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Tag: Whidbey Art Gallery

  • Artist-Owned Gallery Celebrates 25th Anniversary

    Artist-Owned Gallery Celebrates 25th Anniversary

    BY KATE POSS
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    May 17, 2017

    “It was at this spot, Memorial Day weekend, that the co-op gallery was started,” said Tom Hanify, who met with members of the original Whidbey Art Gallery at the Braeburn restaurant in Langley.

    “Except it was called the Raven Cafe then,” said Christi Shaffer, who was also there, along with Mary Ellen and Ron Ward and Moses “Moe” Jerome. Shaffer joined the co-op a year after it first began. She’s a ceramic artist whose work incorporates impressions of lace, leaves, and stamped letters into functional plates, teapots, and bowls with driftwood handles.

    “It started with a meeting of interested artists who showed their work at the Raven Cafe on Memorial weekend 1992,” continued Shaffer. “Then a group decided to form a gallery starting in the back and moving to the front. The gallery remained here three years, and then we wanted to expand. We went to the Jones Department Store, which is now Music for the Eyes.”

    Original members of the Whidbey Art Gallery co-op 25 years ago. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Art Gallery)

    “Paul Schell was instrumental in getting us in,” added Jerome, an oil painter whose poster of a mermaid kissing a mortal was chosen to illustrate the poster for the 2012 Choochokum summer art festival in Langley. The late Paul Schell, a former mayor of Seattle, developed the Inn at Langley with his wife Pam and was known for his can-do-ness in the community. “He wanted his guests…”

    “… to see our art,” finished Shaffer. “Paul loved us! He bought gifts for the hotel employees from our artists.”

    “We were at the ‘rug’ shop for five or six years and then moved to Second and Anthes (where Whidbey Telecom’s the Big GIG is now housed),” Shaffer continued.

    Jerome jumped in: “We moved to the corner, an interesting space to merchandise in. As we moved through the years, the economy went bad. In 2008, we closed.”

    Some of the founding members of the Whidbey Art Gallery 25 years later. From left, front row: Mary Ellen Ward and Christi Shaffer; top row: Ron Ward, Moe Jerome, and newcomer Tom Hanify. (Photo by Tom Hanify)

    Mary Ellen Ward said that before the 2008 crisis, the co-op members tried an idea that paid a month’s rent.

    “We produced a nude calendar…” said Shaffer.

    “…with 12 different people,” added Mary Ellen Ward. “I’m encouraging them to do it again. The first calendar was good.”

    “Rated R, not X,” joked Shaffer.

    “More like PG-13,” said Hanify. “They closed the storefront, but the group kept going.”

    “In ‘98/‘99, we had 13 galleries in Langley,” Jerome said. “By 2008, only Brackenwood and Museo remained.”

    Moe Jerome’s painting of salmon. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Art Gallery)

    “They can squash us, but they cannot stop us,” said Ron Ward, a sculptor and painter.

    Paying monthly dues, the group continued meeting each month.

    “We were closed two years,” said Mary Ellen Ward. “We looked around for a storefront and found what is now the vet’s (Animal Hospital by the Sea). The building needed lots of work. Everyone pulled together. We painted and fixed doors. When we got it set up and beautiful, they sold the building and we moved to where we are now. We got re-established and are stronger than ever.”

    “We’ve been through the fire,” adds Ron Ward.

    Ron Ward’s sculpture in a natural setting. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Art Gallery)

    The friends sit around the table, crack jokes, finish each other’s sentences, and remember the various buildings that housed their art, along with the perseverance to carry on in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

    Hanify, a photographer, has been with the co-op for three years. His work reflects his interest in nature, landscapes, and travel. He now chairs the gallery’s marketing committee and manages its website and Facebook presence.

    “Mary Ellen runs the gallery now,” he says. “She’s the CEO. I call her the empress.”

    Christi Shaffer’s signature pottery with a driftwood handle. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Art Gallery)

    “Ann Sayvitz used to run the co-op,” Mary Ellen Ward says. “Ann helped us tighten and review policies through her expertise. She gave us structure. When we lost her (she passed away last October), we struggled with having different people take her place, and it occurred to me how the world has changed and how we’re still a group dedicated to sharing our art. It’s like music. It’s a dimension.”

    “It is the soul of life,” adds Jerome.

    “We’re trying to move forward in step with our times and hold on to what we value,” Mary Ellen Ward continues.

    “We have 37 artists now with an emphasis on local art,” Hanify added. “We no longer emphasize the ‘co-operative’ part and say rather that it is an artist-owned gallery. We’re looking for more artists to join us.”

    Tom Hanify’s photo of a dinghy on reflective water. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Art Gallery)

    At the monthly Langley Art Walk on April 29, the gallery was packed with visitors. Ron Ward gave a personalized tour of the gallery after sitting outside for a moment, enjoying time with his grandchildren in the early evening sun.

    The artists now have a well-lit art-filled gallery at 220 Second Street in Langley. It’s filled with paintings, sculpture, jewelry, photos, collages, fiber art, pottery, drawings, and cards. This month’s guest artists are Declan Travis, a photographer who specializes in bird photography, and Hank Nelson, a sculptor who likes working in bronze. The month’s featured artist member is oil painter Nancy Anderson.

    The gallery at its current location on Second Street in Langley. (Photo by Tom Hanify)

    Come celebrate the gallery’s 25th anniversary at a party hosted by the artists on Saturday, May 27, from 5 to 8 p.m. There will be live music and refreshments, and Artists in Action will be painting and demonstrating artistic skills.

    Kate Poss worked as a library assistant at the Langley Library until last June, when she retired. She worked for three summers as a chef aboard a small Alaskan tour boat from 2008 to 2010. She was a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles for many years before moving to Whidbey Island, where she likes cooking for new and old friends, hiking, reading great fiction, and writing her second novel with friend Fred Bixby.

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  • Calligraphy Illuminated on Whidbey Island

    Calligraphy Illuminated on Whidbey Island

    BY SHAWN BERIT
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    March 15, 2017

    In the distance, past the trees and houses of picturesque Langley, the sparkle of Saratoga Passage beckons. Past the water, the pines of Camano Island rise, providing a frame for the place where gray whales come to play. Words cannot do justice to the idyllic view, yet words are exactly the foundation of Mary McLeod’s art.

    McLeod is a calligraphy artist who has called Langley home for the past forty years. Her career has been spent teaching, first as a music teacher over “in America” and then as a visual arts teacher for the South Whidbey School District. Yet, in all her career, it was an incidental two-week seminar that changed her artistic passion.

    Mary McLeod working in her studio. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    The history of calligraphy is as old as the history of writing. Books were once handwritten and hand embellished by expert scribes. The calligraphic arts extended beyond the words and letter forms to include decorative motifs and illustrations with colored and gilded Illuminations. Yet, as is often the case, technological advances all but killed calligraphy when the printing press came into use.

    Near the end of the 1800s, around the time the village of Langley was founded, Great Britain’s William Morris took a new look at old world calligraphy and realized that the writing was made with a broad-edged instrument rather than a pointed pen. He also realized its value. Edward Johnston, called the father of modern calligraphy, carried on the work of Morris and ushered in the revival of this elegant art form.

    In 1976, McLeod attended a seminar taught by Professor Lloyd Reynolds of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reynolds is credited as the man who brought calligraphy to the Pacific Northwest, and he is certainly the man who instilled a life change in McLeod. From that one seminar, she was hooked. Her passion for this old and beautiful art steeled her resolve to learn all she could and master the techniques.

    McLeod demonstrates the italic form, which is created using a flat-tipped nib. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    “You don’t give up on anything,” she says, “If it’s something you want to do, you find a way to do it.” This led to a succession of calligraphy teachers and years of practice and discipline.

    Her studio in Langley is adorned with examples of the many base types of calligraphic form and samples of her work. Part workspace, part gallery, her “tree house” is a place of refuge and art. The tools of her art form rest in display across her main desk. Across the top of another desk, handmade folded journals stand open. They tempt investigation to learn what awaits inside their accordion folds.

    In a second studio room, candles flicker from within luminaries adorned with McLeod’s calligraphy, drawings, and embossing. The lanterns, hand-made by McLeod, cast a warmth to the room with their amber glow and messages to “sister and mother Earth.” McLeod’s eyes share that same glow when she talks about calligraphy.

    Some calligraphic styles, such as this one, are created using a brush. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    At one gathering of fellow calligraphers, group members were challenged to use their skills for a cause they believed in — to become activists. “I wanted to be an activist scribe,” to promote the art of calligraphy, she says. So, she set about sharing her art wherever she could, including store windows, shelves, cards to friends.

    Her work, and the work of others like her, has paid off. In recent years, calligraphy has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. With that has come new, modern forms of calligraphy that are trendy. McLeod hopes, though, that this interest will lead people to learn the foundation styles. You must learn to do it the traditional way before you can create your own style, she says with a knowing glint in her eye. It is the look of experience.

    McLeod is a living example of “once a teacher, always a teacher,” and that desire to teach has come back. Soon she will be offering classes in her own home studio. She will be teaching embossing, stamp making, drawing, journaling, luminary making, and of course, calligraphy. Anything she knows how to do, she will offer others the chance to learn.

    McLeod in her studio, showing an accordion journal. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    Until then, you have the opportunity to see McLeod’s beautiful art first-hand at the Whidbey Art Gallery in Langley. McLeod has been a full, juried member of the Whidbey Art Gallery since September of 2014. There, you can both view and purchase her creations. The Whidbey Art Gallery is also the place to go if you are interested in taking a class with McLeod.

    It is rare for visual arts and the written word to share space anymore. That place where poetry, the thoughts of the mind, and the images of the heart converge is now elusive. McLeod has found that place. View her work at the Whidbey Art Gallery and find illumination.

    Shawn Berit lives near Maxwelton Beach on the south end of Whidbey Island. He freelances as a social media manager for churches and organizations. A father of three and an all-around creative, Shawn paints and draws fantastical scenery, story illustrations, and science fiction concept art. He is a nature photographer, a vocalist wanting to start a band, a science fiction writer working on his first novel, and a television and voiceover actor wishing the island had a radio station. He is also one-half of the Dakota Guys on YouTube and in love with all things Whidbey Island.

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    WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.