PORT TOWNSEND — A biannual juried exhibit at the Northwind Arts Center’s Exhibit Gallery will be one of the attractions during Saturday’s Port Townsend Gallery Walk.
The Gallery Walk, lasting from 5:30 p.m. until about 8 p.m., encompasses several downtown venues, all of which charge no admission to see the art and meet the artists who create it.
The Northwind Arts Gallery, 701 Water St., will host an opening reception of “Alchemy of the Abstract” during Gallery Walk on Saturday.
On Sunday at 1 p.m., juror Jonathan Wood will give a talk at the gallery.
The exhibit of abstracted and non-representational art opened Thursday and will be on display through June 26.
“The artist’s work often explores the uses of unconventional materials, ever pushing the boundaries of what we’re accustomed to thinking of as art,” said Wanda Mawhinney, chair of the exhibit committee, in a news release.
“This show never fails to bring out a wide range of frequently colorful and always thought-provoking work,” she said.
Wood is the owner of Abmeyer + Wood gallery in Seattle.
The Northwind Arts Center also will feature its Showcase Artist of the Month, Leah Gerrard, an Artist Trust fellowship recipient.
The opening reception for the sculptures created by Gerrard will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
The show opened Thursday and will close June 25. Exhibit hours are from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday through Monday and from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Wednesday.
From 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 21, Gerrard will talk about her work, “Sculptures in Wire.”
Gerrard has been doing metal work for more than 15 years. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree with a focus on metals, she works primarily with wire and found objects.
“I will be talking about my process and how it has evolved over the years and how it came to be my main medium,” Gerrard said. “I will also do a small demo of how to make a small basket and demo of my method of knitting with copper.”
For more information, visit www.northwindarts.org.
Other exhibits are offering treasures during the Port Townsend Gallery Walk.
• Port Townsend Gallery, 715 Water St., will present a Jewelry Showcase featuring six jewelers.
Stephanie Oliveira, Addy Thornton, Andrea Guarino-Slemmons, Caroline Littlefield, Shirley Moss and Suzy Louise will be at the reception from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Oliveira has been working with jewelry for more than 30 years and specializes in one-of-a-kind pieces. She works in silver and gold.
Thornton has been fabricating with silver for a two decades. Her work includes dichroic glass and gemstones set in silver.
Guarino-Slemmons has been designing jewelry for more than 25 years. She enjoys walking the local beaches and collecting stones, glass and shells, which she incorporates into her work. She was awarded the Excellence in Jewelry Artistry Award for 2015 from Bead &Button magazine.
Littlefield has been making jewelry since the 1970s. For Gallery Walk, she will feature pendants and bracelets with silver feathers set with semi-precious gemstones, along with pendants and earrings in sterling silver designs.
Moss, “The Chainmaker,” specializes in handmade chains. She creates every chain one link at a time, considering her work a meditation in metal.
Louise is a metal artist specializing in mixed metal jewelry. The focal point of her jewelry is the stone. Her jewelry shows off fossils such as agatized dinosaur bone, petrified wood and fossil sand dollar, as well as such stones as turquoise, malachite, variscite and Oregon’s polka dot agate.
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
For more information, phone 360-379-8110 or see www.porttownsendgallery.com.
• Gallery 9, 1012 Water St., is featuring paintings by Linda Lundell and glass art jewelry by Nancy Rody this month.
The two will discuss their art from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Rody uses the unique variations of shape, size and color to create one-of-a-kind earrings and pendants out of sea glass.
The new pieces are created with found glass from Port Townsend and Hawaiian beaches, combined with tiny seashells and silver findings.
Lundell also creates cloisonné fine art jewelry.
See www.gallery-9.com or call 360-379-8881 for more information.
• Red Dragonfly Gallery, 211 Taylor St., will present “Dreaming in Aether: The Art of Braden Duncan.”
The artist will be at the reception from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday. The reception also will feature Underground Cupcakes and other refreshments.
Duncan’s work is a combination of nature and cats intersecting with steampunk and pop culture. The show at the Red Dragonfly will feature a number of new pieces of original work, as well as a collection of prints and cards.
For more information, see http://reddragon flypt.blogspot.com/p/gallery.html.
• Jefferson Museum of Art &History, 540 Water St., will be open for the Gallery Walk on Saturday.
This will be the last chance to see the exhibit “The Printed Word in Port Townsend: Literary Presses of the 1970s and ’80s” during a Gallery Walk.
In the newly created Women’s Jail Cell Gallery, the exhibit features examples of the seven literary presses that once operated in Port Townsend, one press for every 850 residents.
Author Jenny Westdal will be on hand to sign copies of the exhibit’s companion book, a detailed history of Port Townsend’s presses.
Also on exhibit at the museum is “Pat and Peter Simpson: Collectors and Patrons,” featuring art collected in the 1970s and ’80s paired with recent works by the same artists.
• First Friday Lecture
Painter Linda Okazaki will be the First Friday speaker at 7 tonight at the Jefferson County Historical Society.
The suggested donation for the lecture is $5 in Port Townsend City Council chambers, 540 Water St.
Okazaki’s brightly colored watercolor and oil paintings explore and expand on a foundation of figurative painting to create a distinctive style. She continually experiments with an intersection of personal narrative, the dream world and the playful — and sometimes dark — part of the creative spirit.
“I know it’s not a real pond, but I love watching all the different colors — it’s brown, it’s green, it’s orange, it’s pink, it’s blue. I feel like I could paint that the rest of my life,” said Okazaki.
Okazaki will present an overview of her work and discuss how her early ideas still resonate in her contemporary paintings. She will show the stream of thematic ideas that travel through her work and some of the images from life and other painters that she references.
For information, call 360-385-1003 or email brooke@jchswa.org.
