This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s Arts Review Program.
December lights up the sky with wonderful art this festive season. I just stopped in to the Emerald Art Center to see two artists invited to show by the ever proactive Photography at Oregon. These two artists, Rhonda Lashley Lopez and Ann Mitchell both work in that in-between world where the image starts as a photograph, but gets so layered and worked over that there should be a new and more interesting word to describe it.

Once you really start putting your eyeballs into this art, I really think you’re gonna like it. All the images are on the small and dark side but each is redeemed by some special element. For example, Lashly Lopez loves spiritualized additions to her dark landscapes such as a flying white bird, wings blurred in flight, or a yellow butterfly on a dark and textured field. Mitchell has one photo that looks like a sepia-toned Maxfield Parrish--an angelic young girl peacefully posed under an enormous tree, eyes dreaming out over the land. I’ll put some images up on the KLCC.org/viz city blog for you to check out.

These two artists will be giving a free artist’s talk and demo (so I’ll finally figure how they get their spooky effects!) at the Emerald Art Center this coming Sunday at 2:00 pm, followed by a potluck. Hard to beat that combination!

On my continuing theme of unusual venues to see art, bring your honey to the Eugene Court House and hold hands while you stroll the boulevards of Keith Munson’s terrific portfolio of images from Paris, and yes, I mean Paris, France!
Are you going to the beach to take in the immensely popular Holiday Lights at Shore Acres? Go in time to stop in at the lovely Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay for a different kind of light show; an exhibition called Portals--Windows and Doors. Look for art by painter Victoria Tierney, who is sure to steal the show.
Remember the New Zone Gallery in downtown Eugene is loaded with local and affordable art, and look around you in restaurants and coffee shops cuz ART IS EVERYWHERE!
Viz City is co-produced by Terry Way and Sandy Brown Jensen.