These are perfect days at the coast, so last weekend the mister and I took a mini-vacation to Florence and Bandon to see some arty friends and look in at several galleries.
Some of you may remember the originator of Viz City and long-time owner of Raven Frameworks, Terry Way, now blissfully retired in Florence with a picture window right on the Siuslaw River. We popped in to see what new art he’s been doing. To my surprise, Terry is making very unusual 8-12 inch sculptural pieces that have moving parts. For example, one piece has a winged figure that flies around a sun called “Automaton: Icarus.” A sign urges the viewer to “crank me.” You have the satisfaction of seeing a rope winding in action and when released, the figure of Icarus flies around the sun.
You can see this cool art and lots more at the Florence Regional Arts Alliance or FRAA at 120 Maple Street.
In Bandon, we met up with artist Victoria Tierney. She was preparing nine of her digital prints and invited us into her studio to discuss how they should be ordered on the wall for her upcoming show at Southern Coos Hospital. Artists from Bandon and the southern Oregon coast submitted work based on the theme "Glorious Water: Puddles, the Pacific & Beyond.”
Victoria creates her images using an app called ArtRage. Her images are all suggestive, hinting at a world of plankton or the swirl of tide pools. Her studio was full of decades of a productive painter’s life.
You know me—I want everybody to get in the habit of walking into a gallery and then, “slow the scroll.” As Rumi says about how to enjoy art galleries,“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
