A hand-thrown pottery Brie baker, with curled handle, by Rose Quirk

Timeless Fashion: The Functional Pottery of Rose Quirk

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A curved, hand-built pottery platter by Rose Quirk, Wenaha Gallery guest artist from Richland, WA

A curved, hand-built pottery platter by Rose Quirk, Wenaha Gallery guest artist from Richland, WA

Human beings are not machines.

Sounds sort of obvious, doesn’t it? While the statement would make a fine social media meme — short, punchy, rhyming, and good for a share or two and 7.5 seconds of fractured reflection — it makes a point well  worth comprehending:

Human beings are not machines.

A hand-thrown pottery Brie baker, with curled handle, by Rose Quirk

A hand-thrown pottery Brie baker, with curled handle, by Rose Quirk

And when those human beings are artists, creating items with their very human, very skilled hands, the resulting craftsmanship is not designed to be found, shrink-wrapped, in a child’s meal.

“Each piece I create is unique, handmade, and even pieces that are part of a set can be different,” says Rose Quirk, a ceramic artist from Richland who specializes in functional wheel-thrown and hand built pottery.

“Mugs are slightly different sizes; the glaze on each piece is unique and has its own personality. This is both wonderful, and challenging.”

Consider, for example, a stack of dinner dishes, she adds. They must, and do, stack evenly, but part of their singular, unparalleled charm is that they do not look like precisely the same piece, eight times over. Before approaching the wheel, Quirk meticulously weighs out the clay, apportioning an equal amount for each item. One after another a plate is shaped on the wheel, guided by steady hands that, after more than 20 years, know what “feels” right. A ruler measures and confirms the final step. The resulting dinnerware, while close in size and shape, is far from being a clone.

Fractured Fish ceramic wall art by Rose Quirk

Fractured Fish ceramic wall art by Rose Quirk

“Because each piece is hand-formed, there’s not going to be that exactness that you get in commercial pottery,” Quirk explains. “There are ways to control it without using a mold, but you can’t control it exactly,” nor should this be the driving focus.

“You can go to Walmart and buy a mug for a dollar, but when you spend $25 or $30 on a hand-thrown mug, you appreciate the aspect of its being hand-thrown.”

Such attention to detail, in conjunction with an understanding that nothing is 100 percent predictable, reflect the duality of Quirk’s professional background: a biochemist who has worked for medical and pharmaceutical firms throughout the nation, Quirk concurrently pursued her interest in pottery. Upon moving to Washington State with her husband (“I think we’re here permanently, now”), Quirk focused her attention on the art side of things.

Interior and exterior views of large pottery serving bowls by Rose Quirk

Interior and exterior views of large pottery serving bowls by Rose Quirk

“Science and art have frequently gone hand in hand for me,” Quirk says. “There is a strong correlation between the visualization skills needed to see and understand chemical elements and molecules and the art of creating a three-dimensional piece of pottery.”

Precision, experimentation, observation, research, creativity — a host of elements come to play as Quirk works in her 500-square foot home studio, where half the room is devoted to throwing and firing clay (“This can be quite messy . . . “) and the other half is devoted to finishing, including the addition of embellishments such as collage and fiber.

With an eye on food an entertainment trends, Quirk combs through Pinterest for ideas, which she then transforms into signature, trendy pieces of timeless appeal: a delicately curved, hand-formed platter to hold hors d’oeuvres and finger foods; a shallow dish for creamy Brie cheese; a gently sloping, texturized serving bowl that looks as good everyday on the coffee table as it does in the middle of a holiday gathering. The glazes are rich, warm, earth-toned, and perpetually in vogue.

Celestial Dream ceramic wall art by Richland, WA artist Rose Quirk

Celestial Dream ceramic wall art by Richland, WA artist Rose Quirk

“My art is in kitchens all across the Mid-Columbia,” Quirk says. “It is to be handled, used and enjoyed every day.”

A member of the Allied Arts Association in Richland, Quirk is a longtime board member who serves as the Featured Artist Chairperson, responsible for setting up and managing the exhibits that rotate through the facility’s 1800 square feet of gallery space. In 2015, she was honored by receiving the coveted Szulinski Award, recognizing artists who have distinguished themselves by their excellence of craftsmanship in a three-dimensional medium.

Such recognition is always positive, but for Quirk, an even greater joy is the creation of her work,  melding science with art, and finding that harmonious balance of individuality with congruity. An achievement like this, she notes, is lasting success.

“It has always been my goal to create beautiful, one-of-a-kind, functional pieces.”

Wenaha GalleryRose Quirk is the featured Pacific Northwest Art Event artist from Monday, June 20 through Saturday, July 16.

Contact the gallery, located at 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA, by phone at 509.382.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

Wenaha Gallery is your destination location for Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Prints, professional customized framing, and original fine art paintings and sculpture by notable Pacific Northwest artists.   Books, gifts, note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and more are also available. Visit at 219 East Main, Dayton, WA.

This article was written by Carolyn Henderson.

A fossil of a fish is one of the more unusual items that framer Lael Loyd has framed at Wenaha Gallery.

When Being Framed Is a Good Thing — The Importance of the Simple (or Ornate) Frame

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A fossil of a fish is one of the more unusual items that framer Lael Loyd has framed at Wenaha Gallery.

A fossil of a fish is one of the more unusual items that framer Lael Loyd has framed at Wenaha Gallery.

The beauty, and frustration, of history are the differing opinions by experts regarding what actually happened. After all, since the parties involved are long gone, it’s difficult to be precise.

So it is with the history of not only painting (with researchers propounding both Europe and Indonesia as sites with the oldest works, and dates ranging initially from 10,000 to a present consensus of 40,000 years ago), but with the frames that surround the paintings. One voice in the framing world, Church Hill Classics, asserts that frames have existed since the second century B.C., when borders were drawn around Etruscan cave paintings, while the UK’s Paul Mitchell Ltd, specializing in antique and reproduction frames, pinpoints framing’s origins to the embellishment of vase and tomb artwork around that same date . . . or a thousand years earlier.

Three dimensional items are a challenge, but not an impossibility, to frame.

Three dimensional items are a challenge, but not an impossibility, to frame.

Technicalities aside, framing artwork has been around for a long time, and as any college student with posters on the wall can attest, a formal outside border makes all the difference in whether the room feels like a dorm, or a home. It enhances, it upgrades, it protects.

“For all practical purposes, it holds the guts of the frame package together, and acts as another barrier to protect the art,” says Lael Loyd, principal framer at Wenaha Gallery in Dayton, WA. “The frame is the last line of defense against the elements from the side.”

While it can be as simple as strips of barn wood (hopefully without the splinters) to the ornately crafted, gold-leaf gilded frames associated with 19th century French landscapes, the final choice, Loyd observes, strongly depends upon the artwork within.

“The frames, like the lamps, floor rugs, couches, and mirrors, should never detract from the room. We encourage each piece to be designed for what it needs, keeping in mind the environment it will live in.”

A Victorian Shadowbox incorporates items from the era.

A Victorian Shadowbox incorporates items from the era.

Like that interior furniture and decor, framing goes “in” and “out” of mode, Loyd says, explaining that the manufacturers of commercial framing keep an alert eye on the home interior market, introducing styles that are trendy without being “faddy.” Some elements, however, are like the little black dress — always perfect, and always timeless:

“Basic black, gold and silver always win . . . Browns, in a variety of tones, mahogany, black and shades of gold, silver and bronze are what I use most.”

Loyd has designed framing packages for everything from what one would expect to frame — a painting, a poster, certificates and diplomas — to the more unusual — a fossilized rock, a piece of the Torah (“No pressure there!”), a softball outfit including the ball and bat, a World War I Service Banner encased in glass on both sides. Her most challenging 3-D framing commission was her first, a Victorian shadow box that included a feather, pair of gloves, book, buttons, pocket watch, and more.

“I was terrified! I took a long time because I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I used techniques I didn’t know existed until, and in the end, it is one of my favorite designs.”

Some frames are works of art in their own right, and within the museum art world, curators are paying increased attention to this fundamental, but easily overlooked, element to the finished art package. In 2015, The National Gallery in London presented a 5-month exhibition entitled Frames in Focus: Sansovino Frames, featuring elaborately designed frames from the 16th century. It is the first in a series of exhibitions that the gallery plans on frames.

For the average person, however, what needs to be framed probably won’t be found in a museum, although this does not mean that the work doesn’t have meaning.

“I love the designs that come with a story,” Loyd says, “like a child’s refrigerator art housed in a basic frame, and the child comes in and clings to the framed piece, or the photo of a prize-winning husky, with ribbon included, and the owner brings out a Kleenex because the beloved dog has passed away and we’re now working to display a memory.

“It’s history, living history, preserved and protected for future generations.”

Wenaha GalleryFraming Extravaganza is the Pacific Northwest Art Event from Monday, March 28 through Saturday, April 23. Both ready-made frames and a select inventory of link molding (from which custom frames are made) will be deeply discounted as the gallery makes room for additional frame styles and colors.

Contact the gallery, located at 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA, by phone at 509.382.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

Wenaha Gallery is your destination location for Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Prints, professional customized framing, and original fine art paintings and sculpture by notable Pacific Northwest artists.   Books, gifts, note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and more are also available. Visit at 219 East Main, Dayton, WA.

This article was written by Carolyn Henderson.

 

 

 

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

One-of-a-Kind, Unusually Unique — The Handcrafted Jewelry of Andrea Lyman

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Handcrafted necklaces, bracelets, and earrings by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

Handcrafted necklaces, bracelets, and earrings by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

In the adroit hands of Andrea Lyman, there is no such thing as dross. Found items, vintage beads, dice, glass, metal, buttons, fabric trim, even seeds and nuts, find their way to new life and unusual expression in one-of-a-kind jewelry that genuinely lives up to that description.

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman.

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman.

“I’ve been making jewelry for, man, decades,” Lyman says. “I have always loved anything slightly worn with its own natural patina, and I have always loved creating beautiful things.”

Lyman’s inspiration began early, watching her mother and grandmother transforming fiber into embroidered pillowcases, crocheted doilies, table coverings, and curtains.

“I remember how much time went into making the most mundane of household items into a thing of beauty for our family to enjoy,” Lyman says, recounting how she followed the matriarchal steps of creating with fabric before expanding her scope to hand-made art cards, large bags crafted from new and vintage textiles and trims, and encaustic, or hot wax, painting.

When she turned her attention to jewelry, at first she just made things for herself, then as presents for holidays and birthdays, then — at the urging of friends, family, and other gift recipients — for sale at craft fairs and festivals, gift shops, and galleries. What started as a hobby and a means of expressing herself soon grew into a second career, one pursued concurrently with her day job as a music teacher in both public and private schools, a position she held for more than 40 years.

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

“I am no longer teaching in a school, but nearing retirement age (notice I didn’t say ‘retirement’ — whatever that means!), I now travel and mentor other music teachers in Waldorf schools throughout North America and a couple in South America,” Lyman says.

Presently residing in Cuenca, Ecuador — where, in her non-retirement, she serves as artistic director for the 45-member Cuenca International Chorale — Lyman incorporates exotic elements, like hand-woven basket beads from Ecuadorian artisans, into her bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. Another favorite design element is the tagua nut, nicknamed the “vegetable ivory,” and prized for its ivory-like color and texture.

Earrings by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

Earrings by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

“I love making beautiful things — period,” Lyman explains. “I thoroughly enjoy creating something artistic, colorful and unique, and especially for the jewelry, making someone else happy or feel special.”

Through the years, many people have experienced this happy, special feeling, as Lyman readily takes on commissions for life’s important occasions — a necklace and earrings to match the mother-of-the-bride’s dress, or a birthday gift incorporating colors and items meaningful to the recipient.

“I love making things specifically for others.

“I think of them all the while I am working on the piece, so the piece ends up being imbued with my attention and good intentions for that  person.

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

Jewelry by Wenaha Gallery artist Andrea Lyman

“I like to think that it is similar to an amulet or ‘medicine’ piece for them, bringing them luck, good fortune, peace, or whatever good things can come their way.”

Because she has an eye for the unusual and distinct, Lyman finds signature raw material wherever she goes, and every flea market, antique store, community market, or even yard sale is an opportunity to discover hidden gems that most people overlook. Back at her studio (“a space that is my own, filled with all of the things I need and the things that bring me delight”), Lyman pores through the drawers of her bead cabinet, which she has organized by color and shape and size.

“Something calls out to me — perhaps a color or a certain bead. I kind of let the materials tell me what they want to become.”

Part of any artist’s dilemma is that, after investing so much of their soul in a work, an eventual good-bye must be said if the artist is going to make a living at selling it.

“I only make things that I would love to wear, so I either wear all of them or none of them!” Lyman exclaims. That being said, there are pieces that, upon completion, never leave her possession, having been created for her own special occasion or specific outfit. It is at these times that Lyman feels the joy her clients experience upon possessing the perfect piece of jewelry.

“I love to play with the colors, shapes, and textures of the materials until a piece begins to create itself, guiding my hands, thoughts, and visions.

“My jewelry is truly wearable art, and each piece is unique.”

Wenaha GalleryAndrea Lyman is the featured Art Event artist at Wenaha Gallery, 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA from Monday, August 10 through Saturday, October 3.

Contact the gallery by phone at 800.755.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

Wenaha Gallery is your destination location for Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Prints, professional customized framing, and original fine art paintings and sculpture by notable Pacific Northwest artists.   Books, gifts, note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and more are also available. Visit at 219 East Main, Dayton, WA.

This article was written by Carolyn Henderson.

Hand thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

Beautiful Lizards — The Pottery of Roberta Zimmerman at Sun Lizard Studios

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Hand thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

The shape, form, glazing, and decoration of Roberta Zimmerman’s hand thrown pottery pieces is inspired by Native American design

Even the most urban-based child manages to find enough dirt and water to create mud pies at least once in their lives, but for Dayton potter Roberta Zimmerman, three out of four of the sacred elements — Earth, Air, and Water — were an integral part  of every childhood summer. (Fire, she added when she was an adult.)

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

“I was born in Arizona, the first-born daughter of a real cowboy and a homemaker,” Zimmerman says. “We lived all over Arizona on cattle ranches and movie sets, as my father worked on all of John Ford’s western movies shot in Arizona.”

While Zimmerman’s father attended to the stuff of legends, Zimmerman focused on that legendary childhood stuff — mud pies, baked under the scorching Arizona sun. When it got too hot for inedible culinary production, Zimmerman did what any sensible child would do and ran around barefoot.

“We found Indian arrowheads just laying all over the land. Another favorite pastime was chasing lizards — it was a challenge to be fast enough to catch them!”

Such is the stuff of memories better than legends, and in Zimmerman’s life, those memories have shaped the art that she does today: hand-thrown, hand-painted pottery designed to endure (because of that Fire she added, pushing the temperature in her studio kiln to 2300 degrees Fahrenheit) as well as be used for the cooking and serving of food (definitely not recommended with mud pies).

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

The lizards she chased and the arrowheads she admired factor strong in the decorative inspiration she adds to her finished work, expressing her reverence for and respect of Native American art and artists.

“The works I create reflect my love of the West and the ancient people who came before us,” Zimmerman explains. “Each and every piece is thrown on the pottery wheel, so there are no identical pieces — no molds.

“The paintings are free-hand paintings, no stencils. All the glazes are lead free to be safe for dinnerware.

“It is my deep wish that folks will enjoy using these pieces I create.”

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

In between childhood mud pies and adult work with clay, Zimmerman’s residence in the art arena took a break as she ceded to the demands of the work world, serving 11 years as a police dispatcher and 11 years as a correctional officer at Washington State Penitentiary (she and her husband, Ralph, who also worked as a correctional officer, like to tell friends that they met in prison).

When severe back surgery in 1999 resulted in an earlier retirement than Zimmerman had initially envisioned, Ralph’s practical, yet encouraging, nature propelled her forward when he asked,

“What do you want to do?”

Pottery. The answer was out before the question was finished.

“I just always wanted to do that ever since I was a little girl,” Zimmerman says. “So I started taking classes at community college, Ralph bought me a wheel and a kiln, and I was off and running.

“I bought every book I could get my hands on and highlighted and highlighted, and just tried and tried.”

Through the years, in addition to working with white stoneware, Zimmerman has explored Raku, pit-fired, black smoked, and horse hair pottery, and she has sold her work through art fairs, regional shows, gift shops, co-ops, and at Sun Lizard Studios, the brand name for her work which she creates from her Wolf Fork home.

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

Hand-thrown pottery by Roberta Zimmerman

An inveterate learner, she has added the Internet to her repertoire of information resources, communicating online with artist colleagues in Germany, Israel, and throughout the world. Ralph, ever the encourager, owes gratitude to the opportunities technology offers, remembering the five-hour driving detour they took once in Nevada so Zimmerman could visit a potter’s studio she had heard about.

“It turned out to be a fascinating place,” she remembers.

But just as fascinating is Sun Lizard Studios, named when Zimmerman’s daughter playfully observed, “Well, Mom, you are just an old sun lizard!” In this mountain retreat, where a bear swimming in the pond or turkeys strolling through the yard replace lizards darting underfoot, the child who spent her summers slapping mud seamlessly picks up where those joyous days of abandon left off.

“Making pottery has been the fulfillment of a dream for me.”

Wenaha GalleryRoberta Zimmerman is the featured Art Event artist at Wenaha Gallery, 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA from Monday, July 13 through Saturday, August 8.

Contact the gallery by phone at 800.755.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

Wenaha Gallery is your destination location for Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Prints, professional customized framing, and original fine art paintings and sculpture by notable Pacific Northwest artists.   Books, gifts, note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and more are also available. Visit at 219 East Main, Dayton, WA.

This article was written by Carolyn Henderson.

 

Colorful Spheres original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee.

Rock, Paper, Scissors — Cheri McGee’s One-of-a-Kind Cut Paper Paintings

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Colorful Spheres original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee.

Colorful Spheres, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

Most people, even if they flee at the mention of a fabric store, have met a quilter. Those unfamiliar with the craft marvel at the concept of taking yards of intact fabric, cutting it into smaller and disparate pieces, and reassembling those pieces into one planned, designed, and cohesive unit.

Blue Cat, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

Blue Cat, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

But a quilt seems like a simple thing when placed side by side with the cut paper art of Cheri McGee, an Enterprise, OR, artist whose palette consists of thousands of snipped, scissored, and punched out pieces of paper — some of them smaller than a tick. Practiced throughout the world, paper art can be as basic as a silhouette, those portraits in profile that we associate with the Victorian era, or insanely complicated — as  is the more intricate traditional work from China, Indonesia, Germany (Scherenschnitte), and the Philippines.

McGee does a little of everything, embracing a style that ranges from a timelessly nostalgic folk art village scene to a sinuously flowing, almost curvaceous abstract mixed with realism. And then there are the mosaic works, consisting of itsy bitsy (think back to that tick, in company with sunflower seeds and some orange pips ) squares and circles and triangles and diamonds meticulously arranged to create a paper version of something you’d expect to find in a Turkish marketplace.

African Dancers, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee.

African Dancers, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

“Painting with oils may be easier,” the artist comments, explaining how, in the process of cutting and layering card stock into a cohesive image, weeks fly by. But it is this very detail and intricacy, in addition to the uniqueness of the medium itself, that is the attraction.

“I have been working in paper for 30 years,” McGee says. “It began as both an experiment and a need for wall art when the phrase, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ kept echoing through my head.” Faced with a new home of blank, white walls, McGee’s eyes turned to her young daughter’s supply of construction paper, her hands picked up a pair of scissors, and a passion was born.

City Scene, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

City Scene, original cut paper art by Wenaha Gallery artist Cheri McGee

In short order, one pair of scissors grew into more than 25, and the cache of paper multiplied to, well, the equivalent of a quilter’s stash, as McGee kept an eye out, everywhere she traveled, for unique, unusual, textured, exotic, patterned, and colored stock. A spare room in her home functions as her studio, where creativity reigns and portable desk fans, even on hot days, do not.

Every finished artwork is unique, and while McGee may work on multiple projects simultaneously, there are no (no pun intended) short cuts. While in the early days she pre-cut and stored in drawers images and shapes as a means of speeding up future artworks, McGee found that she never used them, preferring, instead, to custom cut exactly what was needed precisely when the moment called for it.

It’s a build-as-you-go process, and the artwork itself makes its own demands. But when it comes to subject matter, anything goes, depending up McGee’s mood and inspiration, both of which are influenced by her interests, a childhood background in traveling as the daughter of a military family , and marriage to another artist, sculptor and flute carver Roger McGee.

“Being a self-taught artist, I find inspiration in that freedom, to create what strikes my fancy,” Cheri says. “I have recently begun a series of images and designs from the ’60s. I am also inspired by Moroccan designs, having lived there as a child when my father was serving in the Air Force.”

Lucky Charmz, original cut paper art by Cheri McGee

Lucky Charmz, original cut paper art by Cheri McGee

McGee’s works are in the homes of collectors from California to New York, as well as in Japan. She has shown and sold her work at the Kalispell Art Show and Auction in Montana, Spokane’s MONAC Western Show and Auction, and the Western Art Association Show and Auction in Ellensburg.

But the best place to find the artist herself is in that studio, scissors in one hand, paper in the other, as eyes, soul, and psyche focus on creating a work of art that has no twin of itself, anywhere, in the world.

Wenaha GalleryCheri McGee’s cut paper art is on display at Wenaha Gallery through Saturday, June 27, 2015.

Contact the gallery by phone at 800.755.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

Wenaha Gallery is your destination location for Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Prints, professional customized framing, and original fine art paintings and sculpture by notable Pacific Northwest artists.   Books, gifts, note cards, jigsaw puzzles, and more are also available. Visit at 219 East Main, Dayton, WA.

This article was written by Carolyn Henderson.