PORT ANGELES — One month ago, Clay and Angie River sent out a challenge: Brighten your January with daily art. Do your thing, be it cooking, taking pictures or writing poems, songs or letters.
This is the inaugural Fun-a-Day Port Angeles, a community outing to culminate in a show this Saturday.
“We had about 30 people sign up with projects ranging from photography to painting to sewing,” Angie said of the monthlong endeavor.
“I’ve seen some projects already, and it is beautiful.”
The Fun-a-Day show will make its public debut Saturday at Studio Bob, the event space upstairs at 118½ E. Front St., with the opening party from 2 p.m. till 6 p.m.
Admission is free to this showcase, which will stay on display till next Friday, Feb. 7.
Port Angeles Arts Council President Amy McIntyre and her daughter, Imogen Fraser, 7, are among the Fun-a-Day participants delivering a project to Studio Bob today.
Special series of photos
McIntyre, a fine art photographer, playwright and single mother, made time for a special series of photos inspired by Port Angeles-born writer Tess Gallager’s piece titled “I Stop Writing the Poem”:
I stop writing the poem
to fold the clothes.
No matter who lives or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.
McIntyre is fairly certain Gallagher wrote this about the loss of her husband, writer Raymond Carver.
“But to me,” she said, “it was more of a post-divorce poem,” with its images of a giant shirt belonging to an absent man and a small daughter watching the mother rebuild life for the two of them.
With the Fun-a-Day project, “I appreciate the built-in limitation of daily art creation,” McIntyre said.
“I do small projects at night — mostly after my daughter goes to bed, but sometimes with her — using a handful of mediums: photography, felt and paper, watercolor and Perler beads,” she added.
Start to new year
“This is such a great way to start the new year,” wrote Maret Carrillo, whose blog, www.ecua-gringa.blogspot.com, is part of her Fun-a-Day project.
“By creating something each day, no matter how grand or small . . . in any month, we can become hooked on creative expression,” she writes.
“It gives you a sense of control,” she adds, “and a great sense of accomplishment . . . you are in charge of your own projects.”
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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.
