Art and Life at Northwind: Come for the art, stay for the community
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"I Rode into Town One Day" is one of Tabitha Blackburn paintings in Northwind Art's Jeanette Best Gallery Showcase. Blackburn lives in Quilcene. [/caption]
A Northwind Art Column by Diane Urbani
Overheard in the gallery: “Look at this. It’s totally different. I don’t know why, but I love it.”
In my little office, door closed as I toil at the computer screen, I often hear people sigh and exclaim. They’re walking around Northwind Art’s Showcase space in our gallery in downtown Port Townsend, where 14 local artists’ works are on display.
They might behold Tabitha Blackburn’s wild West paintings, Peter Koronakos’ wacky assemblage animals or John Bradshaw’s color-field visions. Whichever — I love hearing humans respond.
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"The Tighter the Fist, the Looser the Sand" by Tabitha Blackburn [/caption]
One fine day, I walk through the gallery and cross paths with a woman and a man taking their time with the Showcase exhibit. I recognize them from Northwind’s Aging Creatively program for folks with memory loss and their caregivers.
Holding hands, the pair stops in front of one of Blackburn’s large-scale paintings. As they gaze up at the images tumbling across the tableau, their faces glow.
“Isn’t that amazing?” I ask.
The man turns to me and nods. We stand still, quiet. We turn again toward the painting, which has horses, people and caricatures juxtaposed against an earthy brown background.
The thing about powerful visual art is that it transcends words. As I pause with this woman and man in the art space, we don’t have to say anything. We simply look at the art. We look at each other. There’s a feeling of peace. All haste is washed away.
Like the Showcase exhibit, Northwind’s other show in the streetside room of Jeanette Best Gallery is filled with art that eludes description. “Echoes, Memories and Curiosities” features 80 prints and sculptures made by one outsider artist: Chuck Iffland of Chimacum. Here are the “Mexican Queen” and the “Mad King,” the “Hour Glass Totems” and the “Circuit Buddha” — all gazing out at us passers-by, inviting us to wonder.
This mind-expanding brew is found also at Northwind Art School at Fort Worden, where classes from mixed media art, silversmithing and gouache to quilting and sewing are offered this summer. Sunday, July 27, Seattle artist Charlie Spitzack will lead a Woodcut Printmaking Exchange: First you get to learn and develop your printmaking skills, and then everyone shares copies of what they’ve created.
