Members

WANDER/WONDER: a sculptured dance happening at Price Sculpture Forest on August 19 2023

Saturday August 19, 2023 at 1-3pm!

StoneDance Productions presents WANDER/WONDER: a sculptured dance happening. Come journey on a lush forest trail to witness thought-provoking dance by 11 stunning professional PNW dance artists alongside a beautiful outdoor collection of art.

Located on Whidbey Island, Price Sculpture Forest is a community sculpture exhibition park and natural habitat preserve where Art Enhances Nature and Nature Enhances Art.

Choreographer Eva Stone is also a producer, curator, and teaching artist based in Seattle.

Dance artists include: Julia James, Mary Sigward, Zsilas Michael Hughes, Leah Terada, Kyle Johnson, Carol Davis, Kaelyn Lefferts, Lorraine Constantine, James Kirby Rogers, and Audrey Rachelle.

Suggested donation: $20 or pay-what-you-can. All donations accepted at the event.

All proceeds from this event support Gifts from the Heart Food Bank and Price Sculpture Forest.

You can arrive anytime between 1-2pm. 11 different short dance performances will be on continuous rotation until 3pm throughout the park.

We are grateful to Island County and the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee for providing a grant to bring this event to you and the community.

For additional information, video, and photos, go to https://SculptureForest.org/dance.

Join the PNWS Sculpture Conversation – 7pm this Wednesday

Join the PNWS Sculpture Conversation – 7pm this Wednesday

May 10

We are learning about Meta Business suite, the set of promotional tools that our Instagram and Facebook page Pacific Northwest Sculptors has available. Let’s talk about how it can help us promote our sculpture and exhibitions.

As always, feel free to bring current projects or ideas to share, or just follow the creative thread that reveals itself when like minded sculptors gather. Alisa Looney will be your host on Teams.

Wednesday, May 10 at 7pm

Microsoft Teams meeting

Join on your computer, mobile app or room device

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 281 261 125 494

Passcode: tVSAkQ

Download Teams | Join on the web

Learn More | Meeting options

New PNWS member Philip Robertson exhibits sculptural statements at PDX

Philip Robertson is a new PNWS member who moved from New York recently and is in the process of reestablishing his sculptural career on the West Coast. His day job is as an arts educator at Catlin Gabel in Portland and his artistic passion is to involve our various cultural diversions into unifying conversation, inviting viewers to literally see themselves in his work. Philip recently had a show at the Cave Gallery titled: Old Talks With New Icons. His sculptures are bas relief and many are larger than life size and invite involvement from close up to across the room. Most involve the use of natural wood and polished stainless steel. The wood is often recycled or with a local history, and mounted on steel that is polished so that viewers see themselves involved in the work. The following is from the catalogue from the Cave Gallery:

A multi-media sculptor and conceptual artist, Philip A. Robinson Jr. uses wood to symbolize temporality within natural cycles of time and geography to amplify the narrative of identity within popular and marginalized cultures. The linear marks and structural beauty in spalted maple; the varied palate of tinted tones in walnut and the enduring history of the red oak trees, metaphorically define and contextualize selfhood as part of a global discourse about power paradigms that delineate culture and ethnicity as a valued product and object d’art within the marketplace.

a new series of works will be featured at PDX from mid May through July. To learn more about our new PNWS member and this show: https://www.catlin.edu/posts/~board/stories/post/welcoming-in-travelers-from-around-the-world

Philip’s reflections on this new show:

‘Welcome In’
For this new series, I wanted to correlate the relationships between clothing and fabric
to trees and the life cycle/dating of the wood. The sculptures embody different fabric
patterns, colors and symbolism found in multiple civilizations from East to West
Coast. The sculptures also prompt the viewer to consider the meanings of fabric in
relation to nature and belonging: A set of clothing—handcrafted in wood—is mounted
on finished stainless steel, so the viewer sees themself in the composition, wearing the
clothes or within the weavings of the fabric.

IS Day PDX 2023 was a Magical Evening!

Oh what a fun group!

International Sculpture Day is a blast every year, and this year may have been the most fun of all!

On April 29th we gathered at SCRAP, with many wearable sculptures partly built, and curiosity as to what they could become. As we looked though all of their cheap and quirky art materials, we made choices and the fun began! It’s amazing what can be done in two hours with colorful objects, hot glue and a room full of sculptors!

Once complete, we dressed up and headed out for our PNWS International Sculpture Day Parade! We had plenty of onlookers, many of whom were surprised to hear of this creative holiday! The joy was palpable!

We stopped to get ice cream, yum! Then over to Burnside to play with the movable publis sculpture, got some burgers in the outdoor seating area, and then on to Pioneer Square for our Finale!

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL SCULPTURE DAY 2023!!!

Who knows what we will come up with for next year! …Stay tuned…..

New Work!

Making this “Wise One” has been a deepening experience. Getting up close to really see the details of this Great Horned Owl and his intense eyes, brought a sense of awe while scratching into the glass. I combined several reference photos to create this image, and visualized trees as feathers in the chest, which follow the shape of his form.

Wise One, Enamel on Steel, ReEnamelware, by Alisa Looney, 13 inches in diameter, wired to hang on indoor or outdoor wall.

Alisa Looney’s ReEnamelware series brings attention to the health of our Northwest Ecosystem, and will be on view in her upcoming solo exhibition at the Betty Gray Gallery lower level at The Sunriver Resort Lodge in Sunriver Oregon, June, July and Aug 2023. Betty Gray Gallery is located on the lower level at The Sunriver Resort Lodge in Sunriver Oregon.

Upcoming Online Workshop in May!

Upcoming Online Workshop in May!

Presented by Silvera Jewelry School
Explore new Ground – Enameling on Steel Forms
with Alisa Looney
Four Tuesdays, May 9, 2023 – May 30, 2023; 2:00PM – 5:30PM PT (Pacific Time) – Online

Do you have a desire to add glass enamel imagery or marks to steel forms?
Curious how to begin this versatile enameling process?

Learn to design, cut, and form various gauges into three dimensional shapes. Clean and prepare the steel for a ground coat formulated to adhere for a strong yet lightweight structure. In this class, not only will you learn how to work with the steel to prepare it for enameling, but also learn the granular spray technique Alisa uses with sgraffito to get those delicate lines with no chipping! The course covers professional as well as budget conscious options. Experience enamel like never before with incredible control on your steel forms. Create work in a variety of styles- from detailed drawing to abstract patterns, loose and expressive or realistic and precise. Graisalle techniques will also be covered, building up shades of black and white to achieve depth and detail. Can be kiln-fired multiple times, on which color enamels can be added.
This course is available as a live online class with time to work and ask questions both during and between 4 weekly sessions.
Classes are recorded so if you miss a class, use the recording to catch up.

Details & Registration

Samples of Enamel on formed steel: Clockwise from top left- 1. Tapestry of Hearts (Spirit Mask), 2. Buddha Face (Pendant) and 3. Wave Dream (Spirit Mask) shown in three stages from Left to Right: Ground coat, Granular Spray and sgraffito of white layer, and Black spray and sgraffito for grisaille effect.

PNWS the personal and the digital

We will always be more than what we think we are. More than what we can measure, define, value or digitize. Even while we keep finding more ways to quantify ourselves and our world, there will always be something unseen, unexpected, nuanced and absurd beyond definition about our existence. This elusive human experience can be crafted into a sharable form called art. Sculptures can be vessels for our mysteries, holding space for those in-between-not-quite-grasped experiences. Objects substantial and dimensional, but mysterious embody the paradox of being and non-being at once. (artwork by PNWS Member Julian Voss-Andreae)

PNWS is a vessel for a variously, defined substance: Call it community, collaboration, a space where our unique offerings are recognized. That space can be expanding into new mediums for connection, with the goal of making it more accessible and inclusive for all people that want to join PNWS, no matter how remote you are geographically, or how eccentric your art may seem. All the more so because the further afield you go with your art, you are inevitably making more space for others to join in.

Inspired participants of PNWS International Sculpture Day 2023

Alisa Looney is the champion of inclusion for PNWS, and the continual recipient of the PNWS Volunteer of the Year award. For International Sculpture Day 2023 this year Alisa embodied a Goddess of the Trees persona, walking with a motley crew of living sculpture-people, through downtown Portland last Saturday, while wishing awestruck pedestrians, “Happy International Sculpture Day!” Alisa is the host of our monthly online meet-up (now on the Microsoft Teams app) happening second Wednesdays at 7PM. Look for an email invite with a link, but make sure you first download the free app for Teams. As I wrote in the last newsletter, “Digital technology seems to be both a solution and a challenge for our group, hand in hand with the need for more volunteerism and education about what’s happening and what’s needed.” That was in reference to adopting new online meeting software. We are no longer using Zoom, switching to Microsoft Teams. Thanks to out Meetings Chairperson, Bob Deasy, for recognizing and guiding us with that very practical decision. Teams is free, Zoom had a cost. Multiple meetings can be lead by many Members using Teams, and we have direct access to PNWS files within other Microsoft apps; Zoom did not have those features. Our journey into more digital connectivity continues with expanding knowledge and use of Social Media. In a one on one meeting today with PNWS Member, Shelly Durica-Laiche (AKA Indio metal Arts). Shelly created our Instagram account: 777 followers to date! https://www.instagram.com/pnwsculptors/ I learned it will be worthwhile to “boost” our Instagram posts about the upcoming sculpture shows like Into the Depths https://pnwsculptors.org/the-pnws-newport-group-show-into-the-depths-is-june-3-through-july-30-2023/ showing at Newport Visual Arts Center (June through July 2023). We should always add hashtags to posts, and comment on other art. Algorithms love networking, and lots of little connections can add up. I’m coming to the fact, Social media is THE medium for the artists to be seen by the world. Ultimately a balance is struck between our digital presence with the directly personal relationships that I have with people like Julian, Alisa and Shelly. An acceleration of information entangled with the hearts of friends and family, this is the adventure and the anchorage which can take us forward into the unknown, sharing our discoveries through art and community. +++Andy Kennedy

The benefits of Collabs

Member Rick Crawford has encouraged me for years to attend a collab, saying “It will change your art.” Now back from CollaborationNZ for a month, I have to say, he was so very right. Based on techniques taught me by celebrated French carver Benoit Averly, I have created a couple of stunning large-format carvings (I’m not bragging: one fell over on me when I was photographing it and literally stunned me). Heck, I may never go back to metal.