Juried Show 2021
Juried Show 2021

This summer, the Gallery at the Park presents its annual Juried Show, which runs July 6 through August 20.

The Gallery received 223 entries from 78 different artists across the region. Nicole Pietrantoni, the juror for 2021, selected 44 pieces for exhibition.

“The works selected represent a broad range of engagements with contemporary concerns,” Pietrantoni states. “Whether about the pandemic, place and landscape, or finding joy and beauty in the everyday—the selected artworks represent an attention to and reflection of the world around us.”

Pietrantoni received her MFA and MA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa and her BS in Human and Organizational Development and Art History from Vanderbilt University.

She is the recipient of numerous artist residencies and awards including a Fulbright to Iceland, an Artist Trust Fellowship, a Larry Sommers Printmaking Fellowship, a Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Grant, the Manifest Prize, and a Graves Award for Excellence in Humanities Research and Teaching.

Her art has been in over 100 national and international exhibitions, and she has had solo exhibitions at the Coos Museum of Art, Kimball Arts Center, the Lamar Dodd School of Art, and the San Juan Islands Museum of Art.

To learn more, visit her website at nicole-pietrantoni.com.

Check the Gallery at the Park’s website and social media pages for a video of Nicole Pietrantoni explaining her process and announcing the winners of the 2021 Juried Show. Some artists will receive monetary prizes, with more than $2,500 being awarded altogether.

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Steve Jensen's Voyager
Steve Jensen's Voyager
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Death may be a sensitive subject for many people, but Steve Jensen, a sculptor based in Seattle, hopes his personal portrayal of grief will provide relief for others experiencing their own losses. This June, the Gallery at the Park presents Jensen’s art exhibition “Voyager.”

“Voyager” features carvings and sculptures of boats made from a variety of mediums, including wood, glass and found objects. The image of a boat represents a voyage to the other side or a journey to the unknown. Mythologies surrounding the river as a passage between life and death can be found across many cultures, including in Jensen’s own Norse ancestry.

Jensen’s work speaks to a life filled with love and loss. His best friend Sylvan, who had been diagnosed with AIDS, gave Jensen a drawing of a boat and asked for a carved version for his ashes. When Sylvan passed, Jensen carved a boat as close to Sylvan’s drawing as possible.

At his mother’s request, Jensen created a similar vessel for his father, a Norwegian fisherman and boat builder. Jensen and his mother buried the boat at sea, reminiscent of a Viking funeral, and when Jensen’s mother passed two years later, Jensen created a boat for her as well, so she could be buried at sea with his father.

Before Jensen’s partner of 24 years, John, passed, he also asked Jensen to make a boat for his ashes, as his wish was to be buried at sea with Jensen’s parents.

“In the course of eight years,” Jensen states, “I had tragically lost and made funereal boats for everyone close to me.” 

Jensen’s “Voyager” series is an exploration of personal grief, as well as an attempt to take something painful and turn it into something beautiful. The boat sculptures featured in this exhibit are approximately the same size as the actual boats used for burial.

Jensen, a graduate from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, has been working as a professional artist for over 30 years, with work featured in museums throughout Washington, nationwide and beyond. In 2008, self-funded private astronaut Richard Garriott spent 12 days in space aboard the International Space Station; among the things he took on the flight was a 12-piece art exhibition that included two of Jensen’s works.

“Voyager” will be on display at the Gallery at the Park from June 8 to July 3. Steve Jensen will be at the Gallery open house on June 8 from 6 to 8 p.m.

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LuAnn Ostergaard and Joseph Rastovich
LuAnn Ostergaard and Joseph Rastovich

Beauty can be found in the unlikeliest of places, as evidenced by a new art exhibition from LuAnn Ostergaard and Joseph Rastovich. This May, stop by the Gallery at the Park to see their unique perspectives both on art and on how they view the world.

Joseph Rastovich has been interested in sculpting since he was 14 years old, spending his paychecks on metalworking tools. By the time he was 18 years old, he had completed his first public sculpture, titled “Synergy.” Since then, he has created 14 more public sculptures.

Rastovich uses art to communicate deep truths about human existence and to make the world a better place through creative expression.

LuAnn Ostergaard, Joseph Rastovich’s mother, creates beautiful art prints that are sold to collectors nationwide, as well as in Europe and in Australia.

Ostergaard captures images that speak to her, and she often combines images, overlaying odd textures or weathered surfaces to create something completely new.

Her inspiration comes from the patterns and textures she sees in the world, such as those found in a metal scrapyard or a forgotten natural area. Her goal is to inspire viewers of her art to appreciate the beauty that goes overlooked all around us.

Like Ostergaard, Rastovich is also drawn to the beauty of imperfection. He uses raised welds, layout markings and weathered scars to show the artist’s hand, echo creative thought and remind the viewer of time.

The Ostergaard and Rastovich show will be on display at the Gallery at the Park from May 3 through May 29.

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Scholarship Show 2021
Scholarship Show 2021

Each year, as a way of supporting visual arts in the community, the Allied Arts Association awards an annual scholarship to a Columbia Basin College student and to a student working towards a master’s degree in fine arts.

This year’s scholarships went to Cheyenne Storer, a student attending CBC, and Aunde Cornely, an MFA student attending Goddard College.

Inspired by a simple fascination with the human form, Cheyenne Storer began drawing at a young age. She often tried to recreate people she had seen, finding that every person has an irreplicable individuality. Storer’s penchant for finding the beauty in those around her eventually spread to other organic life, such as foliage and florals.

Storer also states, however, that while she is always able to find beauty in others, she struggles to find it in herself. She uses art to explore her own vulnerability and to attempt to find the beauty she sees in others in herself. Art allows Storer to express herself, but she also hopes to use her art to reach out and connect with others. Through art, she can normalize and destigmatize mental illness, and she can let others know they are not alone.

Aunde Cornely, the MFA scholarship recipient, is earning her degree in interdisciplinary arts with a decolonial arts praxis concentration. For the past 13 years, she has lived on an island in the Salish Sea. Her work is inspired by the shifting nature of land, sea and sky, both in her current home of Washington and in her ancestral home of Ireland. Cornely is interested in the relationships between people, places and plants, as well as how these relationships reflect identity and embody culture.

Cornerly’s photography has been displayed regionally around the Pacific Northwest. Currently, she is creating new photographic work from Ireland and developing a short animation inspired by Irish myth, folklore, geology and archaeology.

The Allied Arts Association’s scholarship exhibition will be on display at the Gallery at the Park from April 6 through April 30.

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Vitae Cyclum, the life cycle of art
Vitae Cyclum, the life cycle of art

When we view a work of art, we tend to see it only as it is: a finished piece. We overlook the entire process—the development of new concepts and ideas—that brought the art to us in its current state. With her new exhibition at the Gallery at the Park, titled Vitae Cyclum, Jessica Heidi Stoker hopes to change that.

To help explain the “life cycle” of art, Stoker points to Da Vinci’s Last Supper, a painting that has seen so many restorations since its creation in the late 1490s that art historians believe there to be very few, if any, actual paint strokes by Da Vinci left. The Last Supper had noticeably deteriorated by 1517, but because other artists throughout the centuries preserved and restored the work, we are still able to see it today—at least, some version of it.

Stoker uses a wide array of techniques and materials to allow viewers to experience the way art can transform over time. Her Vitae Cyclum exhibition features many small, two-dimensional works interspersed among larger paintings of diverse female figures. The smaller works demonstrate Stoker’s experimentations with the materials used in the larger paintings, essentially functioning as a behind-the-scenes look at her creative process.

Stoker also explores themes relating to the male gaze, a feminist theory describing the act of depicting women from a masculine, heterosexual perspective, which represents the female body as a sex object for the pleasure of the male viewer. Stoker’s paintings of female figures are thought-provoking works meant to elicit debate over the general concept of gaze, as well as the specific ideas of the male gaze and the female gaze.

Vitae Cyclum will be on display at the Gallery at the Park from March 9 through April 3. To learn more about Jessica Heidi Stoker, visit her website at jessicaheidistoker.com.

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