PORT ANGELES — This year’s Art in Bloom is proving to be unlike any other in the event’s 10-year history.
For the annual Mother’s Day weekend art show, local gardeners create floral designs in response to the art work at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
This year, that’s been tough. The mixed-media sculptures by John and Robin Gumaelius of Cosmopolis, while popular with visitors, don’t exactly lend themselves to flowery counterparts.
“It will be a challenge to the designers,” said Art in Bloom veteran Mary Lou Waitz, “to pick flowers to complement those crazy little sculptures.”
Challenges
Challenge is a good thing, Waitz emphasized. It makes the project “interesting — and definitely motivating.”
She’s selected white rhododendrons to respond to her chosen Gumaelius figure, a stack of clay faces with a bird perched on top.
Billie Fitch, another Art in Bloom designer, is assembling a mass of flowers to go with the sculpture she chose: one featuring a very large ceramic head.
Doors open today
Art in Bloom will be revealed when the fine arts center opens its doors at 11 a.m. today.
Admission is free at the center, 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd., but since this is the city’s nonprofit art museum donations are welcome.
Art in Bloom, a Mother’s Day tradition begun by the late Mim Foley in 2004, lasts only through Sunday. The hours at the fine arts center are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Members of the Port Angeles Garden Club have long participated in this event.
This year’s Art in Bloom designers are Waitz, Fitch, Sue Conklin, Bernice Cook, Judi McClanahan, Marian Meany, Linda Nutter, Mary Lou Paulson, Laurie Tillman, Patty Wheatley and Betty Wrenz.
For more information about this and other activities — such as plein air painting classes for adults and a children’s summer camp — at the fine arts center, visit www.PAFAC.org or phone 360-457-3532.
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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.
