Bainbridge Arts & Crafts welcomes Keiko Hara, a Japanese artist of international renown, for the exhibit “Keiko Hara: Prints from 1981 to 2013” at the gallery in July.
An opening reception is 6 to 8 p.m. July 5 on the First Fridays Art Walk.
Through vividly abstract two and three-dimensional work, the artist explores the universal concepts of place, space, nature, memory, and the passage of time with imagination, energy and astonishing technical skill.
Hara has built a 40-year career in the United States with works of art that meld traditional and contemporary techniques with a sophisticated sensibility that truly bridges cultures. Born during World War II, the artist relocated to the U.S. in the early 1970s to further her art studies, earning three fine art degrees in vastly different locales, from Mississippi to Michigan to Wisconsin. From 1985 to 2006 she was a professor of art at Whitman College in Walla Walla.
Hara will discuss her inventive, technically astounding prints, which meld traditional Japanese techniques with a strikingly modern sensibility, at a gallery talk at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, July 6 at BAC. No advance registration is necessary for the free presentation.
Also on display in July at BAC, “Sumi” and “The Vase.”
“Sumi” features works on paper by members of Puget Sound Sumi Artists. These “masters of ink” will show both calligraphy and landscape by Bill Colby, Darlene Dihel, Fumiko Kimura, Chizuko Nicholas, Trish Rogers, Selinda Sheridan, Midori Kono Thiel, Lois Yoshida and Yuming Zhu.
“The Vase” includes elegant, functional Japanese-inspired vessels by Nick Ashman, Colleen Gallagher, Barry McAlister, Michel McCarter, Reid Ozaki, Ann Reynolds-Pearl and Rick Stafford.
BAC’s July exhibitions coincide with this year’s Japanese American National Museum Conference, to be held July 4-7 in Seattle and commemorating the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
The exhibitions run through July 29.
Bainbridge Arts & Crafts is at 151 Winslow Way E. and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
For more information, call 206-842-3132 or visit www.bacart.org.
