Art show opens in Manzanita
The latest show at Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts, opening on Thursday, April 4, will feature sculptures by Stan Peterson and a photography show with work from Melinda Hurst Frye, Brian Padian and Megan Hatch.
An artists’ reception will be held on Saturday, April 6, from 3 to 5 pm.
Peterson has been exhibiting his carved and painted figures since 1981, when William Jamison gave him his first solo show in what was to become the Pearl District in Portland. Since then, his work has been exhibited and collected nationally. He carves basswood with hand tools and uses a variety of colorants for finishing. The only power tool he uses is a bandsaw, with the remaining cutoffs often becoming handheld “rescue dogs.” Peterson divides his time between New Mexico and Oregon for both photo shoots and carving. He does memory paintings in gouache of sights both real and slightly surreal. From these, he constructs and carves wood sculptures as wall tableau or as narrative figures standing without backgrounds.
Hurst Frye photographically celebrates the ecology of the forest floor with the goals of providing visual evidence of the cycles, bearing witness to the understory and bridging the poetry of art with biological sciences. To intentionally slow down her own seeing, she often works with a flatbed scanner as a camera, which also allows for space and time to connect with the ecology of her surroundings. Her work has been featured in publications for both art and science, gallery and museum exhibitions and a variety of collections. She has an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and lives with her family adjacent to an urban forest in Washington.
Brian Padian is a narrative filmmaker by training and somewhat new to photography. He is drawn to the immediacy of still images, to the worlds and possibilities that can exist in their boundaries. Padian’s films and screenplays typically feature individuals facing forces beyond their agency or struggling to find the right place in the world, often observing or fighting malevolence in variable forms. This vantage has also informed how he pursues mood and tone in his images, some of which can reassure and provoke the viewer all at once. Based in Portland, Padian frequently visits the Oregon Coast with his family.
Megan Hatch is a Portland-based creator and curator with a Studio Art degree from Carleton College. Her experiences of growing up rural, working class and queer inform her work. Her photography has been exhibited internationally and is in both private and public collections. She was a 2022 Critical Mass Finalist and a 2023 recipient of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award. The images in this exhibit are from her body of work entitled “yes-and.” They are bound together by a thin golden line as if by kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold.
The show will run through April 27. The Hoffman Gallery is located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita and is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 pm. For more information go to hoffmanarts.org or call 503-368-3846.