Gayle Bard, Barbara Helen Berger earn the local arts award.

For Gayle Bard, it’s all about seeing – perhaps a strange statement from an artist who lost her left eye in a car accident when she was 37.

“I see differently than other people do because of my vision, so I probably look harder,” said the artist.

For author and illustrator Barbara Helen Berger, the joy of creating on Bainbridge is the “wonderful balance between quiet and solitude and connecting with people. It’s a very nurturing place to be a writer and an artist.”

For their excellence and commitment to the arts, Bard and Berger are the recipients of this year’s Island Treasures, presented by the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council.

The pair will be honored Jan. 29 at IslandWood.

Singular view

Gayle Bard’s vision has expressed itself in a variety of forms and over many years.

Those nominating Bard for the Island Treasure award cite her prolific art, energy, teaching and community service, and overcoming trials in her life.

Many islanders are familiar with her name from the sculptures that sit outside Bainbridge Island City Hall.

But how does Bard see her own artwork, to which she was only able to fully dedicate herself after she turned 50?

“When you have monocular vision, you have to compensate,” she said. “I have no depth perception, so sometimes I’m fooled, but because I know how that works, I know the rules of portraying spatial relationships.

“One of the things I’m good at is creating the illusion of depth in 2D and 3D works. I have done installations 4 feet deep and 4 feet wide, and you’d swear it was several rooms.”

Bard recalls her fascination as a child watching a seemingly endless number of clowns exiting a tiny Volkswagen, “so there is that delight that I take in fooling people.”

Bard created a miniature tableau in a cigar humidor that turned out like a multilayered pun. Opening the box, the view finds a carpet of tobacco, and a lens sticks out beckoning the viewer.

The scent of tobacco is stronger as the viewer looks through to see a table with another humidor on top, a pipe tray, a French newspaper, while hanging on the wall is the Magritte painting of a pipe with the French words “This is not a pipe”

“Well, this ain’t no humidor either, Honey,” Bard says with a hearty laugh. The title of the piece? “Smokescreen.”

Bard eventually established her reputation in such installations and tableau.

In a small cabinet, no more than a foot high and a little bit wider, a small eyepiece offers a peek inside. A seemingly Anytown USA scene of an empty house has a framed picture on the floor leaning against the wall.

The little drawer of the cabinet contains old love letters and divorce papers; the other drawer, matches from Vietnam and military brass. The piece, completed in 1985, is called “One of Our Other Wars.”

In such works, Bard tries to “activate people’s memories by telling a ‘story’ that is pretty generic, that can be triggered by visual effects.”

Bard studied art at various schools, from the University of Wisconsin to Yale University, finally earning a BFA from Cornish College when she moved to Seattle in the late 1970s.

In the island community where she arrived in 1987, she served on the Bainbridge Island Public Art Committee for five to six years, soon after she received commissions for public art at Bainbridge City Hall and the library.

She also taught for years at Cornish College and private students, but these days she paints mostly minimalist landscapes, which never contain figures, Bard said because they impede the viewer from entering the scene.

Bard says her landscapes deal with a memory common to the human race, of an elemental connection to the land.

“It’s that big memory that we’re maybe not aware of, but is in us all. I rarely paint what’s around me because I’m numb to it,” Bard said. “My heart quickens – literally – when I find new views of things.”

Creative soul

For more than 30 years, art has been Barbara Helen Berger’s sustenance.

As a child, she was surrounded by creativity, her own and that of her parents.

Berger’s father was a doctor and artist who became a medical illustrator with a “mad scientist” home studio.

Her mother, a nurse and poet who read aloud with a sense of the music of language.

Growing up, Berger harbored a dream of creating books with her own words and pictures and she did – after spending a year in Rome and graduating with a fine arts degree from the University of Washington in 1969.

For 10 years after graduation, Berger taught art classes and successfully exhibited her paintings in Seattle gallery shows. Ultimately, she began visualizing children’s books as she painted.

“Something ripened. I grew slowly toward the idea of doing books. Children’s books were the only ones I could see that combined words and art,” said Berger, whose first book was published in 1984.

Although she has lived quietly on the island since 1976, Berger has not gone unnoticed. Among the anonymous comments urging her selection were:

“Her creative output is indeed impressive and acclaimed, but I am nominating Ms. Berger as an Island Treasure primarily because of her life’s devotion to the creative process.” She is “a quiet and dynamic model of an artist’s life” and “not one to repeat herself.”

This observation is particularly telling. When she turned 50, Berger began writing personal memoir essays for adults.

“You can’t adapt everything you have to say for a young audience,” she said.

“I was interested in finding the stories in my own life, the creative process, what that’s like, my own spiritual journey.”

Berger has written about standing with Women in Black since the war in Iraq began and is giving readings, which she enjoys tremendously.

“I have more and more appreciation for the audio part of the written language,” she said. “I like the experience of being a storyteller. How the listening changes. Everybody likes to hear a story, even the storyteller.”

Repetitive strain injuries – “a particular tendon that gets inflamed” – have forced Berger to redefine her work once again.

“I can continue writing pretty uninterrupted, (but) I am exploring a different way of working with mixed-media,” she said. “It circled back to children’s books and I’m doing collage. I just finished a collage.

“It still looks like one of my books, but the technique is different.”

Berger’s deadline for her new book is exactly the same time as the Island Treasures banquet, she said.

If she meets it, “Thunder Bunny” will come out in Spring 2007, five years after her last work, “All the Way to Lhasa: A Tale From Tibet.”

Berger hasn’t really digested the fact that she is an Island Trasure.

“It feels like a big community family putting its arms around you. It’s very affirming. It means, ‘Good job. Keep going,’” she said. “To have the community express this is so stunning to me.

“I think when it comes to the award ceremony, I hope somebody remembers to bring Kleenex.”

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Treasures shine

The seventh annual Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council Island Treasures Award Ceremony and Dinner will be held at 5 p.m. Jan. 29 at IslandWood. The award recipients are sculptor/painter Gayle Bard and writer/illustrator Barbara Helen Berger.

The festivities begin with an optional tour of IslandWood at 4:30 p.m., followed by a reception, an awards presentation in the great hall and a banquet at 6:15 p.m. Tickets are $10 for the reception and ceremony only; $45 for BIAHC members; $50 for nonmembers; and $100 for Patron Level. Seating is limited. For reservations, call 842-7901.