PORT ANGELES — You can tell this marriage is a complex yet happy one: The children, after all, keep coming back with wedding gifts.
The 10th season of “Art Outside,” a joining of art and nature at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, opened Sunday with a tour of 16 new pieces, inlaid by artists from Walla Walla to British Columbia.
The wedding of whimsical art with Webster’s Woods, the forest that curves around the center, took place in June 2000, with center director Jake Seniuk officiating. And every June, he celebrates as new generations of sculptures, clothing and odd objects arrive.
“This is the best time of the year; there’s so much energy and cross-pollination going on,” Seniuk said Sunday, standing in sunshine on what was the first full day of summer.
This year’s gifts join the more than 100 art pieces that have lived in the woods for years. Visitors who wander the paths have pondered Judith Bird’s “Witness,” a group of sweaters in one of the forest glens; they’ve paused to sit in the meadow on Sheila Klein’s black eyelash-shaped bench and looked up through the high branches to see “Swimming Upstream,” in the meadow — Anna Wiancko’s rusty-metal school of suspended salmon.
Sunday’s unveiling revealed work by artists who are new to the woods and by others who are returning.
Nicole Dextras from Vancouver, British Columbia, is one of the newcomers; she installed the word “culture” at the edge of the forest and planted seeds so flowers will bloom later this year in each of the letters — and then spread the word.
Elusive art
David Nechak of Seattle, who has added art to the woods every year since 2000, brought a piece made from an old truck door, bearing the image of a “ghost deer,” the animal that always eludes the hunter.
John Liczwinko of Port Townsend, another new face, added large, abstract cement ferns to the forest, seeking to evoke the feeling of growth and energy that comes with summer in this part of the world.
Diana Liljelund of Bainbridge Island installed a 14-foot floating tree, a log rigged to look like it’s levitating above the forest floor; to make it shimmer too, Liljelund painted it silver.
At the edge of the Webster’s Woods meadow stands a mirrored box conceived by Rebecca Cummins of Seattle. The side panels show the passing humans surrounded by maple leaves, while the top reflects the electric-green canopy. And because the box is a camera obscura — Cummins is a photography professor at the University of Washington — a look inside is rewarded with a kind of movie in which the trees dance to the breeze.
Artists bring their work to Webster’s Woods not because this is a lucrative project — each receives just $400 thanks to First Federal’s sponsorship of Art Outside — but because “they love this place,” said Seniuk. “This park is unusual, with the freedom it gives artists to experiment.”
Since it’s always free to the public, the art is available to a wide cross-section of people.
And to enjoy the works mixed in to the 5-acre forest, you needn’t take any art history courses.
“The woods is about walking and looking,” Seniuk said. “If you can walk and look, you’re ready.”
The art is everywhere, from high on the towering tree trunks to the fern-shaded path under your feet. In the central woods, flowing down a slope, are thousands of small “soul vessels,” laid by Walla Walla artist Anne Bullock. They’re clay bowls, small as clamshells, inspired by people whose lives ended too soon. Bullock started making these ceramic “pinch forms” after Sept. 11, 2001, and has kept on as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have continued.
With the bowls’ varying colors and shapes, she evokes diversity, and by placing them in the form of a river, harmony. Together, the soul vessels are a kind of rosary, a prayer, Bullock said, for a place where people can find some healing.
To her, this forest is that place. Bullock was vacationing in Port Angeles with her husband last summer when they discovered the fine arts center, and she immediately said, “Let’s tromp through the woods.”
Bullock fell in love while wandering. “There’s this thread of whimsy,” she said. “It’s not all heavy stuff.”
This forest of art is lush with mystery and delight, with butterflies and birdsong, sculptures and sweaters. “Sometimes your soul gets tired,” Bullock said, and a walk in these woods refreshes.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
