Renee Kaup’s paining, “Confluence Alley,” will be on display.
Confluence Gallery offers a diverse collection of new art in three exhibits that open Saturday (Oct. 15) with a reception from 4 – 8 p.m.
The main gallery exhibit, “Paper,” spotlights paper art in its many forms including paper making, cutting, collage, printing, sculpture and origami.
Artists for the exhibit have been hand-selected by curator Nicole Ringgold to encompass the wide range of possibilities with this beautiful medium.
In Confluence’s Community Gallery, painter Justin Gibbens will show paintings that build on a lifelong interest in depictions of animals. Paintings in his exhibit, “Peaceable Kingdom,” are inspired by scientific illustration and the detailed scenes of the natural and domestic spheres of classical Persian miniatures.
The exhibit features Gibbens’ unique take on these age-old traditions — he has focused on Northwest animals, painting them on found Arabic manuscripts.
Gibbens has been blending his passion for creatures and art since he was a boy, rendering dinosaurs, creepy crawlers and other freakish fauna. Not much has changed in three decades, he said, although he has since received degrees in painting, drawing and scientific illustration.
Over the decades, Gibbens has made innumerable trips to natural history museums and indulged “a keen and unhealthy interest in all things that scamper and poke about in the undergrowth, slither in the thickets, soar through the ether and swim in the infinite abyss of our planet’s aquatic environments.”
Gibbens is a founding member of PUNCH Projects, an artist-run collective in central Washington. His work is in collections of universities, businesses and municipalities.
Confluence Gallery also features work from the gallery’s artist-in-residence, Renee Kaup, who presents “Around The Studio,” a series of paintings about her days in and around her residency studio in Twisp.
As Confluence artist-in-residence, Kaup received three months of studio space on the second floor of Confluence Gallery from August through October, and a solo exhibit in the gallery gift shop.
When Kaup started her artist residency she imagined making paintings of the rivers and mountains of the Methow Valley, but instead found herself drawn to painting what was closest to her every day — the alley behind Confluence Gallery, views from the hills and orchards behind the Methow Valley Community Center, and the locally grown fruit she enjoys while painting.
“I’ve just begun,” Kaup said. “There is so much I want to paint inspired by my new home in the Methow Valley.”
During her residency, Kaup’s intent was to discover and develop a signature style to advance herself as an artist. She worked with a looser brush stroke style, more apparent line work and color schemes reflecting the valley’s ever-changing compositions.
Kaup received a bachelor’s of fine arts degree in painting and drawing from University of Utah. She has been a teaching artist in drawing, painting and printmaking at Gardenia Center in Sandpoint, Idaho, and has participated in solo and group exhibitions primarily in Idaho and Nelson, British Columbia.
All the exhibits continue through Nov. 19.
