January 28, 2012. For immediate release.
PRESS RELEASE
The Island Gallery
400 Winslow Way E., #120 For more information, contact
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 Susan Swannack-Nunn, Owner
206-780-9500/www.theislandgallery.net
Event:
Spindrift. Lamp, Wendy Dunder
The Sculptor’s Eye
February 3-26, 2012
Nathan Christopher, Brad Davis, Wendy Dunder
Debra Greiner, Cecil Ross, Alan Vogel
Reception for the Artists: First Friday, February 3, 6-8 pm
Featured Artists:
Nathan Christopher, Bainbridge Island, Washington. Nathan’s work merges sustainability and functionality with the aesthetics of unique and artful designs. With a degree in Natural Resources, Nathan places a huge emphasis on timeless elements created by nature. Each piece is conceived and crafted according to the history, nuance and texture of the reclaimed wood used, creating furniture with character. Nathan has also been working as a film actor and producer, most recently producing the award-winning short film The Butterfly Circus, which is available at our Gallery.
Brad Davis, Vashon Island, Washington. For thirty-five years, woodworker Brad Davis has created exquisite works in wood, both fine art such as wall hangings and functional furniture pieces. As an artisan, he enjoys featuring the wood’s grain, knowing that it is from this core that each piece’s beauty and history flow. The grain appears as liquid, a wash of fine lines capturing motion over abstract landscapes that thrill in their simplicity and startling beauty. His exceptional pieces can be found in many Northwest homes and galleries.
Wendy Dunder, Portland, Oregon. Wendy Dunder is a professional watercolor and acrylic painter as well as a certified teacher. She depicts landscapes, still life, animals, and people. She creates curriculum based murals with students as an Artist in Residence in schools. A hallmark of her work is the involvement of the students in the process. With students she created permanent outdoor municipal murals of concrete, stone, tile, glass, and paint. Her recent focus is creating sculptural lamps of bent wood and laminated paper.
Debra Greiner, Suquamish, Washington. Educated at Ohio State University and the Otis Art Institute/Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, Debra Greiner has worked in a range of artistic venues over the past 30 years: as Assistant Art Director for the Jackson Hole News in Jackson, Wyoming, owner of an award-winning sign business in Jackson Hole, scenic painter in the theater and film industry in Los Angeles and Seattle, and co-founder and Visual Art Director of Room 608, Gallery for Visual and Performing Arts in Seattle.
Following an apprenticeship with influential Tlingit sculptor R. James Schoppert (whose 1988 “Portal to the Pacific” sculpture is prominently displayed on Seattle’s Mt. Baker Tunnel, with retrospectives of his work appearing most recently at the Guggenheim and American Indian Museum of the Smithsonian) in his Stone Frog Studio in the early nineties, Debra has pursued sculpture as an artistic medium. Debra has been featured in group and solo shows at Room 608, Mercer-Hood Gallery in Seattle, Edison Eye Gallery in Edison, Washington, and The Island Gallery.
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Cecil Ross, Bainbridge Island, Washington. “Combining function and art is my challenge. Highly figured woods with prominent natural features are central to my work Much of the wood is local and from trees with history, including black locust, figured maple, spalted alder, yew, and walnut. I am concerned about the impact that we, consumers and artisans, have on our environment, and how, as a builder and designer, I can influence this. Trying to tread softly on this earth, I attempt to produce the highest quality product, while adhering to a green philosophy.”
Alan Vogel, Bainbridge Island, Washington. One of our many talented Bainbridge Island woodworkers, Alan is locally well-known for his functional furniture pieces, but enjoys working on more unexpected designs as well, using Northwest timbers of all varieties, including recycled woods. In Alan’s words: “…It's been a productive and encouraging ten years working here in my studio on Bainbridge Island, where I find myself dreaming up unique designs and intricate joinery while scouring away decades of grime and splintery surfaces. While I'm known for the reclaimed fir dining tables I make, I have also fashioned more artistic live edge pieces from figured and spalted slabs of maple, alder, cherry, redwood, et cetera. Each of these pieces displays a uniqueness that emphasizse the natural shape and characteristics of the wood.”
Event Location: 400 Winslow Way E., #120, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
For more information, images, or to interview the artists, please contact:
www.theislandgallery.net
206-780-9500
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