While sunlight filters through newly leafed out alders in Webster’s Woods Art Park, artist Deanna Pindell and her crew lay a thick rope of net-covered straw across ivy, which threatens to crowd out the native plants surrounding it.
The rope is actually a work by Port Townsend artist Pindell, who calls it “Squiggle.” It incorporates 200 feet of tube made of jute, stuffed with straw and covered with words stitched in heavy back wool.
Pindell explained that the words on each of the tubes are poems about salal and words from eight Native American language.
One group of tubes, or wattles, will surround an area where the ivy will be pulled out and salal will be planted. Wattle is typically used for erosion control.
The tube will break down over time, nourishing the young salal plants.
“It’s a remedial artwork,” Pindell said. “More and more artists are realizing they want to help the environment. It’s a very happy marriage.”
Pindell is working on a master’s degree in ecological public art through Goddard College in Port Townsend.
“Squiggle” is one of many pieces of art installed over the past month at Webster’s Woods, adjacent to the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, as part of the ongoing Art Outside project.
She has two other installations in the art park, “Dream Tree with Meditation” and “Juncture.”
“This is a playground for artists,” she said.
Nineteen artists in all will contribute to the project, with an opening reception Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Many of the artists come from the North Olympic Peninsula, with others from Shelton, Bellingham, the San Juans, Seattle, Mount Vernon, Duvall and Vancouver, B.C.
Anna Wiancko-Chasman is the only Port Angeles artist participating this year.
She has created a work near the entrance to the fine arts center called “Thyme Garden,” a raised and rocky bed, almost grave-like, containing elements of “time.”
A clock drapes Dali-like over a rusted metal wheel, while a smiling Barbie doll is embedded waist deep in gravel.
Jake Seniuk, fine arts center director, said of the piece, “. . . the progression of style and technology traces a timeline of civilization, which is interspersed with living thyme plants that will reclaim the spot for nature as they propagate.”
Seattle artist and Cornish College of the Arts instructor David Nechak has contributed art installations every year since the project began in 2000.
This year his installation is in the same area of the park that held his “Trees in Tutus” work. This one is very different from that work of whimsy.
Ghostly white hands emerge from trees high up on the trunk and attached to the top of a fallen tree suspended between two others.
Nechak sees it as “a dialog between the group of hands and the single hand.”
While there are 14 hands total, there are only two molds, one right, one left, made from a female student’s slim hands.
Nechak said there is no one interpretation of the work.
“Every audience member reacts differently to artwork,” he said. “It enlarges the experience.”
Other artists contributing works are Judith Bird, Port Townsend; Dean Hanmer, Vashon Island; Karen Hackenberg, Port Townsend; Barbara de Pirro, Shelton; Djoti Duwadi, Bellingham; Dan Cautrell, Duvall; Colleen Hayward, Seattle; Gloria Lamson, Port Townsend; Alan Lande, Seattle; James Lapp, Mount Vernon; Carolyn Law, Seattle; Julie Lindell, Seattle; Margie McDonald, Port Townsend; Shirley Wiebe, Vancouver, B.C., and Kuros Zahedi, Bellingham.
The artists are paid an honorarium for their works, which helps to cover the cost of materials and travel. The works remain the property of the artists.
San Juan Island artist Micajah Bienvenu, who created the large stainless steel “Pi a la Mode” sculpture in the park’s meadow, returns with a second stainless steel sculpture, “Yippeee!”
The 12-foot tall sculpture greets visitors at the entrance near the parking lot, and features graceful, flowing lines that set the “abstracted figure to gyrating,” Seniuk said. “. . . an effect that is amplified by its rotating mount which allows it to be spun around a central point.”
“Pi” was recently purchased for the arts center by Sequim art patrons Harris and Diana Verner and Krys and Gary Gordon.
Seniuk, who started the Art Outside project in 2000, said, “Of equal interest to art sophisticates and 5-year-olds, these works, in large part, are labors of love that come together in this very special place to create memorable experiences that leave visitors highly attuned to the spirit of art in their everyday lives.”
Seniuk will lead the first of a series of “Art Ranger” tours of Art Outside at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Art Outside 2010 opens at 1 p.m. Saturday, with a special ceremony at 1:30 p.m.
Webster’s Woods Art Park is located at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
It is open during daylight hours year-round, and admission is free.
