PORT ANGELES — The PUB Gallery at Peninsula College, a campus space open to the public, is about to be remade by internationally known artist Jenene Nagy.
Exactly how, she doesn’t know. Nagy, who has shown her creations at venues from Berlin to Portland, Ore., intends to start work today and finish by next Thursday.
The art piece, to be titled “cover,” might be an installation, a painting or a mix, but either way, it will spread across the whole space of the gallery at the college campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., Nagy told the Peninsula Daily News.
The artist said she wants to talk to passers-by as she works.
“Folks will have full access to me, whatever the working conditions turn out to be,” Nagy said.
“One of the reasons I do projects with academic institutions is to engage folks in dialogue.”
Nagy will set up inside the PUB Gallery, right outside the Little Theater, and plans to use common building materials, such as Tyvek and latex house paint.
Her colors this time out are deep blue, silver and a bright green.
She hopes to offer a viewing experience that calls to mind “an idealized horizon, with all the luminosity of a crystal-clear sky.”
Yet “I make all design decisions on site,” Nagy emphasized.
“I am not sure how the work will manifest until I arrive.”
Talk on Thursday
Next Thursday, Nagy will give a talk on “cover” and her life as an artist, in a free, public Studium Generale lecture in the Little Theater.
Her presentation will go from 12:35 p.m. to 1:25 p.m., and immediately afterward, Nagy will go to the PUB Gallery for a reception.
Nagy has been making similar site-specific installations for the past seven years. The layout of each, she said, responds to each location’s architecture.
Nagy has displayed her work at the Portland, Ore., Art Museum; Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin; and the Dam Stuhltrager project space in New York City, among other venues.
She recently received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a three-month residency at the RAID Projects in Los Angeles.
Nagy now lives part time in Aspen, Colo., and part-time in Los Angeles, and serves as artistic director of Painting and Printmaking at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colo.
“My work questions the boundaries of the built and natural environment,” Nagy said, adding that she seeks to explore how physical, yet often unseen, structures dictate people’s lives.
Watch it take shape
Nagy’s “cover” will stay on display at the PUB Gallery through April 12, but the artist urges everyone to visit this next week to watch it take shape. Seeing the process, she said, makes a finished work less mysterious.
“I am going to start and work until it’s done, probably starting around 9 a.m. and going until late,” she added.
“I will be working on the weekend for sure.”
Aside from the construction of “cover,” the PUB Gallery’s regular hours are from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
More information can be found at www.PenCol.edu and on the Peninsula College page on Facebook.
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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.
