Harvesting the Light

As the Methow Valley approaches the summer equinox, the days grow longer; the slanted evening sun lingers on the hillsides and the morning light creeps sleepily through our bedroom windows and across our pillows earlier each day. In celebration of the return of summer, Confluence Gallery & Art Center presents “Harvesting the Light,” an art exhibition opening on June 5,  that takes its premise from the centrality of light to art – as metaphor for spirituality, as illumination of the physical world, and as symbol.

 “The show is about how we as humans use, or harvest, light,” explains curator Michael Caldwell. “Light is central to our physical and spiritual existence, and takes on many roles. Light can be seen as illumination, as symbol, as manifestation of the spiritual. I’ve invited artists whose works manifest these different approaches to understanding and experiencing light.”

Regular gallery visitors will recognize the work of many perennial local and regional artists – the light-infused landscapes of Mary Powell; the gauzy, dreamy photographs of Ken Smith; the impressionistic brushwork of recently featured Bellingham painter Trish Harding. Kim Matthews Wheaton will present her horizon-oriented, regionally inspired landscapes, in which the slanted shadows of hay bales and boulders become major dramatic events on stark, muted fields.

Colored and stained glass has long been associated with sacred spaces, and Laura Ruud’s fused glass bowls continue this tradition. Likewise, Yuko Ishii’s sepia toned photographs and mixed media pieces overtly refer to the role of light in the cathedral, although they take their subject matter from the feminine, hidden, intimate moments we experience in nature. Laura Karcher continues her carefully crafted studies into light and interior spaces in her new lamp designs, which play off the wonderfully sensuous acid-etched translucency of Jeremy Newman and Allison Ciancibelli’s blown glass sculpture.
 
Michael Caldwell has invited a number of artists from outside the Methow Valley to complement his vision of the role of light in art. Among these, several focus on plein air painting, directly capturing light conditions as they occur on site in nature. The landscapes and Western scenes of Gregg Caudell fall into this category, as do the works of Wenatchee artist Diana Sanford, who states, "Only those things which appear to be completely new can stop us in our tracks and make us look with fresh eyes. Arrested, we find ourselves in a place of receptive, expectant attention. Those moments occur frequently when out in wild places and I love it when a painting grabs my attention in this way and I am fully in the moment, in the present, if only briefly."

Kathleen Cavender’s paintings are dominated by dramatic and sometimes menacing light conditions; many of her pieces are almost entirely given over to skies and ominous clouds rolling over starkly shadowed landscapes. The paintings of Emily Wood take a different tact, gently depicting light and color playing over landscape in a richly hued world.

Confluence’s solo gallery will exhibit work by Seattle artist Roger Feldman, a professor of art at Seattle Pacific University. Feldman’s works include abstract sculptures, and paintings employing oil on planes of concrete. These paintings, Feldman says, are “a comment about the warmth of humans in austere settings.” Feldman’s installations, paintings and drawings have been exhibited in North America, England and Europe.