Only a few sculpture parks around the world have exhibited digital 3D art. In addition, they have generally been purely digital software that was not based upon original physical sculptures. The few attempts up to now have been created more by software designers and digital designers with an artistic flair, rather than sculptors of physical materials. This new collaborative effort is based on our shared reality of physical sculptures and transforms them for public exhibition at a physical sculpture space into interactive augmented reality. We will be venturing into new frontiers here.

The three partners are currently working on multiple aspects of building out this new experience. The program, physical space, and funding is being led by Price Sculpture Forest. The underlying technology, approach, and custom app is being developed by Prefixa. Pacific Northwest Sculptors will lead in getting the word out to sculptors of this new opportunity and helping with the upcoming Call for Artists and exhibition.

If this excites you, please consider a donation toward the technology and program startup costs. You can donate at www.SculptureForest.org/donate and specify it go toward the Augmented Reality Sculpture Project.

Stay tuned for more updates as we get this unique and groundbreaking effort launched.

Virtual Reception for “Emergence” Exhibit

Pacific Northwest Sculptors hosted a virtual for the “Emergence” online sculpture exhibit. View the recorded event. The reception celebrated the first online sculpture exhibit presented by the group. Entrants from 32 states submitted over 500 works.

View Reception Video
View Exhibit
Best of Show: John Siblik – River Weaving,

Author, critic and curator, Richard Speer was the juror for the exhibit. He shared his observations and discussed his selections. The show included 61 pieces.

“River Weaving,” received the Best of Show award, created by John Siblik, Associate Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University. The environmental installation represents years of evolution from concept to realization. The piece includes 103 elements installed in a quarter mile of river.

As Siblik describes his installation, “The river forms the Warp and the Elements placed in the river form the Weft. Each Element is 6 feet by 3 feet by three feet. The elements are made from Willow canes which often grow along rivers, marshes and wetlands. The original design for River Weaving dates to 1986.”

Other award winners include: First place to Stephanie Robison; Second Place to Gard Jones; and Honorable Mentions for Jessica Bodner and Karen Theisen.

2021 Annual Meeting

Members Only Annual Meeting

Although PNWS can’t host a social gathering* due to COVID-19 restrictions it is still important for the membership to meet.

The Annual Meeting gives the Board a chance to share:

  • Highlights from the past year
  • What we are currently working on
  • plans for the future

January 27th, 2021 – 7:00 pm

We are also excited to show you our new website!

Agenda

  • Welcome
  • President’s Message
  • Board Election Results
  • Treasurer’s Report
  • Membership Update
  • Volunteer Update
  • New Website Debut