Art Watch 7/8-7/15

One of the best smorgasbords of art in Central Oregon is hosted this weekend at Bank of the Cascades’ Summer Festival, with 150 booths and artists.

There are wood carvings, water colors, and fine outdoor wildlife photography, like Dan Ester’s collection of crisp photos of osprey with fish in their talons set against the blue sky, and raccoons with each whisker in sharp focus. Kirk Casey with Terrasteel is bringing a collection of furniture—rich woods set against stark solid metal structures—and there are surreal paintings, like those from last year’s Best Of Jury: Joni Olsen, who worked for more than a quarter-century as a marketing and membership director for Bend Golf & Country Club, and now creates fine art, like a collage of images set in a buffalo’s outline.

There is traditional, elegant pottery from David Scott and less traditional, like Beth Yoe, who picks up rocks and twigs and bits of trains—what she calls “remnants of a disappearing time”—from Eastern Oregon to fashion jewelry. Her work is described as “looking beyond the literal to where things meet or don’t meet…to the edges…and shape, to where things get out of their skins and become form, like the tenuous connection between sky and earth.”

This year’s Best of Jury was awarded to Ping Zhang from Bellingham, Washington. An embroidery artist, she learned from her grandparents and creates images that are delicate yet also look like slightly blurred and surreal photographs.

For those looking to become artists, Nathan Sowa will teach a plein air class focused on capturing natural light and regional landscapes. Born in Guam, Sowa came to Oregon as a student at Oregon State; his final year he spent on exchange in France and later enrolled at the Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. (11 am–1 pm, Saturday)

Summer Festival Fine Art Promenade

11 am–7 pm, Saturday & Sunday.

Wall Street, between NW Oregon

and NW Franklin avenues.

This article appears in Jul 8-16, 2015.