PORT ANGELES — You can swoop into town and buy a piece of art — and Port Angeles will love you for it — or you can come learn a new art form.
That’s what the Port Angeles Artists Collective is holding out there: the challenge and joy of building a work of art, over two days or five, then bringing home the fruit of your time here.
The group’s new website, www.PAACworkshops.com, already has descriptions of eight artists’ programs, from glass art to metalsmithing to pastels and beyond.
But Bob Stokes, a sculptor and the co-orchestrator of this new endeavor, wants more.
He won a $2,500 grant from the Port Angeles Lodging Tax Advisory Committee to build the website and print rack cards to promote the artists’ offerings.
But to get maximum attention for Port Angeles’ art community — to bring people in from out of town — the collective needs to collect more workshop leaders, Stokes said.
“Other towns do this; it’s not rocket science,” he said, adding he hopes to see the number of artists on the website double.
Would pay for training
The inspiration for this came when a woman from Marin County, Calif., phoned Stokes to ask how much one of his handmade silk chandeliers cost. He quoted her $5,500, to which she said, oh, no, absolutely not.
“Then she asked, ‘How much would you charge to teach me to make one?’ I told her $5,500 for a five-day class,” and out she flew to Port Angeles.
Stokes, potter Cindy Elstrom and sculptor Gray Lucier all worked with the woman, and she went home with her own handmade chandelier.
“She was so tickled to come up and do her own thing,” Stokes said.
“What she bought was the experience.”
Now, $5,500 is far above what the Port Angeles Artists’ Collective members plan to charge for their workshops.
Fees vary
Fees vary by class size, but photographer Eric Neurath said he’ll charge $120 to $140 for a two-day workshop.
Painter Doug Parent gives a two-day session in which participants learn to build frames, stretch canvases and create a painting, for $200.
And Stokes, who offers fabricated metal sculpture and bronze foundry casting workshops, charges $200 to $350 including materials.
“People can come and spend two days,” he said, “and take home a bronze sculpture.”
Parent, who has lived in Seattle, San Diego and Long Beach, Calif., said Port Angeles, small as it still is, has plenty to offer the art-thirsty tourist.
“This is a pulsating place,” he said. “There’s an art scene going on that a lot of people are not aware of.”
With the workshops, he and his fellow artists want to demystify the artistic process.
“I hope to inspire people to get their feet wet,” Parent said.
Clay, photography
Elstrom and Anna Wiancko Chasman are likewise looking forward to welcoming people to their clay studio at Freshwater Bay west of Port Angeles.
To work with clay, “it doesn’t matter one darn bit whether you have any experience,” Chasman said.
She and Elstrom teach a two-day class: one full day, including lunch with a view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and then another session after the participants’ creations have dried and undergone their first firing.
Enjoy the area
During that drying time, students can choose to go hiking, wine touring or sightseeing.
“If you’ve always had an itch to do something with clay, you’ve got a few days in between [sessions] to go do the Olympics,” Elstrom said.
Neurath, whose striking images of the Olympic Mountains and of kayaks on Hollywood Beach grace the collective’s website, is offering basic photography workshops in which participants go out and shoot on their own for a day, then come into the studio to develop their skills.
Neurath said he’ll help his students learn what makes a successful picture — scale, composition capturing a moment — and encourage them to take their cameras off the automatic setting, to gain more control over their pictures.
Stokes, for his part, hopes the artists’ collective will boost the local economy as well as the workshop leaders.
The lodging-tax grant money, he added, is designated for projects that attract people to Port Angeles’ hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfast inns.
To learn more about joining the collective and offering a workshop, artists can phone Stokes at 415-990-0457 or e-mail sculptorbobstokes@yahoo.com.
The www.PAACworkshops.com website also has information about workshops and studio space.
“This is something to help our local art community survive the depression right now,” Stokes said.
“Everybody has a something to teach; they’re willing to pass it on.”
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
