Art with attitude
By Sherrie Wolf
Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts brings together three distinctive approaches to art this month, with work by Sherrie Wolf, Lisa Conway and Rachael K Bowles on display through Saturday, Sept. 26.
An opening reception from 3 to 5 pm this Saturday, Sept. 5, will give guests a chance to meet the artists, learn more about their work and spend time with fellow art lovers.
Bowles, an abstract landscape artist based in Hillsboro, works primarily in oil painting and monotype printmaking. Born in Kailua, Hawaii, she first discovered a passion for art through darkroom photography as a teenager. After moving to Oregon in 2004, she continued her art, eventually studying at the Oregon Society of Artists, where an introduction to monotype printmaking, along with studies in color theory and painting, helped shape her current approach.
Bowles explores the concept of Polynesian navigators who crossed the Pacific by reading stars, ocean swells, birds, sunlight and other natural signs. She sees parallels in her own artistic process, looking for clues in terrain, shapes and, particularly, light.
“My connection to the Pacific Ocean strongly shapes my work, which explores place, memory, and meaningful reference points, beginning with my birthplace in Hawaii,” she said.
Wolf, a Portland-based photo-realist painter and printmaker, is known for work that combines elements borrowed from historical and classical art with contemporary imagery of her own. Her paintings frequently place boldly colored still lifes and other subjects against backgrounds drawn from art history, creating unexpected conversations between past and present.
Wolf has received multiple awards for her work and has been described as one of Portland’s most prominent artists.
Conway approaches ideas of connection through ceramics. Born in Detroit, she earned a bachelor’s degree in ceramics from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in ceramics from Louisiana State University. She also received a fellowship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
She has taught at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Alberta College of Art and Design, Portland Community College and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Since 2003, she has served as professor of art and head of the ceramics area at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington.
Her recent work centers on ceramic knots, drawing on the long history of knots as tools for storytelling, timekeeping and calculation as well as symbols of love, promises and faith.
“The knots I create are organic, bulging, and charged with tension,” she said. “They suggest intimacy and restraint, vulnerability and strength. They speak to the promises we make to each other and the stories we tell about ourselves.”
The Hoffman Gallery is located at 594 Laneda Avenue and is open Thursday to Sunday from noon to 5 pm. For more information, go to hoffmanarts.org.