Columbia Arts is proud to present the work of mixed media artist Carmen Sonnes in its main gallery for the month of October, and a collective show of works by members of the Hood River Art Club in its “Lobby for Local Art” gallery, both located at Columbia Center for the Arts at 215 Cascade Street in Hood River, Oregon. A First Friday opening reception will begin at 6:00 p.m. on October 6.

Carmen arrived in this area from South Texas back in the 80’s, fell in love with the Pacific Northwest, and never left. The child of migrant farm workers, she grew up in orchards, vineyards, and farms very similar to those here in the Hood River Valley. Carmen was an inquisitive but painfully shy kid, so she spent a lot of time alone, drawing and imagining. She kept imagining, sketching, and painting for the next 60 years. Carmen has no formal training or art studies: she simply creates from her heart and mind, delighting in the act of “making art.” She especially enjoys recycling, re-purposing, and finding an artful way of giving items new lives and meaning.

About her artwork, Carmen says “I simply follow my heart and mind. Basically, I never left kindergarten: finger paints, glue, scissors! My studio is brimming over with art supplies and lots and lots of stuff/treasures. I  create for the sheer joy of making art, and don’t often have a plan for a painting or collage: I just let it go where it wants to go. Anything can inspire me: most definitely my rich and colorful Mexican culture, but also elements of nature, bits of paper, feathers, glass beads, fabric. For this reason, my work covers a very wide range: big, small; complex, simple; bright and vivid, calm and quiet. To me, art lives and breathes; it is everywhere, patiently waiting for us to recognize it and call it forth.”

In the Lobby for Local Art Gallery, we are very proud to present the work of Abigail Merickel. She studied art and foreign languages in Seville, Spain, Venice, Italy and London, England acquiring her B.A. in Spanish and English (University of Colorado-Boulder, 1981), B.F.A. in Painting (Accademia di Belli Arti-Venezia, 1989), M.A. in Teaching (George Fox University, Oregon 2006). She teaches art at Columbia Gorge Community College, lives in both Oregon and Oaxaca, Mexico.
As a printmaker she experiments with monotype, collagraph, relief, intaglio and lithography.

Her creative process relies on the intuitive, informed by her senses, surroundings and experiences. A sense of adventure spurs her exploration into divergent themes— from identity and place to the mystical, earthiness to the divine. The allure of colorful birds, the vigor of animals, the radiant power of ascendant women and the generative forces of Earth inform her work. Working from memory and emotion, she captures her yearning, full of nostalgia, reverie and not least of all, joy. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally.
www.abigailmerickel.com