At Liberty Arts Collaborative reopened at the beginning of the month, with state mandated guidelines in place.
On March 13, the downtown Bend gallery opened a new exhibition, “Russians & Americans & One Italian,” featuring the art of Jim Riswold, a Seattle-based copywriter-turned-artist and leukemia survivor. Riswold’s photography has appeared in galleries across the country, and many of his pieces and exhibitions poke light-hearted fun at unfavorable historical figures, like Adolf Hitler. This week, Riswold’s art featuring Joseph Stalin appears on the Source cover.
In March, At Liberty shut down the day after Riswold’s exhibition opened, due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We recently reopened Jim’s show,” explained Kaari Vaughn, At Liberty co-founder. “His show will be up from now through July 4. What’s really cool is that he’s produced some new work since the show went up in March that’s COVID-related. It’s very timely and we encourage everyone to come and see it.”
Following Riswold’s show, At Liberty will exhibit the works of Kai’la Ferrell-Smith, a contemporary visual artist based in Modoc Point, Oregon. The exhibition is called “A Lie Nation, Alienation: New Paintings,” and will run from July 9 through August 29.
Vaughn explained that several gallery rules have been changed in accordance with statewide mandates. “We’ve limited our hours to Thursday through Saturday from 1-6pm, or by appointment,” Vaughn said. “We’ve limited our capacity to 10 people at a time, we’re following social distancing guidelines and we’re requiring masks. We provide masks to those who may have forgotten theirs. We do have immunocompromised staff in the gallery, and when people hear this, they tend to be super respectful. We hope that everyone has a chance to come see Riswold’s new work; it’s light, it’s satirical and it’s really what we all need right now.”
Russians & Americans & One Italian
At Liberty Arts Collaborative
849 NW Wall St., Bend
atlibertyarts.com
This article appears in Jun 17-24, 2020.
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