PORT ANGELES — A few minutes into the conversation, the contrast hits you. It’s like hearing a tune suddenly change tempo.
First, we’re talking about money. How the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center struggles with too little of it: Between 2008 and 2009, the city of Port Angeles cut its contribution from $57,000 to $24,750. That amount stayed the same this year, leaving the center to raise nearly $150,000 to keep its staff of two, and to continue the art exhibitions, lectures and concerts coming.
That’s the grim report this week from Jake Seniuk, the director and curator for 22 years. But it’s not what he really wants to talk about as the center marks its 25th anniversary with a historic show.
Opening this Sunday is “25! A Silver Milestone,” an exhibition of work by 29 Pacific Northwest artists, from glass blowers to renowned painters to fine art photographers. Each has displayed their best efforts at the arts center over the past quarter-century, and each is part of the sweeping survey to open this weekend.
The show starts with a public reception, with many participating artists in attendance, from 2 p.m. till 4 p.m. Sunday. Then “25!” will be open Wednesdays through Sundays through Nov. 27. Admission is free to the center, perched on what’s known as Beaver Hill at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
“It is a beautiful show,” Seniuk said in an altogether new tone.
There is “Point of the Arches,” by the late sculptor and sumi painter George Tsutakawa, whose show was the center’s first in 1986. Sharing the space with “Arches” are the bizarre and the beauteous, including:
■ the “Culture Vulture” sculpture by Richard Cook;
■ a gouache of “Anima,” the female archetype, by Charles Stokes;
■ “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” an interactive, multimedia creation by Barbara Slavik, the center’s longtime education director;
■ Alfredo Arreguin’s portrait of Port Angeles-born poet Tess Gallagher;
■ A pair of bronze cormorants, slightly smaller than the ones on Port Angeles’ City Pier, shaped by Duncan McKiernan.
Seniuk’s own “Olympic Crossing,” a tryptych of photographs, is here, too. The pictures from his solo run across Olympic National Park in 1994, five years after he became director of the fine arts center. Seniuk has been a long-distance runner since, seeking grants, working on fundraisers — and bringing art of all kinds to this far corner of the continent.
The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center is the Olympic Peninsula’s contemporary art museum, built on land bequested by Esther Barrows Webster, the late owner of the Port Angeles Evening News that later became the Peninsula Daily News. Webster gave the property to the city, and McKiernan became its first director.
The center thrives, Seniuk has said, because of its supportive community: artists, art lovers and sponsors such as Kitsap Bank, which provided the funding for the “25!” show. The exhibition also includes a display of old posters and “On Center” newsletters, alongside works by local artists such as Peninsula College art professor Michael Paul Miller, Sequim photographer Charlotte Watts and Port Townsend-area sculptors David Eisenhour and Tom Jay. Contributors from farther afield include photographer Mary Randlett of Seattle and Barbara Berger of Bainbridge Island.
“Jake’s vision is essential,” Berger said of Seniuk. “He has put together a lot of very interesting shows,” added the author and artist, who first showed her work here in the 1990s. “He includes a lot of different mediums, including conceptual pieces,” both inside the gallery and out in Webster’s Woods.
“He is always interested in ideas,” Berger said. “It isn’t just decorative art or art for art’s sake,” at the center; “it’s art that evokes thought, and feeling and depth.”
For “25!” Berger has contributed a pair of illustrations from Gwinna, her 1990 Washington Governor’s Award-winning book about a girl born with wings. At first she doesn’t know how she is different, but at age 12, she discovers the wings and must learn how to use them.
One illustration, which Seniuk describes as a work of magical realism, shows the “Mother of the Owl,” who is also Gwinna’s grandmother. The other image is of Gwinna in flight.
The Gwinna book will also be on display, Berger said. She has not been to the fine arts center for some time, and hopes to attend Sunday’s opening reception for “25!”
“It is always an honor,” she said, “to have something in a show there.”
To learn more about the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, visit www.PAFAC.org or phone 360-457-3532. While the gallery is open from 11 a.m. till 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, the 5-acre Webster’s Woods park around it is open daily from dawn till dusk.
