11Cynthia Thomas, the sculptor of this two-visaged beast, hopes you’ll come to her lair and decide for yourself.
Another bear, alongside the metal “Bob the banjo player” and a flock of leggy birds, awaits on the other side of the Dungeness Valley, deep in the woods.
They’re sort of like the children of John and Kim McBride, owners of the Rickety Ranch off East Sequim Bay Road.
This is Sequim Arts’ 2009 Art Studio Tour, a series of peeks inside the creative process in all its irreverent, unfettered forms.
The free, self-guided circuit, open this Friday through Sunday during the Lavender Festival, includes 14 artists in 11 locations from Blyn to Carlsborg to the western stretch of Old Olympic Highway.
Their work is all over the emotional map, from resplendent landscape paintings and photography to metalwork aimed at cracking people up.
Comic art
The latter is the McBrides’ specialty. They moved to the Sequim area in 2005 from their chili-pepper farm — called Rickety Ranch — near Antelope Valley, Calif., and have populated their woodsy property with metal dancing girls, the one banjo picker plus wildlife, from dragonflies to elk and moose.
When visitors pull in to this reincarnation of Rickety Ranch, they usually respond with laughter, John McBride said while showing a reporter around the place.
And that’s what he wants, when he puts together tractor parts, garden tools and frizzy copper wire to make these creatures.
“I enjoy creating this stuff, but I enjoy it more when someone comes out and says, ‘Oh, look at that,'” added McBride, 60.
The studio tour is of course one event in a jammed weekend of activities during the Lavender Festival.
The 13th annual Sequim Lavender Festival will run Friday through Sunday, with seven farms on tour and a street fair in downtown Sequim.
Both McBride and Thomas understand the plethora of choices may give people pause.
McBride encourages those who “want a nice, relaxing drive along east Sequim Bay to come out here for a quieter time. They might be surprised by some of the things they’ll see.”
Then there’s Thomas, whose feelings about opening her studio are as ardent as the art inside.
She’ll be demonstrating her sculpting process, either with the bear-man piece or with a bronze horse she’s working on.
“It’s not about what I do,” she said. “It’s about how I share it.”
Thomas, 61, showed her studio to about 100 visitors during last year’s tour, and she’s hoping for at least that many this time around.
Art therapist
An art therapist who works with teenagers — “they’re our most precious resource” — she believes face-to-face time with art equals powerful inspiration.
Her work reflects the spectrum of emotion and experience, from sorrow to serenity.
She’s known for her bronze portrayals of women morphing into animals — owl, river otter, bear — and of women as goddesses.
She also creates mixed-media works such as “Dreamwalker,” in which a woman gazes into a sea of 218 small faces.
“When people ask me how long it took to do a piece, I say 61 years,” as in her life so far.
Thomas believes creative expression is essential to good mental health and to connections among people.
Sharing her art, she said, is like offering a piece of her heart to the world.
Thomas vividly remembers being a youngster who had to make things. She learned to use a potter’s wheel at 7, and one day when her parents couldn’t drive her the 11 miles to her art teacher’s studio, the 9-year-old Thomas pedaled her bike there.
By 16, she was teaching art to younger children.
Now, if she doesn’t get to work in her studio for a few days, Thomas gets “very grouchy,” and her husband, John, urges her to get in there.
Naturally, she can’t wait for the weekend’s tour — and hopes people will give themselves the time to explore several studios.
“They’re going to meet some amazing artists,” Thomas said, “and they’re going to learn so much about the different processes.”
What makes her happiest: When a visitor discovers something that strikes a chord of creativity.
“It’s essential to share this with other people,” she said, looking around her workshop, “so they can find it in themselves.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsula dailynews.com.
