“Fault Lines,” by Abbie Birmingham, is part of the new Confluence show.
Have you felt nostalgia for ancient places? A deep longing or even homesickness for a home which perhaps was never yours? Then you’ve felt hiraeth (here-eyeth).
Hiraeth (Welsh) is “the echo of the lost places of our soul’s past and our grief for them. It is in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere,” according to a press release from The Confluence: Art in Twisp.
The upcoming “Hiraeth” exhibit at The Confluence was curator Sarah Jo Lightner’s idea. “I had come across the term on a word-of-the-day type of thing and I got excited to take a deep dive into ancestral connections, ancestral lands, ancestral traumas and how those dictate how we move through the modern world,” she said.
While some of The Confluence’s exhibits are open shows, others, like Hiraeth, are closed, populated by the work of artists who are invited by the curator to contribute. Lightner invited the following artists:
• Sandi Bransford, a Seattle-based ceramic mixed media artist, whose bisque and glazing methods create an ancient aura to her sculptures, many of whose heads are surrounded by a nimbus.
• Janet Fagan, who divides her time between Seattle and the Methow Valley, and whose work Lightner said she had in mind when she pitched the Hiraeth concept at the annual show committee meeting. “She has an interesting perspective on nature — how she moves in nature and translates that into paintings. Her work speaks to a feeling of home,” Lightner said.
• Justin Gibbens, an Ellensburg artist who does “fantastical illustrations of animals,” Lightner said. “His perspective is ancient marine animalia and for Hiraeth his body of work will feature whales in watercolor.”
• Salyna Gracie, former executive director of the gallery, recently completed a journey to Turkey and submitted work to Hiraeth based on that experience. Gracie’s “murmuration” is 100 small paintings focused on ancient architecture. Gracie said “This is my first attempt at an expansive installation … not just a body of work. Each painting needs to speak with its own voice, yet each is only a whisper in this deeper story.”
• Deborah Kapoor, a Seattle artist now living in Texas, creates hanging mixed media sculpture that explores how one’s family is part of one’s ancestral connection to the past and to past places. Regular gallery visitors may remember Kapoor’s work as part of encaustic exhibit several years ago.
• Jennifer Lowe is a Chelan artist who creates mixed media abstract work. Lightner wanted Loew’s perspective to “bring something fresh to the hiraeth concept,” since much of the other work is realistic. “Loew’s work has a depth of color, texture, and movement that evokes the feeling of hiraeth,” Lightner said.
Lightner said that Hiraeth is an unusual chance to see the work of all these artists together, calling it a “museum-quality experience to see high-quality fine art that we wouldn’t normally have access to. It’s a wonderful cultural opportunity in the darker months of the year.”
‘Birds, Bridges and Basalt’
Concurrently, Abbie Birmingham will exhibit “Birds, Bridges and Basalt” in the Community Gallery. Birmingham is a printmaker and book artist with a love of all things paper.
“My work is deeply place based and much of my imagery addresses my fascination with patterns, both visible and invisible. With a background in architecture and construction I often create imagery exploring the built environment, structures and street grids,” Birmingham said in a press release.
All of Birmingham’s pieces in the show, including most of the collage elements, began as original, hand-pulled prints, using a variety of printmaking techniques, and then adding multiple layers of mixed media such as pastel, watercolor and pen-and-ink.
“I love the eastern Washington landscape, its huge skies and fascinating geology and as metaphor for change over time. The basalt cliffs remind me of urban towers. [The] Columbia River and its drainage basin is the powerful Big River that unites the entire state and region,” Birmingham said.
The Confluence will host an opening for “Hiraeth” and “Birds, Bridges and Basalt” on Saturday (Jan. 14), from 5-7 p.m. The opening and the exhibits, available through Saturday, Feb. 25, are free to the public. The Confluence is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. For more information visit www.confluencegallery.org or call (509) 997-2787.
