Art pours into Manzanita
Explore texture, landscape and form when Manzanita’s Hoffman Gallery presents its April exhibition, opening this Saturday, April 4, with a reception from 3 to 5 pm.
The show features Loren Nelson, Andrea Benson and Karen Russo, three artists whose work reflects deep connections to place, process and the natural world across a range of media including photography, encaustic collage and figurative sculpture.
Nelson’s series, “The Colors of Time,” grew from visits to the Port of Astoria boatyard.
A few years ago, on his way to photograph his favorite rusty railcar, Loren became fascinated with taking close-up photographs of massive piles of colorful trawler nets. One day, he noticed a boat in for repairs called Iona, which is also his granddaughter’s name. Moving closer, he was completely captivated by the swirling patterns of paint, corrosion and primer on the hull. This initial attraction grew into an obsession, and Nelson has spent hours wandering through this forest of colors and textures, mesmerized by the incredible combinations of layered paint and rust.
Using both a traditional 4x5 view camera and a modern digital workflow, Nelson creates abstract images that move beyond representation, inviting viewers into a more personal, interpretive experience. His work spans more than 45 years and is held in collections including the Portland Art Museum and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.
Benson’s “Between Earth and Sky” combines encaustic wax with mixed media collage, layering Japanese kozo, Nepalese lotka and rice papers with inks, watercolor and drawing materials. The translucent wax-saturated papers are cut, torn and fused together with heat, creating luminous compositions that evoke landscapes, weather patterns and quiet moments of reflection. Working with encaustic for more than two decades, Benson approaches each piece intuitively, assembling fragments in search of what feels right, often discovering meaning through the process itself.
Benson moved to Portland in her mid-20s after growing up in a smalltown in Pennsylvania. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art from Penn State and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design from Marylhurst College. She has worked with encaustic paint, combining it with paper and drawing, for more than 20 years and her work has been exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Russo’s “Salt of the Earth” presents figurative clay sculptures that emerge from and merge with their environments, incorporating textures inspired by the ocean, forest, desert and mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Each piece is shaped through a highly physical process of carving, hollowing and reassembling, then finished with stains, underglazes and paints that create layered surface imagery.
Russo has lived and worked in Elmira for nearly 35 years, drawing inspiration from the surrounding forest and native flora and fauna. Time spent outdoors informs her work, with textures and patterns from rocks, fossils, shells and plant forms finding their way into the carved surfaces of her sculptures.
She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California Santa Cruz and later studied figure sculpture in the University of Oregon’s Master of Fine Arts program. While raising her children, she stepped away from sculpting to paint, run a ceramic tile business, teach art in rural schools and create public art installations across Oregon.
The show will be on display through April 25 at the Hoffman Center for the Arts, located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita and open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 pm, except the last Sunday of every month. For more information, go to hoffmanarts.org.