First Friday: March Art Walk offerings include fiber works, paintings, sculptures

Third time’s as charming as ever.

This year’s March installment of the monthly First Friday Art Walk in downtown Winslow is set to serve up an array of awesome art for lovers of craft and beauty, whether they come from near or far.

The action, as always, will be in full swing from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 6.

Participants in the beloved monthly event, organized by the Bainbridge Island Downtown Association and sponsored by the city of Bainbridge Island, include nearly 30 galleries, show rooms, museums, shops and offices. Though the list sometimes changes month-to-month, the latest info can be obtained by visiting www.bainbridgedowntown.org.

A few highlights:

The slate of new, springtime showings at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art kicks off early with the debut of “Fiber 2020” Friday.

BIMA officials recently announced their imminent crop of new offerings, set to debut with a public opening from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 14, but “Fiber 2020,” which explores diverse ways artists are working in fiber and textiles, will be up and ready to view this week.

More than 35 artists are featured in this large group exhibition, from traditional fiber arts through contemporary works and installations.

Media on display includes lace, embroidery, quilts, wearables — reconstituted and repurposed objects — conceptual sculptures and art installations. Participating artists include Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry, Margaret Gibbs, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, Hollie Clark, Maura Donegan, Zia Gipson, Gail Grinnell, Margie McDonald, Julie Paschkis, Maria Phillips, Lynnette Sandbloom, Kristin Tollefson, and Ko Kirk Yamahira.

Kicking off the exhibition is a weekend festival that showcases the many facets of textile and fiber arts.

Imbued with the spirit of discovery that characterizes the medium, Fiber Fest has been designed as a playful, immersive and interactive weekend festival, including a heavy dose of spectacle and creativity.

Explore the versatility and multi-faceted expressions of fiber with workshops, demos, hands-on activities, community partners, lectures, and a three-day pop-up sale featuring fiber artists from the Puget Sound region.

To learn more and view a complete schedule of events, visit www.biartmuseum.org/events/fiberfest.

This month’s showing at the Bainbridge Performing Arts Gallery is “From Sea to Tree with Mountains In Between,” a collection of abstract mixed-media pieces by Thendara Kida-Gee.

Growing up in the relative flat of Buffalo, New York, Kida-Gee is entranced by the Puget Sound’s positioning between mountain ranges. Such placement yields an added ability to locate oneself that is rare in other places — a defining of space where land tells us where we are and what to do as opposed to man.

She obsesses over the mountains and the feelings of freedom they inspire as she contemplates her own “speck-like nature compared to the vastness of it all.”

With those mountains comes a beautiful blanket of trees and lapping of seas. Having lived a good portion of her life in cities, Kida-Gee’s move to Washington was like “coming home to a place I never knew as home.”

“The trees are my people and the sea a disenchanted friend. Nature and the nurture it affords here give life what I had been missing, really with no idea,” she said.

The works in this exhibit are mixed media, but the majority of them are what Kida-Gee calls “recycled landscapes” — abstract images cut “meditation-ally” and methodically by transforming something old or discarded, and hand-creating something new.

The show will remain on display through Monday, March 30.

Visit the “Gallery” section of www.bainbridgeperform ingarts.org to learn more.

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is proud to announce its second solo exhibition by Kingston painter Evy Olsen Halvorsen as its main March offering.

Halvorsen will show a group of works in oil and encaustics from Friday, March 6 to Tuesday, March 31, with a special reception for the artist set to take place from 6 to 8 p.m. during First Friday.

Many of the new works are purely abstract, according to gallery officials, though some contain figurative elements and text.

Powerful in color selection and gesture, Halvorsen’s works reveal and conceal ancient Nordic visions and memories in a gritty and turbulent manner contrasted by passages of optimism and tenderness. Halvorsen’s encaustic efforts are increasingly more subtle in color and texture as her technique matures, adding a dreamy liquid environment to her repertoire.

Born in Norway before her family relocated to Ballard in 1956, she has been making art since she was a small child. After raising kids, she received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 1999.

Halvorsen has exhibited primarily in Kitsap County and on the Olympic Peninsula with a few appearances in Seattle.

For many years she was a driving force behind the Kitsap Arts and Crafts Festival in Kingston, giving visibility to local talent and raising substantial sums to help aspiring art students attend college.

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is located at 181 Winslow Way East, Suite F. Call 360-598-4479 to learn more.

Robert Schlegel and Daniel Brown will have work on display throughout the month at Roby King Gallery.

Schlegel’s acrylic paintings explore the tension between the representational and the abstract. He is well known for his response to structural shapes in the landscape.

Sometimes animals, birds and the human figure are explored in his colorful yet minimal painterly style.

Working in acrylic on canvas, panel or paper, he often includes collage materials in his paintings.

A sculptor from Okanagan, Brown comes to sculpture from a science and art education background.

With a degree in wildlife biology, he continued on to receive his art and teaching certification and for many years he taught science and art in Soap Lake.

He taught environmental education for the Peace Corps in Paraguay and worked as a biological technician in Umatilla National Forest in Oregon. Brown continues to teach drawing, painting, art history, printmaking and sculpture in Okanagan and has developed a school sculpture garden and permanent art collection.

Brown joined the gallery last year, according to gallery officials, and his cut-steel sculpture combines with found objects to create some very exciting outdoor sculptures of birds and fish.

There will be an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. The gallery is located at 176 Winslow Way East.

Bainbridge Island artist Diane Walker is the featured artist for this month’s exhibition at the Bainbridge Public Library.

The March show is titled “Out of the Box” and will feature more of Walker’s abstract paintings.

Walker described her new show: “Being relatively new to painting — and working primarily in abstracts — gives me a wonderful excuse to be constantly exploring new possibilities. Whether the result is visually satisfying or not, I have the fun of testing new colors, tools, techniques, and compositions; I’m not yet locked into a particular style. And, because acrylic paint dries quickly, if I don’t like the results I can just keep painting over what I’ve done until it evolves into something that pleases me.”

Walker will be available for a “meet-and-greet” for First Friday, from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday, March 6 (there is no reception this month only) and the new exhibit will be on display for the entire month of March.

A portion of art sales is donated back to the library.

Image courtesy of Roby King Gallery | “Four Square Aqua” by Robert Schlegel, whose work is on display at downtown Winslow’s Roby King Galleries through March. Image courtesy of Jeffrey Moose Gallery | “Isn’t It Clear?” by Evy Olsen Halvorsen, subject of this month’s featured exhibition at Jeffrey Moose Gallery. Image courtesy of Bainbridge Performing Arts | The mixed-media work of Thendara Kida-Gee, on display at the Bainbridge Performing Arts Gallery through March.