Past Exhibits
WVC Advanced Students Exhibition | November—December, 2024
Linda Lyons: Sanctuary | September—October, 2024
An exhibition of cameraless photographic works by WVC Photography instructor Linda
Lyons. Lyons uses traditional cyanotype chemistry on fabric and paper, creating predominantly
Prussian Blue abstractions that echo and pay homage to the natural elements she finds
within her nearby wilderness sanctuaries. The images describe the physical spaces
in which they were made, while they also represent the feelings that they evoke in
her: grounding, connection and calmness.
Ron Evans: Signs We Were Once Here | May—June, 2024
An exhibition of well-crafted and witty mixed-media objects by local legend artist
and Comet Magazine publisher, Ron Evans. Many works felt intimately home-grown and
nostalgic to residents of the valley, but in addition to his reverence for mid-century
design and pop-culture relics of the valley, they also put on display his trademark
satire and social commentary, communicating a more bittersweet sense of our existence
in this time and place.
Kyung Hee Im: Taemong: Mother's Dream | March—April, 2024
An exhibition of evocative works by CWU Sculpture Professor Kyung Hee "Kate" Im, including
sculptures and installation-based pieces of bodies fragmented in space but bound together
by a network of fragile threads. These bring form to ideas of human connectedness,
intimacy, and isolation, and explore the Korean phenomenon of Taemong, where another’s pregnancy is foretold through dreams.
Sue Edick: As I Found It | January—February, 2024
The MAC Gallery presents the first solo gallery exhibition by former WVC student Sue
Edick. Her beautifully rendered gouache paintings of well lived-in interiors offer
us unfiltered looks inside homes and storage spaces from around Northern Okanogan
County. Their cluttered contents are left in situ, recorded just the way she finds them.
From Their Own Studios: 2023 Art Faculty Exhibition | November—December 2023
The MAC Gallery shows off the fruits of WVC Art Department faculty members' professional
artistic practices with a group exhibition of their creative works across a variety
of media. The exhibition includes pieces by Ruth Allan, Scott Bailey, Ellen Bruex,
Natalie Dotzauer, Arius Elvikis, Elena Payne, and Nik Penny.
Cascadia: A More Than Human Experience | September—October 2023
An exhibition of art and poetry from the book, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, a unique collection which brought together art, poetry, and stories holding scientific,
sensory and cultural knowledge to celebrate and illuminate our bioregion. The book
was co-edited by WVC Professor, Derek Sheffield, who also co-curated the exhibition.
Carly Feddersen: Deer Hearts | June—July 2023
This exhibition of the work of WVC Alumna, Carly Feddersen was ostensibly an exhibition
of her exquisitely crafted jewelry, but the Deer Hearts installation offered the pieces as sculpture, with imagery rooted in Plateau traditions
of pictorial storytelling and using a variety of symbolic materials, including metal,
glass, ivory, and bone. These choices provided insight into the artist’s inspirations
and the connections she finds between her Indigenous heritage and her concepts of
contemporary culture and adornment.
Timea Tihanyi: To Go Gentle | April—May 2023
Mixed-media installation by interdisciplinary visual artist, ceramist, and UW Professor,
Timea Tihanyi. With an eclectic set of influences including her upbringing in Hungary, her education
in medicine and ceramics, and her embrace of contemporary technologies, Tihanyi’s
sensual works probe conditions of subjectivity and objectivity, such as the liminality
of where and how the virtual meets the physical. To Go Gentle included 3D printed porcelain ceramic forms, a video piece, and large wall pieces made of porcelain,
recycled polyethylene tarp, and blown glass.
Ruth Allan: Looking Forward, Reaching Back | February—March 2023
Retrospective exhibition of WVC Ceramics instructor Ruth Allan's works stretching
back through decades of development of her iconic saggar and Raku ceramic techniques
and forms. Ruth is a legend in the ceramics world, recognized as a true master of
her craft. A consummate artist and instructor, she has made the Ceramics discipline
a cornerstone of the WVC Art Department, inspiring generations of students. She is also beloved in the Wenatchee community,
as evidenced by her winning the inaugural Stanley Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, as well as the 2011 Wenatchee’s Living Treasure Award.
Uncertain Nature: The Sublime in the Contemporary Landscape | November 2022—January 2023
Four regional artists find a complex and paradoxical beauty in landscapes made inhospitable
by human manipulation, such as those ravaged by the extractive industries. For these artists, the sites are awesome, mysterious and frightening, and inspire
in them a sense of wonder about the natural world and how we interact with it.
The exhibition included pieces by Edgar Smith (Wenatchee based artist showing paintings); Karen Rice (Missoula based artist showing mixed-media drawings); Patrick Kikut (University of Wyoming Professor showing paintings); and Marcy James (Missoula based artist showing photographs).
CHA CHA Exhibition | September—October 2022
An exhibition of the fruits of two artists’ residencies that occurred in and around
the Methow River (2020) and the Wenatchee River (2021). The residencies were sponsored
by the Icicle Fund, Methow Arts, and Icicle Creek Center for the Arts, and the resulting
show includes artist’s responses, through a variety of forms of visual arts and poetry,
to the Icicle Fund’s mission to celebrate and support conservation, history, and arts
(CHA) in the region.
LEAD PENCIL STUDIO | Shadow Aperture | June-August 2022
Installation by the acclaimed Seattle-based multi-disciplinary duo LEAD PENCIL STUDIO
(Annie Han + Daniel Mihalyo). Their works, drawing on their backgrounds in architecture and studio arts, have appeared
throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, in museums of all scales, non-profits,
commercial galleries, independent projects, international art fairs, and private/public
commissions.
For their MAC Gallery exhibition, Shadow Aperture, LPS presents a suite of wire sculptures and line-based drawings that lend material presence to the geometry of windows and framed light that lands on interior spaces. This work continues their ongoing interest into the ephemeral and emotional qualities inherent in constructed space.
Ellen Bruex | An Index of Beginnings and Endings | April 1-29, 2022
Installation of an ongoing project by WVC Instructor Ellen Bruex (Smith), who took
an ethnographer’s lens to her personal experiences, continually recording the monumental
and ordinary transitions in her life with brief descriptions of the events on index
cards, as they happen. This largely text-based installation displayed those cards,
along with painted structures made of doors, utilizing poetry and symbolism to invite viewers to step through, reflect on, and share their own recent transitional
experiences.
Scott Bailey | Accretions | February 4 — March 25, 2022
WVC Art Department Director Scott Bailey exhibits his most recent creative work, a
series of nonobjective paintings resulting from the accumulation of literally millions
of tiny bits of color. Monotonous and ambivalent fields of grey from afar, closer
inspection reveals more variation and depth as the surface breaks down into thousands
of compositions, one nested inside another. The works attempt to cope with apprehensions
about things exponentially proliferating in the world. As in life, amid the cacophony,
they struggle to find—between rational and organic; signal and noise; order and chaos—balance.
Henry Stinson | Toys in the attic, and other curiosities | October 1 — December 16, 2021
Stinson is a highly accomplished painter who conveys metaphor and meaning to a wide
variety of subjects, using a rich, painterly style. He exhibits and sells his work
nationally and teaches Figure Drawing classes at WVC. Henry’s beautiful figurative drawings can be found in the hallway outside of the Drawing
Studio (MAC 1508). These show the artist's significant drawing skills and the classical
training that makes the paintings possible.
WVC Graphic Design Class of 2020 | June 2020
Presentation of the work of WVC’s 2020 cadre of students graduating with an associate
degree in graphic design. These six students have invested two years’ worth of ink,
sweat and tears as they learned all aspects of graphic design. Now they invite the
public to experience the fruits of their labors, through a presentation of individually
made, web-based portfolios. Students are Paige Osterlund, Nicolas Pineda, Teeya Rich,
Nicole Warren, Ashley West and Sabrina Windsor.
Natalie Dotzauer | What We Take | February 18 — March 20, 2020
WVC Professor Natalie Dotzauer fills the MAC Gallery with sculptural objects, or fragments
of them, which trigger the senses and thoughts of nostalgia. A recipe, a smell, a sound, or a roofline can act as relics, or talismans of memories,
triggering the senses and conjuring the delight of play.
Adele Crawford | Revised Editions | January 6—February 7, 2020
San Francisco Bay Area artist Adele Crawford deconstructs found books and then transforms
them into beautiful sculptural and wall-based objects. Her Revised Editions installation
includes over 1000 flowers and other pieces, all made from of four reference books,
two dictionaries over 100 years old, and two world atlases. Each of these books has
been taken apart and reconsidered as an offering of sorts—to the book, to the discarded,
to the wealth of information contained within.
Laura Truitt | Shifting Horizons | November 1-December 11, 2019
Gonzaga University Painting Professor Laura Truitt displays a suite of complex landscapes
filled with ghosts of deconstructed architectural spaces. The beautifully painted
surfaces of the pieces belie underlying conflicts generated by the artist’s concern
for climate change, land abuse, and over-consumption.
ReStructured: A Site-Specific Collaboration by Scott Bailey, Natalie Dotzauer, and Yev Rybakov | September 23-October 25, 2019
ReStructured is a collaborative project by WVC Art Department colleagues Scott Bailey,
Natalie Dotzauer, and Yev Rybakov. In an installation distinct from any of their
individual artistic practices, the trio endeavored to use the simplest gesture possible
to create an engaging new environment in the familiar space. The multiplication of
one of the most compromising features of the MAC Gallery transforms the site, making
a playful and inviting atmosphere out of an austere architectural necessity.
2018-19 AST
Graphic Design Degree Graduates |
Portfolio Presentations
and Student Art Exhibition | June 7-14, 2019
Graphic Design AST Graphic Design Graduates Portfolio Presentations (New)
Before heading off into the real world, Graduating Graphic Design Degree students
display their portfolios of the range of skills they have developed over the course
of the 2-year program. Includes work by Heather Dappen, Dawne Fidecaro, Sierra Hurd,
Rosalie Morris, Anselmo Pacheco, Nicole Panek, Chasen Peart, Emanuel Rivera, and Alan
Sotelo.
Student Art Exhibition (Continuing)
Works in the Student Art Exhibition were selected from among a large number of entries
by guest juror Justin Beckman (artist and CWU Professor) for their excellence in technique
and concept from among a range of disciplines (including Drawing, Painting, Sculpture,
Ceramics, Design, and Printmaking).
Justin Colt Beckman | Happy Trails: An Investigation into the Typography, Symbols and Icons of the Western Frontier | April 5-May 8, 2019
CWU Graphic Design Professor Justin Colt Beckman uses a variety of media, including
digital prints, video, and sculpture, in an installation exploring how the typography,
symbols and icons of American culture have defined our collective memory. Juxtaposing
images and text from contrasting subjects and time periods, he questions the veracity
of our staged historical records and embellished folklore of the Western Frontier,
as told from the traditional lenses of white, patriarchal storytellers. Among other
things, Happy Trails features an incredible mural-sized image on the east wall of
the gallery, with video superimposed onto it.
Jen Erickson | Drifting and Longing | February 22-March 20, 2019
Coeur d’Alene area artist Jen Erickson presents a series of atmospheric mixed-media paintings featuring
forms created from the abundant accumulation of handmade marks. Layers of paint and
graphite are built up, buried, and re-exposed through carving and sanding to reveal
and conceal text and data from different stages of her process. As in memory, this
painted information comes together and disperses, engaging in a constant continuum
of growth and decay.
Sharrat DeLong | "HWY 97" | Jan. 14-Feb. 15, 2019
Wenatchee artist and current WVC student Sharratt DeLong displays the striking byproducts
of his brutal daily work commute up and down Highway 97. His romantic landscapes
in the half-light of sunrise are tainted by familiar human interventions into nature.
Done compulsively, these are painterly impressions of lonely places at particular
moments, ones which the artist could not bear to pass by without memorializing.
WVC Art Faculty Exhibition | Nov. 26, 2018 - Jan. 4, 2019
WVC Art Department faculty members show how they are professional practitioners of
their disciplines with a group exhibition of their creative work in a variety of media.
The exhibition includes pieces by Ruth Allan, Scott Bailey, Vicki DeRooy, Natalie
Dotzauer, Elena Payne, Yev Rybakov, and Majka Sadel.
Abbey Freed | sweet spot | Oct. 5-Nov. 9, 2018
Installation of WVC Alumna Abbey Freed’s captivating installation of sculptures and wall pieces dealing with the preservation,
possession, and memorialization of human existence. Using quotidian materials, she
transforms seemingly banal domestic objects into moving expressions of life and loss.
Graphic Design Degree Capstone: Throwing Spaghetti at Dingos | June 1-July 27, 2018
Exhibition of capstone projects of students graduating with their AA Degrees in Graphic
Design. Throwing Spaghetti at Dingos seeks to answer the question “What is graphic
design?” through exhibition of portfolios of designs compiled over the two-year program
(and a mixed-metaphor). Exhibiting graduates include Maxwell Backer, Hannah Bodily,
Alondra Duarte, Maria Estrada, Bill Evans, Makenna Faulkner, Emily Hutton, Kristina
Pruhl, Zhorik Roseburg, Heather Seman, Joe Server, Caleb Smith, and Joi West.
2018 Student Art Exhibition | May 4-25, 2018
With this exhibition, the WVC Art Department proudly displays the fruits of the talented
students who take art classes at WVC. Works are selected for their excellence in technique
and concept among the variety of forms and disciplines taught at the college (including
drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, design, and printmaking).
RYAN! Feddersen | Stomping Ground | April 6-27, 2018
RYAN! Feddersen is a WVC alumna whose mixed-media installations feature interactive
and immersive artworks inviting audience participation. As a member of the Confederated
Tribes of the Colville (Okanogan/Arrow Lakes), she draws on the indigenous traditions
of performance, communal/experiential practice, and social engagement. She has created
large-scale interactive installations and site-specific pieces for regional museums
and arts agencies including the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, Tacoma Art Museum,
MoPOP (EMP), The Henry Gallery, Spokane Arts, and the Missoula Art Museum.
Multiple Originals: A Survey of Printmaking by World-Renowned Artists | Feb. 2-March 21, 2018
With this exhibition, we explored a broad range of printmaking techniques and concepts
with an incredible array of works courtesy of the Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle. This
exhibition featured some of the most valuable and prestigious works of art we have
ever assembled in the MAC Gallery, where students had the opportunity to experience
first-hand art work by some of the artists that they are studying in their history
and studio art classes. World-renowned artists exhibited included: Robert Motherwell,
Ed Ruscha, Jacob Lawrence, Kiki Smith, Martin Puryear, Jim Dine, William Kentridge, Kara
Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Sean Scully, Tara Donovan, Jane Hammond, Roger Shimomura,
Darren Waterston, Victoria Haven, Anders Bergstrom, Willie Cole, and Marcel Dzama.
Chad Yenney | The Dwindling Power of a Collage Degree | Jan. 2-26, 2018
Chad Yenney, a local artist with a growing national reputation, displays his visually
arresting collage works for the month of January. The exhibition will feature Yenney’s
largest works to date, which are based off his customary vintage found images. His
keen eye for design and ironic juxtapositions of imagery make for powerful and darkly
surrealistic statements.
Sarah Jane | Mere Objects | Nov. 3-Dec. 15, 2017
Sarah Jane brings attention to the serious issue of sexual violence with a poignant
installation of suspended glass globes, each filled with evocative materials obtained
from a victim. She invites participants to choose objects to represent themselves
and their stories, and viewers to bear witness and share in her hope for healing and
a safer world.
Majka Sadel | Landscape: Memory Matrix | Sept. 25-Oct. 27, 2017
WVC Art Instructor Maria “Majka” Sadel exhibits a series of recently painted abstracted
landscapes that feel familiar and local, but are of no specific location. Instead,
they are byproducts of her 'hedonistic' process of working the surface of her canvases,
informed by fragments of memories from the environment in which she is steeped.
Graphic Transmission: An Exploration of Visual Communication | June 2 - July 28, 2017
The inaugural group of graduates of WVC’s new Graphic Design degree display the fruits
of their experience through an installation that expresses the process and breadth
of graphic design as an art form. The exhibition shows the progression of the designers’
work from their early exposure to design through their capstone branding projects
two years later. Artists: Brennen Bertram, Jessica Campbell, Pablo Cendejas, Elias Lopez, Daniel Marron, Katie Marshall, Jose Valdez, Kobie Zweigle.
Renee Adams | Panacea | April 3 - May 12, 2017
Renee Adams creates exquisitely crafted sculptures based on selectively morphed components
from flora and fauna, shaping them into simultaneously strange and familiar creations
that are based loosely in reality, and largely in fantasy. The pieces provide quietly
biting (and often darkly humorous) commentary on consequences of humankind’s interactions
with the environment, while suggesting Nature’s evolving attempts at surviving them.
Marlin Peterson | Mutata in Regnum | March 3-23, 2017
Professional illustrator and WVC Art instructor Marlin Peterson presents wall paintings
and pen and scratchboard illustrated creatures from a recent project for a forthcoming
book about evolution. The black and white images are focused on some of the strange
paths that evolution has taken and many species at the forefront of current evolutionary
research.
Nikolas Penny | Pathos | Jan. 6 - Feb. 10, 2017
WVC alumnus Nikolas Penny’s sculptural mixed-media paintings show the evidence of
the exploratory, and sometimes painful, process of their making. Stretched canvases
are adorned with various non-traditional materials and display his many talents of
painting and work with textiles. As pieces are destroyed and repaired, their resulting
scars make them ever more beautiful and poignant.
Philippe | --paint--blobs--queer--plastic-- | Nov. 4 - Dec. 8, 2016
Seattle-based artist Philippe makes sculptural forms from a process of pouring paint,
seeing the plastic polymer structure of the resulting objects as metaphors for his
explorations of queer theory and constructions of identities. His MAC Gallery installation
will include new work which contains and juxtaposes natural vegetation against the
sterile, plasticity of the paint, providing a sense of queerness like that of grass
growing between cracks in pavement.
Yev Rybakov | CnC / / / Connect and Continue | Oct. 7-28, 2016
WVC Art Dept Instructional Technician Yevgeniy Rybakov presents a time-based installation
that connects natural and living entities with man-made materials and objects, simultaneously
embodying them with a strong element of design. The project was composed of two living
habitats that connect the beauty of organic forms to the minimalist structure designs.
WVC Illustration | Master Brain Mural Project | May 23 - Aug. 5, 2016
For the last exhibition of the 2015-16 school year, the MAC Gallery was handed over
to students in Marlin Peterson's Illustration course. They transformed the gallery
by painting their surreal and otherworldly visions directly on the gallery walls.
For more, read the Wenatchee World article from June 7, 2016.
Sheila Klein | Site and Set | April 1 - May 13, 2016
Visual artist Sheila Klein straddles the worlds of art and architecture. Klein has
been called a "chief re-translator of everyday objects and a manipulator of familiar
and archetypal images." She is making the world as she sees it one piece at a time,
making a pillow or a planet. Klein uses a surprising combination of materials to propose
solutions to the homogenization of our environment. The range of her output occurs
in the studio, on the street, and in art institutions.
Lindsay Breidenthal | Edge of OK | Feb. 4 - March 18, 2016
Former WVC student Lindsay Breidenthal's paintings are simultaneously beautiful and
unsettling. Richly layered with images and patterns drawn from her experiences working
in the woods, watching fire and animals, and observing residential sprawl, they reflect
wild landscapes in transition and the new adaptations of human behavior required for
survival.
Samuel Johnson | Word Clouds for Every Episode of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow | Jan. 4-29, 2016
Samuel Johnson's project is a hybrid critical analysis and installation of graphic
posters. This conceptual, text-based exhibition explores Pynchon's daunting postmodern
novel and the potential of algorithmic and artistic literary analysis by generating,
composing and displaying word clouds for each of the novel's 73 episodes.
Lance Dooley | Life Drawings | Nov. 12 - Dec. 11, 2015
WVC's MAC Gallery displays the life drawings of virtuoso draftsman, sculptor, and
instructor Lance Dooley. Thirty-five framed works are a sample of his tremendous investment
in his craft, each exuding the life and energy of a specific person in a naturalistic
drawing style.
James Lavadour | Land of Origin | Sept. 21 - Nov. 6, 2015
Lavadour has been widely recognized for his captivating abstract landscapes, often
interpreted from and inspired by the geography of his lifelong home on the Umatilla
Indian Reservation. Self-educated in art, he has described the process of recognizing
the gestures of painting and art as their own acts of nature, similar to those that
formed the landscapes his work represents. Lavadour is also the founder of Crow's
Shadow Institute of the Arts, a reservation-based nonprofit organization since 1992.
ART 200 Advanced Painting | Spectrum: Embracing Life | Summer 2015
Students from the ART200 Advanced Painting Seminar endeavored to fill the space with
a compelling work of art that also illustrated statistics of incidences of mental
illness in America. This project was born out of the idea that we do not talk about
mental health, even though almost half the population is diagnosed with one or more
mental health issues. Spectrum took mental health's secrets and formed them into a
bold, colorful design, creating beauty from where beauty is often not seen. The installation
invited viewer participation, allowing the public to help construct the evolving form
by tying on pieces of colored gauze representing personal connections to various mental
health conditions.
Justin Gibbens | Sepulchre | April 3 - May 8, 2015
Using his signature brand of subversive natural history, Sepulchre explores life-cycle
themes of death and renewal. Spring is the time of year when humans look to nature
as a harbinger of rebirth and resurrection. Throughout the ages, these themes have
manifested in a multitude of ways, one being the spontaneous proliferation of bees.
Gibbens presents his own take on this phenomenon inside the MAC Gallery.
Cynthia Neely | Flight Path | March 6-20, 2015
Cynthia Neely is an artist, poet, and frequent student in writing and painting courses
at WVC. The exhibition "Flight Path" springs from the imagery of the poems in her
book of the same title. Her written and rendered works are intertwined, receiving
their push from the imagery that speaks to her from nature. She constructs her works
to lift and soar, yet to be clearly grounded in the human experience as well as the
natural world.
Howard and Lorraine Barlow | XOXO | Jan. 5 - Feb. 13, 2015
Ellensburg artists Howard and Lorraine Barlow anticipate and acknowledge one another's
impending deaths by creating sculptural works examining oath, love, loss, ritual and
tradition. This poignant installation invites viewers' participation and engages emotional
responses to the materials, forms and concepts.
Adele Caemmerer | The Morning Watch | Nov. 7 - Dec. 11, 2014
Adele Caemmerer began to notice and document the patterns of traffic in her neighborhood
in New Delhi, India. She developed a code and assigned a color to each data point.
She then translated the code into compositions.
WVC Teaching Artists' Exhibition | Sept. 22 - Oct. 31, 2014
Exhibition of the multi-faceted professional practices of WVC Art faculty members
Ruth Allan, Scott Bailey, Vicki DeRooy, Lance Dooley, Natalie Dotzauer, Arius Elvikis,
David Hampton, Marlin Peterson, and Majka Sadel.
The work displayed the professional activity that makes our art faculty members who they are—they are artists, first and foremost. They teach with authority from a perspective of knowledge and experience, having developed and refined their various crafts over decades. They truly practice what they preach.
WVC Student Art Exhibit | May 2 - June 14, 2014
Acknowledging the contributions of many local artists to our programs, this invitational
show highlighted and honored the range of excellent exhibiting local artists and art
educators who take art classes at WVC. Their presence in our courses enriches the
atmosphere and enhances the experiences of our more traditional students. As known
and respected exhibiting artists who are engaged with WVC, they also help us to connect
in meaningful ways to the valley's burgeoning arts community.
The exhibition included works by Adele Little-Caemmerer, Cynthia Neely, Dan McConnell, Don Collins, Karen Dawn Dean, Lindsay Breidenthal, Michael McClun and Niki Stewart.
Natalie Schmidt Dotzauer | Romanced | March 7 - 28, 2014
Once and future WVC sculpture instructor Natalie Schmidt Dotzauer displayed recent
work reminiscent of a bygone era. The installation engages viewer participation in
a multi-sensory experience, and evokes a down-home feel, but with a witty and ironic
edge.
Scott Bailey | Instant Landscape | Feb. 7-28, 2014
In this immersive installation, WVC Art Department Director Scott Bailey tries to
do much with little. His experimental project transforms the entire MAC Gallery into
a panoramic virtual terrain of rolling hills using only a few simple materials.
Majka Sadel | Seasons | Jan. 3-31, 2014
WVC art instructor Majka Sadel displays richly layered oil paintings of remembered
and imagined landscapes. Colorful rhythms, semi-patterns and vague forms come together
to beautifully express Sadel's inner- and outer reality.
Cynthia Camlin & Elise Richman | Each Form Overflows its Present | November - December 2013
Cynthia Camlin and Elise Richman are professors of painting at Western Washington
University and the University of Puget Sound, respectively. While taking dramatically
different approaches, both of their works display a strong sensitivity to the history
and material qualities of the medium of painting, along with a conceptual framework
that refers to contemporary ecological concerns.
Both artists engage in painterly processes that evoke water, ice, and geological processes. In each artist's work, the material potential of paint acts as a metaphor for distinct aspects of the material world.
Camlin captures ice's crystalline structure and the primordial depths of ice shelves.
Her frozen landscapes explore relationships between abstract and naturalistic visual
languages while conveying environmental concerns. Layering opaque and transparent
color, solid and liquid form, the paintings rely on correlatives for temperature and
material processes that we observe in the world or our own bodies. If it is a world
in these paintings, that world is in pieces, loosening and shifting.
Richman's process driven work similarly represents perceptual phenomena to communicate ecological content. She depicts water and references the local marine environment in order to express interconnectedness as well as accelerated states of flux. Relative drying times and levels of fluidity versus viscosity create different surfaces that reflect the tactile, physicality of the material world. Her paintings represent and embody the fluid nature of boundaries, reflecting phenomena that operate on visual, physical, environmental, and social levels.
Remembering Rae Dana | October 2013
The WVC Art Department remembered artist and instructor Rae Dana with a collection
of paintings, prints and drawings that showed the broad range of her talents and expression.
Her abstract works are rich and lyrical, drawing inspiration especially from the landscape.
The exhibition featured a written statement by WVC English faculty Derek Sheffield.
Bryan Miller | Reassemble | May 3-31, 2013
WVC Sculpture Professor, Bryan Miller displayed an installation of assemblage sculptures
and wall pieces. "I begin as I always have, and where my work always seems to end:
with materials. I am fascinated by the intersection of the way we view the world around
us and the physicality of the material world. The physical world and its forms determine
how and what we are capable of thinking and seeing. It is with this in mind that I
build abstract and concrete structures to live and interact with. By disassembling
and reassembling materials, I find significance in form. By placing these objects
in a space, I learn how those forms affect our function.
This exhibit demonstrates the creative process."
Karen Dawn Dean and Niki Stewart | ART 220 | April 5-30, 2013
WVC art students Niki Stewart and Karen Dawn Dean filled the MAC Gallery with paintings,
installation, and performance. Collectively, their works showed evidence of transformation:
from figuration to abstraction, from craft to fine art, and from object to experience.
The genesis of the exhibition arose when the artists found themselves together in
an Advanced Painting class and conceived of a show that challenged themselves and
a lifetime of their own artistic conventions. This work provides examples of the kind
of mature exploration occurring in WVC's advanced art classes.
Scott Bailey | Topometry, Topology, Topography | March 1-29, 2013
Scott Bailey, WVC Art Department Director, takes a hard look at the local landscape,
exploring form and color through new materials and processes. Three-dimensional paintings
result from a combination of contemporary technologies, non-traditional materials,
painting sensibilities and gravity.
Majka Sadel | Talking Orchid | Feb. 1-28, 2013
Majka Sadel's exhibit includes ink and mixed media works on paper.
Art History and Art Appreciation professor at Wenatchee Valley College, was an active,
practicing studio artist with a master's in fine arts from painting, and classical
academic art training from Poland, where she was born and raised.
Majka uses ink and non-traditional media to explore a variety of expressive and lyrical responses to her potted companions.
Vicki DeRooy | My Life in Prismacolor | Jan. 4-28, 2013
WVC Professor DeRooy displayed densly detailed interiors created from thousands of
touches of colored pencil on black paper. She says:
"I am attempting to put down on paper a story of my life, an introspective recognition of SELF, myself. I use Prismacolor colored pencil and a smooth black acid-free paper as the tools to express this idea. I look for balance in the pieces, just as I struggle for balance in myself and in my life. I use a few familiar images as symbols, but what these symbols represent can change from one drawing to the next. There are, however, some common themes, having to do in some way with my desire for a pragmatic approach to my life. Some prevalent themes found in the work are life and death, spirituality, reality vs. non-reality, and memories that have in some ways dissolved or changed beyond accurate recollection.
Art Fac.ul.ty Exhibition | December 2012
Group exhibition by Art faculty members, including works by WVC instructors David
Hampton, Kristofor Zehm, Scott Bailey, Arius Elvikis, Majka Sadel, Bryan Miller, Lance
Dooley, Vicki DeRooy and Ruth Allan.
Joe Feddersen | Transitions | Sept. 24 - Nov. 2, 2012
The grand opening of the MAC Gallery in September 2012 featured the exhibition "Transitions"
by renowned artist and WVC graduate Joe Feddersen.
Feddersen was a student at WVC during the 1970s, studying printmaking with Robert Graves in the ascendant art department. After receiving degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he taught for two decades at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, exhibiting his work in major museums and galleries throughout the world. He recently retired from Evergreen and returned to his hometown of Omak, where he continues to ambitiously produce and exhibit work.
"Transitions" included wall-hung pieces utilizing a variety of printmaking techniques, as well as sculptural vessels of blown glass, all mixing elements that blur the lines between Feddersen's traditional culture and contemporary imagery. The exhibition features a six-foot by 12-foot, multi-paneled print piece titled "Okanogan 1," and delicate, new mirrored glass works.