Peninsula Daily News
In this part of the world, the spring-into-summer time intoxicates. The emerald forest canopy and blossoms looking luscious as fruit — they beckon to passers-by all over the North Olympic Peninsula.
And a most enchanting place in Port Angeles, to lovers of art and nature, is the deep green refuge known as Webster Woods.
This is the 5-acre art park outside the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, a place flowering now with new growth and fresh art.
The 13th season of Art Outside — the display of mixed-media creations integrated into the woods — opens Saturday with a public party with the artists from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. and an Art Ranger tour at 2 p.m. with Jake Seniuk, the center’s executive director.
The tour is a revelation: of the forest, the meadow, 100 pieces from past Art Outside seasons and, thanks to the recent work of 18 artists, the new crop.
It’s an exploration of art and nature together — and it is Seniuk’s swan song, as he’s retiring July 1 after 23 years.
This week, he looked inside the center’s guestbook, where a May entry reflects the effect these woods can have.
“This place,” Cindy White of Port Angeles wrote, “is pure adventure.”
June, with its Art Outside activity, is Seniuk’s favorite time of year.
He hails his last season opener with his usual enthusiasm, marveling at the park’s lushness.
One creation newly nestled among the trees is “The Circle Completed,” a kind of three-dimensional architectural drawing made of wood. Vashon Island artist Matthew Olds’ sculpture looks unfinished, like the bones of a stage, Seniuk said.
But it is complete, as both a tribute to the fine arts center and an allusion to its future.
“Circle” is also one of the largest pieces ever to grace Webster Woods.
Both the woods and the Webster House gallery are named for Esther Barrows Webster, the late artist, benefactor of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center and co-owner of the Peninsula Daily News’ predecessor, the Port Angeles Evening News.
Since he became director in 1989, Seniuk has brought artists from across the Pacific Northwest, the United States and Canada to the continent’s western-most public art center.
Perched on Beaver Hill, overlooking the city, this is the rare art gallery that includes both an indoor display space and an art forest, which he pointedly calls a museum without walls.
The 2012 influx in Webster Woods also has a 7-foot steel Art Ranger’s Staff, embellished with beeswax and beads and created in Seniuk’s honor by Jyoti Duwadi, a Nepali artist transplanted to Bellingham.
Not far away, at the edge of the forest, is another gleaming figure: a mosaic Madonna by Port Townsend artist John Liczwinko.
More art has been placed by his fellow Port Townsenders Michael Buettin and Mare Tietjen; Vancouver, B.C., artist Shirley Wiebe; Mary Coss, David Nechak and Alan Lande of Seattle; and Bellingham’s Kuros Zahedi.
Barbara De Pirro, a Shelton artist who usually installs her work in the museums of Seattle and Tacoma, was busy this past week adorning Webster Woods.
She crochets tan plastic shopping bags — hundreds of them — into “vines” and lays them like veins into the bark of evergreens. The crocheted plastic, De Pirro said, mimics the invasive ivy that can strangle trees.
It looks natural when you see it out of the corner of your eye. Come closer, and you find it’s a human-made thing, embedded into the trunk’s skin.
These woods, De Pirro said, inspired her to make a statement about the interweaving of the artificial and the natural.
“I want my art to be more than just aesthetic; I want it to stand for something,” she said — and then smiled, to lighten the moment.
De Pirro is a tree hugger, and she’s not afraid to do just that for a reporter’s camera.
These woods are “an important place,” she said, “a magical place.”
Webster Woods park is open 365 days a year, sunrise until dusk, with free admission.
The arts center’s Webster House gallery, which houses the ArtPaths Portfolio student exhibition through June 24, is open from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. For details, phone 360-457-3532 or visit www.PAFAC.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
