PORT ANGELES — In Peggy O’Brien Fogliano’s art, “there is always a sense of humor, a love of life and a love of people.
“These are the things of Peggy’s life; indeed, this is Peggy’s life.”
So writes her son, Peter Fogliano, in a short biography for her new, unprecedented show, now filling the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
A retrospective spanning 40 years of artmaking — ceramics, collage, paintings, pen and ink, mixed media — opened this week, just in time for Fogliano’s 96th birthday today. Titled “A Creative Legacy: Artist Peggy Fogliano,” it will remain through Nov. 9.
Opening reception
Art lovers also are invited to join the artist for her show’s opening reception from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. next Friday, Oct. 26.
Following that event, the fine arts center at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd. is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.
“She’s been a prolific artist all of her life,” center board member Sandy Long said of Fogliano.
“We’ve been wanting to do this show for a long time, and Peggy is thrilled.”
The retrospective is a rare chance, added Fogliano’s friend Sally Mowbray, to see an artist’s development over four decades.
The works, which range from her early pottery up to collages constructed recently, show “her growth,” Mowbray said, “and her excitement in what she does.”
Fogliano lived in Port Angeles for about 25 years and founded the Friends of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center back in the late 1980s.
She took art courses at Peninsula College and the University of Washington, and traveled the world, enchanted by the Abstract Expressionists, the Japanese artists and designers, and by Gustav Klimt, the Austrian symbolist who painted “The Kiss.”
Gathering place
In Port Angeles, her home and studio became a gathering place for artist friends to critique and encourage one another.
Fogliano’s sight mostly has been taken by macular degeneration — but she has not stopped creating.
She lives alone in a house on the water on Bainbridge Island, where her studio is filled with paintings and collages.
“I’m working on a new series,” she said this week.
It’s about “bits and pieces” and mixes paint, rice paper and glue. The collages have come together in the wake of the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima nuclear plant explosion in March 2011.
“She’s an amazing woman, I am telling you,” said Mowbray, who earlier this month spent a week in Los Angeles with Fogliano.
The women went to the opera twice — for Verdi’s “Due Foscari” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” — and to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
They visited art palaces, of course, including the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Huntington Library.
Fogliano had to come up very close to the paintings in order to see them, but see them she did.
The trip was “marvelous,” the artist said.
Fogliano added that she is looking forward to the opening reception Oct. 26, which will be the first time in a long while that she will gather with her friends back in Port Angeles.
Mowbray, for her part, marvels at Fogliano’s sense of style.
“Peggy is probably the most fashionable lady you will ever see. She is quite a woman,” Mowbray said.
“She is an inspiration.”
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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.
