First Saturday Art Walk Takes Place in Port Townsend

PORT TOWNSEND — Gallery 9, Northwind Art and the Port Townsend Gallery will be among the venues participating in the Art Walk from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday in downtown Port Townsend.

• The Port Townsend Gallery, 715 Water St. will host a reception for Margaret Woodcock and Mitchel Osborne from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday.

Woodcock, a multimedia artist, will present new hand-printed prints developed at Corvidae Press in Fort Worden as well as collages created in her studio.

Two themes emerge in these new works: joy in the garden and the identification of a sense of place.

Woodcock explores a different technique to create the images on her new photopolymer plate prints; she draws with ink, ink wash and grease pencils to create the floral and arboreal forms.

Woodcock also exhibits narrative collages made by cutting or tearing images from paper and, sometimes, sheer fabric, then pasting them onto Bristol or watercolor paper using a semi-gloss acrylic medium.

It combines human and animal forms, landscapes and other graphic elements such as maps, handwritten notes or paintings.

Osborne is a professional photographer who focuses on editorial, commercial and travel photography and has been published in travel guides, magazines and books.

Since moving to Port Townsend in 2006, he has been drawn to the vast maritime trade as he discovered a new interest in the beauty, craftsmanship and preservation of boats in this historic setting.

Osborne's exhibition includes a new series of reflections on boats and new material from his recent travels to Portugal, Spain and Paris, which include scenes from the Douro Valley wine region, Spanish cathedrals and Parisian monuments.

Osborne's work includes an assortment of media, from metal to acrylic to canvas and traditional paper prints, to complement the subjects.

He works in color as his primary medium, but also adds black and white prints for a traditional look.

Woodcock's mixed media artwork and Osborne's photography are on display at the Port Townsend Gallery, 715 Water St., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily in July.

For more information, call the gallery at 360-379-8110 or visit www.porttownsend gallery.com.

• The Jeanette Best Gallery, 701 Water St. will host an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday for “Sifting the Silence,” a collection of 40 paintings, prints and intaglio prints by Port Townsend-based artist Shirley Scheier.

Scheier seeks to share the energy of nature and the joy she finds in it through her art.

Scheier finds inspiration for her work in the Salish Sea, the forest and the flowers blooming outside her studio.

Scheier, a graduate of the Universities of Kansas and Wisconsin who taught art at the University of Washington from 1986 to 2016, credits the Surrealists as an important influence on her art.

His works are in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Meg Kaczyk will interview Scheier during a gallery talk at 7 p.m. on July 18.

“Sifting the Silence” will be on display at the Jeanette Best Gallery, 701 Water St., from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday through Aug. 18.

For more information, visit www.northwindart.org.

• Gallery 9, 1012 Water St. will feature the oil painting of Linda Marie Kempe and the woodturning of Jon Geisbush from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday.

Kempe creates art in various forms, from wearable fabrics to paintings that evoke deep thoughts.

Over the past 20 years of producing and selling her art, she has developed a style she calls Flow Energy Art.

“As an artist, my responsibility is to let go of preconceived ideas and let art be created through me,” Kempe explains. “My art, my personal work on the soul, consists of channeling images that appear active in my mind, combining nature, dreams, the common and the unknown, as well as portraits and surrealism.

“I paint mainly in oil on canvas or board, and sometimes in watercolor on paper. The images appear in my mind and I take a canvas or paper and draw quickly, letting the idea develop as I go. The images come through me, they do not come from me.”

Geisbush, a Washington native, is a self-taught woodturner who has always enjoyed working with his hands.

When his family encouraged him to take up a hobby in retirement, he took up woodturning and has been enjoying it for 15 years.

“The art of woodturning begins with the source of the wood. When I first started turning, I lived in a barren part of the country where the most available wood was lumber, like the kind you find in sawmills,” Geisbush says. “Whether it was a tool handle, a bowl, or a platter, the lumber was glued together and turned. I quickly learned about different species, and the starting shapes of the wood offered different presentations.”

Upon his return to western Washington, his interest in woodturning grew with the availability of new sources of wood from local trees and his meeting with other woodturners.

As his turning skills improved, he began experimenting with the wood to see what colors or grain patterns could be found within it.

Kempe and Geisbush's work is on display at Gallery-9, 1012 Water St., from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday throughout the month of July.

For more information, visit www.gallery-9.com.