Maritime photography, boats among Port Townsend Gallery Walk attractions

PORT TOWNSEND — Upside-down, backward or inside-out, the mysterious and abstract reflections created by boats floating in water often catch Mitchel Osborne’s focus.

Osborne’s maritime photography, featuring those eye-twisting reflections, will be one of the attractions of Port Townsend’s free, self-guided Gallery Walk on Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Both Osborne’s work and Steve Froggert’s watercolor painting will be on display at the Port Townsend Gallery.

Froggert’s representational watercolor painting hones in on the people and scenes of Port Townsend. His approach simplifies some aspects of a scene to draw the viewer to its human essence — “more like paraphrasing than quoting” the view, organizers said.

Froggert exploits the natural properties of his chosen medium to create bright, colorful, clear imagery.

He uses no black pigment, and the paper itself provides the white.

For more information about the Port Townsend Gallery, visit www.port townsendgallery.com.

• Gallery 9, 1012 Water St., similarly features the beauty of boats during the month of September.

At the gallery walk, Michael Hale’s large-scale, colorful paintings of wooden boats and Mitch Poling’s hand-carved baidarka frames will be on display.

Hale’s paintings have been chosen as the poster images for Port Townsend’s annual Wooden Boat Festival throughout the years, including last year’s 40th anniversary.

“I paint boat paintings because I love their architecture,” Hale said in a news release.

“I love how light reflects off their various shapes and textures, from hard metal and wood to soft-flowing sails.”

Poling has been building baidarkas since the 1940s when he lived in the Chugach Aleut village of Prince William Sound, Alaska, and spent hours alongside his father in the boathouse.

Poling handcrafts and carves the baidarka frames from red and yellow cedar. They range in size from 17 to 21 feet, and weigh 30 to 35 pounds. They are built traditionally with sinew lashings and a nylon covering, which looks like the original style of translucent sealskin.

“The baidarkas have evolved over thousands of years and seem almost alive,” Poling said in a news release. “Paddling one is like becoming a sea mammal, a very special experience. They offer a connection to the sea and its environment that is truly unique.”

Hale and Poling will discuss their art during the walk from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

For more information, visit gallery-9.com.

• Jefferson Museum of Art and History, 540 Water St., will be open for the art walk Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The walk marks the the last opportunity to view an exhibition of the Simpson family’s collection,“Pat and Peter Simpson: Collectors and Patrons.”

It features art collected by the Simpsons in the 1970s and 1980s, paired with recent works by the same artists including Thomas T. Wilson, Linda Okazaki, Stephanie Lutgring, Anne Hirondelle, Stephen Yates, Ed Cain, Galen Garwood, Jo Ann Alber and Kate Jenks.

For more information about the museum, visit jchsmuseum.org.

• Room to Move Yoga Studio, 1008 Lawrence St., will give a free “informance” from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Members of Moving Arts: Dance is for Life! Stephanie Cain, Shanta Corra, Salina Harmon, Anna Pederson and Mary Lou Sanelli will present the informance, which includes PowerPoint images; several repertoire pieces; works in progress, including the beginnings of a Prince Medley; as well as CROW, choreographed to perform at the Northwest’s many bird festivals.

“I love informances,” Sanelli said in a news release. “They are informal, in-studio, in keeping with everything I love about dance without the pressure or cost of full-stage production. Basically, we come together, and because we love what we do, we do it.”

For more information about the yoga studio, visit roomtomoveyoga.com.

• Northwind Arts Center, 701 Water St., will showcase Whidbey Island artist Kathleen Secrest’s oil and pastel paintings during the art walk from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The opening reception introduces September’s artist of the month.

A painter for more than 30 years, Secrest has received regional and national awards for her work.

“For me, painting is an exploration,” Secrest said in a news release. “Whether I’m painting an abstraction or en plein air, painting is solving a puzzle. I make a mark and it creates a problem that will need to be solved with the next mark. The next mark creates a new problem. And so I work until I can find no more problems to solve.”

Kathleen has always been fascinated by the lines that occur in nature, “the crisscross of branches, the curl of a dead leaf, the lines in a spider’s web,” according to a news release.

The observations she makes while painting outdoors and the natural objects she collects serve as inspiration for her abstract art, she said.

The show runs from Aug. 31 through Oct. 3.

The exhibit is open from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays to Mondays and from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Wednesdays.

For more information about the Northwind Arts Center, visit northwindarts.org.

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Reporter Sarah Sharp can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at ssharp@peninsula dailynews.com.