Spring Arts & Style

He works alone and on his own schedule using fire, heavy metal and big hammers. As Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath keep time, Hunter Dahlberg pounds away on long iron beams, and, in the process, makes plenty of loud noises of his own.

Kyle Catterlin didn't necessarily know how to build a guitar when he set out to construct his first instrument less than a decade ago. What he did know was how he wanted his guitar to sound.

Jeff Pechan is a jack of all trades. He has many hobbies, from raising birds to woodworking to making tea, but the woodworking is the most impressive.

It’s hard to find much of anything in today’s mass production world that isn’t outsourced to overseas factories and pumped out for pennies on the dollar. Whether it’s clothing or couches, good old-fashioned craftsmanship is hard to find. With that in mind, we set out to create this year’s spring arts and style issue with an eye toward replacing the artless junk in your life with items that have both artistic and industrial integrity. Another way to say that is sh*t that doesn’t suck. To do that, we pulled in local experts in the fields of fashion, interior design and fine art. Keeping with the theme, we’ve got profiles of local artisans, including a furniture maker, a guitar luthier and a local blacksmith—Central Oregonians who are proving that, Chinese sweatshops be damned, craftsmanship is still alive right here in your hometown. Look at little further and you’ll find a profile of local horseshoer Walt Freund, whose mobile ferrier business is bustling.
It’s all right here in the Spring Arts and Style Issue.

Eric Flowers, editor

Photography by: Christian Heeb and Derek Oldham
Special thanks: Derek Oldham and Hunter Dahlberg (Cover)

As an artist, Shelley Futch Anderson doesn't think she fits into the Bend art scene. She's been involved with PoetHouse Art, but has a few years on most of the artists there. On the other side of the spectrum, her work has a more contemporary feel than that of her peers. Anderson creates oil paintings with a conscience and thanks to her background in commercial graphic design has begun incorporating another layer into her art.
Her latest series features an oil painting behind dye sublimation on chiffon. What does that mean exactly? In front of the painting on a sturdy frame made by her husband Pauly, also an artist who headed up the snow sculpting at WinterFest, hangs a piece of fabric with an image print on it. The combination creates a multidimensional piece of art, unlike anything other local artists are currently doing.

Stuart Breidenstein likes to say he creates “jewelry for weirdos.” But if that's the case, then Bend has more than a few weirdos drooling over his unique creations: masks made of metal and leather, round-eyed aviator goggles and pendants with polished trapezoids of ebony and moveable gears. Breidenstein's work gathers different media – from wood to copper to bright pink Nerds candy – and imaginatively walks the line between wearable fine art and edgy high fashion.

Packed into her tiny workspace in the rear of the PoetHouse Art space in downtown Bend, Alicia Renner has a rack full of clothing she's recently completed. To her, it's art, but art that you can wear.

“Some people can make things that look like you can buy them in any store, but I like to add some originality to what I do,” says the 21-year-old Renner, who grew up in the wilds of Canada, outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario. She still gets back to Canada frequently, having previously spent the summers planting trees in the forests and also lived in Toronto last fall.

Looking at her work and knowing how quickly it's been selling off the walls of local stores and galleries, you'd likely never guess that Sarah Hubbard once almost failed a high school art class.
“Yeah, I know, how do you fail an art class? I guess I was always into artistic stuff, but not really into painting yet. But I think I talked my way into a passing grade,” says Hubbard, swaying back and forth in her kitchen with her five-month-old daughter, Elsie (pictured with Sarah), snuggling up to her chest, eyes still watery from her nap.