The Columbia Art Gallery is pleased to announce “Gesture in Place,” an art show designed to get people to stop for a moment, and to think about our relationship with the natural world. The goal of the show is to explore how the “gestures” we each make can have a profound impact on sustaining or destroying the mother we call earth.
A variety of artists and art forms will be featured, as well as lectures and interactive activities and workshops for artists and art lovers. Artists and guest lecturers will be exploring the topic of “the gestures we make” from perspectives ranging from beautiful and sublime to rough and ugly.
Mark Your Calendar!
The show opens on Friday, April 7, and runs through Wednesday, May 3rd.. The public is invited to the artist reception on Friday, April 7from 6 to 8 p.m.
Dan Dancer, nationally-acclaimed environmental artist and photographer from Mosier, Oregon, will be exhibiting his photographic collection of large-scale art installations he worked on over a ten-year period. The collection, consisting of thirty photographs, recently finished a six-year tour of the country, where it traveled to over 50 galleries, museums and universities. It has just now come home to the Gorge. Dancer will be offering individual pieces of the installation for sale for the first time.
A second installation by Dan, called “Wheel for Toxic Man” will also be featured.
Related to the show, Dan will be facilitating the creation of an “Art for the Sky” project at the Mosier School, where schoolchildren will work together collaboratively to agree on, design and create a large-scale image which will only make sense when viewed from the sky. The children will be the “actors” in the art, and Dan the facilitator and “sky” photographer. The photograph he takes will remain on display at the gallery through the duration of the show.
Peter Marbach, well known Northwest landscape photographer, will be displaying some of his fine art wilderness and country images. Marbach is noted for his ability to capture just the right light on the scene, by visualizing what the light would be like, and then patiently waiting until all the elements come together into one “glorious” moment.
Terry Toedtemeier, photographer and Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum, will be displaying an amazing collection of works from his collection featuring Basalt Rock formations.
Gordon Mayer transforms tree stumps left over when fruit trees are pulled out of an orchard, into beautiful and unusually-shaped wooden vessels.
Dan James harvests large trees that may have been cut down and abandoned, and turns elements of these trees into large and complex sculptures that would be appropriate for display in the house or garden.
Hood River Art-Quilters, Marbe Cook, Ginny Fisher and Barbara Fraisier will be creating an array of art-quilt wall hangings out of recycled and found products.
Students from Hood River High School will be displaying an installation they created under the guidance of artist John Mayo from White Salmon, WA. The project, being developed as part of the Arts in Education fundraiser “Bite of the Gorge,” will be first be seen at the fundraising event on April 8th and then moved to the Columbia Art Gallery for the duration of the show.
An Environmental Art Workshop, conducted by noted installation artist Diana Lynn Thompson from Vancouver, British Columbia, will be featured the week prior to the show’s opening, from March 27 through 31. Through slide shows, video, group discussion and hands-on class and fieldwork, students will be introduced to the multi-faceted movement called environmental art. Students and teacher will collaborate on creating a number of works that will be seen in outdoor locations throughout the Gorge.
An Art Quilt Class, conducted by Lorna Greenwood and Maria B. Cook, will offer an opportunity to make small art quilts using cloth, paper, flower blossoms and leaves. The end products will be art-quilt postcards which participants can display at the gallery during the show, and then can keep for themselves.
To register for either workshop, please call the Columbia Art Gallery at 541-386-4512.
Lynn Hull, internationally-active eco-habitat artist from Fort Collins Colorado, will be leading a slide show and discussion about the historical precedents and connections between environmental art throughout the course of time. Wednesday, April 12, 6:30 p.m. at the Hood River Hotel.
Dan Dancer will be presenting a second environmental slide show and discussion on Earth Day, April 22nd. He will be discussing a range of concepts related to the integration of environment and art.
Hood River Library will be hosting a free “arts and lecture” series with many of the above mentioned artists in the early part of the month to further education about this for of art in the Gorge. Sessions will take place Wednesdays in April between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., and are co-sponsored by Friends of the Library.
According to Lynn Hull, Colorado Eco Artist who will be giving the slide show presentation on April 12, describes it this way . . .
Eco-art is artwork created by artists concerned with the state of our environment worldwide, and with their local situation. Environmental artists often work in these ways:
Artists interpret
nature, creating artworks to inform us about nature and its processes,
or about environmental problems we face
Artists interact with environmental forces, creating artworks affected
or powered by wind, water, lightning, even earthquakes
Artists re-envision our relationship to nature, proposing through their
work new ways for us to co-exist with our environment
Artists reclaim and remediate damaged environments, restoring nature in
artistic and often aesthetic ways
For more information about other events sponsored by Columbia Arts, please contact Judie Hanel at 541-387-8877. For more information about the show, please contact Jules Burton at 541-387-3586 or the Columbia Art Gallery at 541-386-4512.
