VAA 2010 Art Auction
Commissioned Artists

FRIDAY:

Charlotte Masi

Gourd artist Charlotte Masi learned to use hand tools when she was young. Her dad, who had a shop in the home, taught her. Now, seven years after his death, she works in her own shop, where she creates her gourds. Yet the main bench at which she works was his, an olive-colored army surplus piece of equipment with an ancient vacuum and a couple of large vises.

Lively engagement pervades Charlotte’s life: she was the first woman in her high school to take a drafting course, and went on to a B.A. in Commercial Art and Industrial Design, a field at that time dominated by men. She later earned an MA in Ceramics and Welded Metal Sculpture.

On January 1, 2006, she awoke and said to herself, “I’m going to do gourds now.” For the auction she created a vase by turning the gourd over and attaching a base. Charlotte also makes bowls, rattles and lidded pots that can be used for storage or for food serving.
Images from nature such as plants, vegetables or insects are created on the outer surfaces. The design is drawn on carbon paper, transferred to the gourd, then incised with woodburning tools. Colors follow, the outlined images colored with dyes, pastes and acrylics.

“I sometimes make complicated pieces, and I’m not sure how it will come out,” she adds. And she keeps busy: in February she’ll show at Seattle’s Flower and Garden Show, for which she’ll prepare hundreds of pieces.

Kristen Reitz-Green

A Juilliard-trained professional French horn player behind an easel? For Kristen Reitz-Green, the decision to create art full-time was easy. “Playing freelance French horn was stressful; I was ready for change.”

After painting furniture, she tried canvases. She plunged into a VAA class with Pam Ingalls. “Pam is my biggest influence; I had never touched a tube of oil paint. As a musician, there was never room for anything else,” she explains.

Reitz-Green instantly became enamored with oil painting. “I did a painting a day for a year and put it on my blog (reitzgreenblogspot.com).”

Searching for her ‘signature’ style, she painted what she calls ‘naughty foods’––gummy bears, Swedish fish, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, even Fruit Loops. “I couldn’t get enough in… then one day I saw a big canvas. I knew that was it. These comfort foods have memories and large canvases give them room to breathe.”

Reitz-Green photographs her subjects, grids the photo on her computer, one square at a time, then draws over the squares to gain perspective. Painting from corner to corner in a layered, dark-to-light process, she adds, “I strive for photographic quality at a distance; up close it’s macro-impressionism.”

“It’s a real honor to be a commissioned artist,” she says, and notes, “I wanted to do ice cream; it has so many textures.” Her 36” x 48” auction piece, “Cherry on Top,” serves up a calorie-free painting of a banana split oozing over the silver dish rim.

Rick Wallace

A fold-up Kodak camera in fifth grade began Rick Wallace’s lifelong interest in photography. Wallace, a Friday commissioned artist, recalls, “I went nuts for photography. My parents even threatened to stop buying film for me.”

For a period in his mid-30s, he decided to stop looking at everything through a hole while traveling so that he could instead experience life as it is, he explains. However, an Africa trip in 1998 brought him back to taking pictures, with encouragement from his wife Karen Baer, and he gained new perspective. He realized that instead of keeping him separate, his camera brings him into contact with the people in his images.

“Water for Life,” his African triptych in this year’s auction, contains three striking photos as well as a social message about the joy of clean water that’s too rare in African nations such as Chad and Cameroon, where the pictures were taken. The photos concentrate on people’s faces, including a girl using the foot pump donated by a construction company to provide water to a village with a polluted well.

Rick and Karen moved to Vashon from Los Angeles 11 years ago, where she was a physician and he a radio and TV newsman. When Rick travels globally as vice president of a public relations firm, he always prioritizes space in his backpack and bag for photo gear. “It’s all a journey,” says Rick. “If you regard the journey as its own goal, then you live a full life.”

SATURDAY:

Donna Botten

Donna Botten has lived on Vashon her whole life and enjoyed drawing since she was a young girl. Full-time painter for the last six years, Botten started in oils and now paints primarily in watercolor. Her work was recently juried into two prestigious shows, the National Watercolor Society show in San Pedro, CA (all-members show) and the Northwest Watercolor Society Open Show, a three-month exhibit in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

Using photographs as a general guide for her subject, Botten adds, subtracts or changes backgrounds. She especially likes to paint portraits and old tractors and cars. “I love painting my dogs too,” she adds.

“Into the Sun,” to be auctioned Saturday evening, demonstrates her considerable talent for recreating realistic florals and her propensity for detail. She often paints flowers from her profusely blooming Burton garden.

Influenced by the simplicity and luminosity of painters such as Jamie Wyeth (known for non-human subjects) and his father, Andrew Wyeth, Botten appreciates the spontaneity of watercolors and layering of color. “I think it’s more forgiving than people think. I love the light underneath.”

She also enjoys ‘pouring’––a bold process that involves masking off areas of the painting and literally pouring paint onto the surface. “It’s always a surprise, a style that leaves more to chance.”

A Barnworks member, Botten says she enjoys the camaraderie. “I’ve made a lot of good friendships there,” she says. “I was pleasantly surprised to be selected as a commissioned artist for this year’s Auction.”

Cory Winn

Wandering into a bookstore as a student of comparative literature, Cory Winn found a publication about handmade tiles, and the next day, purchased book, clay and kiln. She was hooked and began her career as a potter, with books and experimentation helping her discover her own style.

Winn’s decorative ceramic tiles, bowls and vases begin with thin, snake-like coils of terra cotta clay. She stacks each coil, one on top of another, and meticulously smoothes edges with a wooden Kemper tool. “It’s not efficient, but I love the simplicity. All I need is a lump of clay,” she explains.

After creating the tile or vessel, Winn uses tracing paper and carbon to draw and transfer designs to the low-fired surface. Inspired by nature, books and illuminations from medieval times, Winn admits it is challenging. “I find the design process both invigorating and difficult; I labor over it.”

Employing tiny brushes, she ‘paints’ intricate lines with a wax resist material, which preserves definition and affords the opportunity to achieve a highly textural relief finish. “I settled on this technique because it allows me to use many colors.”

Her Saturday Art Auction piece, “Flicker and Dahlia Vase” (inspired by an early Celtic vase), uses 31 different glazes in an elaborate, timeless bird and vine design.
“Being commissioned was a nice surprise; it pushed me to do something I’ve never done,” says Winn. Her work will also be in VAA’s Tile Guild Show in October 2010.

John Lucas

Chicago native and sculptor John Lucas found his way to the Northwest via geology studies at UW. An artist at heart, from the beginning he combined sculpture with painting. He ultimately earned his BFA from Cornish and worked for a fine art handling company nearly a decade before deciding to immerse himself in art.

Recently Lucas has sculpted curious clay figures––men, women and children involved in simple situations or holding a meditative stance. They first appeared in VAA’s Miniatures Show. “I’ve wanted to work larger; I enjoy the pieces and like to live with them a bit to allow their characters to develop.”

“The Dowser” (auctioned on Saturday) depicts a 22-inch tall, clay folkloric figure that embodies a gifted connection to the natural world. Holding a Y-shaped, polished madrone with painted metallic tips, Lucas’s piece captures the otherworldly essence of a serious dowser, one who divines groundwater.

“Dowsing is an interesting metaphor for how many of us depend on our intuitions to make decisions without really understanding the why and how,” he says. “I like to do things that are at the edge, challenging with contradictory emotions.”

Lucas refers to his sculptures as 3-D painting surfaces. He uses many thin layers of ‘scrubbed out’ acrylic on the figure, creating what he calls ‘color on the edge of comfort.’
Since 1991, Lucas has lived on Vashon with his wife, Claudia Hollander. “It’s important where I live and my experience with place. My work is very personal.”

Women Concealed and Revealed

Blue Heron Gallery Opening:
Friday, August 6, 6 to 9 pm
Artist Talk 5:30 pm

Don Cole and Francie Allen
Acrylic on Canvas and Mixed Media Wire Sculpture

Women and the human form are the focus for the August Blue Heron Gallery exhibit. Sculptor Francie Allen’s new figurative work is featured and painter Donald Cole displays early works not previously shown, a retrospective of an era.Both artists will discuss their work in a free lecture from 5:30 pm until 6 pm, Friday, Aug. 6, before the opening. Later, hear live music by Notrio, Jack Barbash, piano, Steve Meyer, bass and Geoff John, percussion.

Allen lived on Vashon 1982-1998, and recently returned to the Northwest (Bellingham); she resided in Northern California since 2003. New York native Cole and wife Joan Wortis moved to Vashon in the early 1990s from New York City where they both were immersed in the art scene.

Currently Don is represented by ArtXchange, a Seattle gallery. He was a VAA Art Auction commissioned artist in 2005 and last showed work at the Blue Heron Gallery in 1999.

In a recent interview at Cole’s Wax Orchard home, he and long-time friend Allen shared thoughts about their work and the upcoming show.

Q: What was the draw of California? 
Francie: I went to California to reinvent myself and reflect on my work. It was a huge exploration with materials, a personal journey of inquiry. As a figurative sculptor with a great love of clay, I feel liberated from my previous work [concrete garden sculptures], which was so connected to the earth. Now I build form in layers; it’s like drawing in the air. I manipulate chicken and aviary wire––I like using common everyday materials. Because it’s light, I can make much larger pieces, figures up to 7 feet tall. I paint them with an acrylic gel medium.

Q: How did you and Don meet and how did this new collaboration evolve?
Francie: Don and I have been friends for many years; we met through a mutual friend. Don came up with the idea and Elaine Hanowell suggested me.

Don: Elaine knew we were both working with human imagery, so we talked about it and decided it would work. My textural acrylic work is a mix of figurative and abstract. These pieces are very personal, about emotional times. They were painted between 1984 and 1990, after a hiatus from painting. The inspiration and theme evolved from an image, Venus of Willendorf, a stone fertility figure from 15,000 BC. My approach was metaphorical, not realist. The content of this work released my feelings… Now it’s time for them to be revealed.

Francie: Don’s imagery reflects his feelings about woman; mine are about myself as a woman, my relationships with others and men. I’m not sure which came first, the art or the feelings. I think both bodies of work are about the human being in relationship. It’s Jungian––perhaps anima/animus, the polarity and the complementary nature of man and woman.

Q: Tell me about your artistic process and what’s next for you artistically.
Don: Except for this particular body of work, my work evolves organically; for example, in our travels to Viet Nam, I was inspired to paint mountains. I don’t ever know where it will go next. For this show I’ll have up to 20 pieces. Color is my thing. These paintings and drawings, due to their theme, offer elements of surprise and a special kind of energy. The combination of our work, mine and Francie’s, is going to be amazing for the viewer.

2010 BLUE HERON GALLERY SHOWS

January Penny Grist (Mixed Media Sculpture)
Larry Muir (Jewelry)
February Rob Snyder (Glass)
March Matt Vogt (Photography)
Suze Woolf (Watercolor)
Dave and Boni Deal (Raku Pottery)
April Tapestry Artists of Puget Sound (Tapestry)
May Kira Bacon (Fiber)
Erin Schulz (Classical Realism Painting)
June Quartermaster Press (Printmaking)
July Shelley Hanna (Photography)
Tove Pisarelle (Oil Painting)
Deby Harvey (Mixed Media Metal)
August Don Cole (Acrylic Painting)
Francie Allen (Wire Sculpture)
September Art Auction
October Tile Guild (Group Show)
November Victoria Adams (Oil and Wax Paintings)
December Masters in Miniature (Group Show)