PORT TOWNSEND — Receptions during the Port Townsend Gallery Walk on Saturday will celebrate the opening of Then and Now, an exhibition showcasing the historical and contemporary art and craft of the Salish Sea coastal tribes at Northwind Arts Center as well as offer the last underground cupcake at Red Dragonfly Gallery.
The show will complement the opening of the číčməhán Chetzemoka Interpretive Trail. Information about the trail will be displayed at Northwind Arts Center, 701 Water St., during the exhibit.
The exhibit, which especially features the art of the Jamestown S’Klallam peoples opened Thursday.
The reception will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. An art talk is set for 1 p.m. Sunday.
Program Director Dominica Lord-Wood worked with Celeste Dybeck, Jamestown S’Klallam tribal elder, and Jo Blair, co-leader of the Native Peoples Connections, to create the display.
The display will close June 30. Gallery hours are from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
For more information, call 360-379-1086, email info@northwindarts.org or see www.northwindarts.org.
Self-guided walk
The monthly self-guided gallery walk is from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Red Dragonfly Gallery, 211 Taylor St., Suite B-2, will present The Magic of Alchemy featuring intricately painted stones with mandalas and sacred geometry by Port Townsend artist Peter Messerschmidt as its final exhibit.
Known to some as “the stone painter,” Messerschmidt — who owns the gallery with Sarah Nash — has created this unique form of art since 2008.
“Alchemy Stones are a lot more than ‘just another painted rock,’ ” Messerschmidt said.
“Each is completely free-hand painted, and there is no plan or template when I start a new piece. The design simply unfolds as I paint, and sometimes takes several days to complete.
“The process is as much a spiritual journey as it is a painting process, and the continuous challenge is to try to give form to what I see and experience during meditation.”
He said that when he started this process, “There was no such thing as ‘rock painting groups’ here in the Northwest, and I knew of maybe two or three other people in the entire region who treated stone painting as an actual art form. My designs are inspired by what I see with my mind’s eye while I am meditating, but also by sacred geometry, patterns found in nature and Asian mandalas, along with some of the colorful geometric stained glass windows found in churches and cathedrals in Europe where I grew up.”
The show will be at the gallery until June 23 — the day the gallery will close.
The proprietors of Red Dragonfly invite their fans, followers and everyone else to stop in and enjoy a final “underground cupcake” during the gallery walk Saturday.
“Sometime in the summer of 2016 we got known for having homemade cupcakes for Art Walk,” Nash said.
“An enthusiastic visitor started telling everyone up on Water Street that we were the place with the ‘underground cupcakes,’ so we just took that idea and made it our particular Art Walk treat for the past three years.”
Red Dragonfly is in Undertown, downstairs at the green pergola at the corner of Water and Taylor streets.
For more information, email reddragonflypt@gmail.com, phone 360-385-1935 or see www.red dragonfly.xyz.
Also on the walk are:
• Port Townsend Gallery, 715 Water St., which will feature The Jewelry Five.
Five artists — Addy Thornton, Andrea Guarino-Slemmons, Martha Collins, Kristen Wade and Shirley Moss — are expected to be present during the reception from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Thornton creates wearable art with intriguing one-of-a-kind pieces that evoke forms in nature, such as her leaf bracelet series, an owl in the branches pendant or an egret flying through the night.
Wade, who has been a jeweler for more than 20 years, will show her line of Botanical Prints silver jewelry. The textures and prints in her jewelry are derived from live plants such as jasmine, strawberry, fig and sage gathered from her garden. The Botanical Prints collection includes earrings, pendants and bracelets.
Collins’ goal is to create personal, unique, three-dimensional works of art with exotic hardwoods and brightly hand-dyed colored veneers. The artist uses woods only from sustainable yield forests. Since 1998 she has been producing a full line of jewelry, bowls and tableware.
Moss, who is known as the Chainmaker, has created handmade chains of precious metals for 47 years. Every chain is hand linked to form a variety of ancient chain patterns. Some chains use as many as 32 links per inch.
Guarino-Slemmons moved to Port Townsend in 1991. Soon after arriving she opened her own gallery, Artisans on Taylor, to sell her handmade glass beads. She made her beads in the front window when she wasn’t traveling all over the world teaching lamp work.
After 25 years of doing mostly just glass she was ready for a change and started adding silver smithing to her repertoire. For June’s gallery walk, she has used stones such as sapphires, rubies, chalcedony and opals to create unique rings, pendants and bracelets.
The Port Townsend Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
For more information, call 360-379-8110 or see porttownsendgallery.com.
• Elevated Ice Cream, 631 Water St., will feature Port Hadlock artist Marty David’s paintings, drawings and mixed media during the month of June.
The show’s title, Color Burst, refers to mixed media rendering techniques, the artist said.
Ceramic cups for wine served at galleries on the walk are available for a $10 donation to Olympic Neighbors at Coldwell Banker/Best Homes at 234 Taylor St. The reusable cups are a benefit for the nonprofit that provides housing support for adults with developmental disabilities and also is an effort to keep plastic out of landfills.
Celeste Dybeck’s button blanket is among the many pieces of Native art on exhibit at the Northwind Arts Center.
