PORT TOWNSEND — From grand opera to backyard fungi, Kim Tepe is all about artful experiments.
Tepe, whose works including “Microclimate,” “Autumn Splendor” and “Dancing in the Woods” are part of Northwind Art’s “Showcase 2025” exhibition, will give a free talk at 3 p.m. Saturday. She will be surrounded by her work in the “Showcase 2025” exhibition at Northwind’s Jeanette Best Gallery, 701 Water St.
Tepe is one of 14 Pacific Northwest artists selected for the juried show. She’s been making art with textiles ever since she sewed costumes for her school plays and then created a quilt for her college dorm room.
These days, Tepe is enthralled by certain things outside her door.
“For me, it’s all about noticing and taking time to look at what’s there that no one notices,” she said.
For example: those little mushrooms that pop up in the yard, or the pine boughs leaning gracefully down from a tree.
During her artist talk, Tepe will show some of the materials she uses to translate nature into art: from upholstery samples to light-reflecting silk.
She’s been using scraps of fabric ever since she worked for the Seattle Opera’s costume department.
Tepe’s degree is in theater; she went from college in Bellingham to working at McCaw Hall at Seattle Center, where the operas were on stage. A colleague staged art shows in the lobby, where Tepe began exhibiting her creations. She has since moved to Gresham, Ore., where she continues to play and experiment with textured fabrics and natural materials.
At the gallery, she wants to connect with other fiber artists. During Saturday’s talk, “let’s share ideas … Fiber art is so hard; it’s such a huge category. It took me forever to be comfortable with what I was doing because no one else was doing it,” she recalled.
Tepe works with felt, wool, embroidery floss, real leaves and her favorite tool, a heat gun. She plans to show some of her unusual artworks and then ask those who attend: “Have you done anything crazy” of your own?
“One of the things I want people to take away is that there is no right or wrong. If you’re doing something (different) and having fun,” she said, “that is great.”
