Join us for the First Friday Art Walk festivities!
Ashland Gallery Association Exhibit Openings & Artist Receptions
First Friday Art Walk, September 6th from 5 to 8 pm
Stroll the galleries and take in the visual delights in downtown Ashland and the Historic Railroad District. Venture further to explore out-skirting galleries! Enjoy this free year-round community event, filled with a diverse array of artwork, live music, artist demonstrations, refreshments and lively conversation!
For more information about all of our exhibits and to download the September Gallery Tour map, please visit: www.ashlandgalleries.com
Thank you for your support of the Visual Arts in our communities!
AGA September Spotlight Exhibits
Ashland Art Works
From the Ground Up – Clay and Wood Artistry
Featuring Bonnie Morgan & John Weston
Our Featured Artists this month are Bonnie Morgan and John Weston, highlighting Bonnie’s beautiful functional and decorative ceramics with John’s luscious wood furniture and cutting boards.
Bonnie has been working in clay for many years. Currently along with her functional work she is exploring Terra Sigillata and smoke patterns that are created during the post firing process. Creating decorative and functional pottery has been the cornerstone of her work. Bonnie enjoys making a full range of functional work including mugs, bowls, serving platters, trays, vases and teapots. Bonnie’s goal is to create pottery that can enrich and celebrate our lives.
John Weston will present his latest custom furniture pieces and assorted craft items utilizing primarily local hardwoods. John has been a member of Ashland Art Works for twelve years. Becoming a part of a cooperative of artists has inspired John to stretch his woodworking and to combine form with function. His work highlights the natural beauty found in wood and is of a quality to provide generations of use and enjoyment.
Meet the artists at First Friday Art Walk Sept 6th – 5:00 to 8:00 pm.
Bonnie Morgan, Teapot – Functional ceramics
Hanson Howard
Robert Schlegel, painting & Penelope Dews, ceramic sculpture
September 6th – October 1st
Artist Reception: September 6th, 5-8 pm
Bob Schlegel creates images that possess tension between the representational and the abstract. He paints in the studio and plein aire from preliminary sketches in charcoal, pencil and oil pastel and takes reference photographs as necessary. Drawing is the foundation for his work, he is tenacious with the sketch whether it be life-drawing session or in the field. Through line, contrast, texture, color and composition he explores form and shape where things in the natural world and things that are made by man collide.
Penelope Dews graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984 with a BFA in Ceramic Sculpture. She works in her studio in Ashland, OR and produces work to fire in a large Anagama wood fire kiln in the Umpqua Valley. An ancient technique, the Anagama kiln produces ash and volatile salts which settle on the pieces and create a natural ash glaze. Penelope uses the tone and texture unique to this process to create richly earth toned characters and objects. This gives the pieces an ancient, stone like surface. Ranging from realistic to whimsical, these animals exude peaceful, playful expressions with a touch of the mysterious.
Robert Schlegel, Houses on Water, acrylic on canvas
Photographers’ Gallery (Ashland Art Center)
The Sentinel of the Forest – Photography by Dan Elster
Local photographer Dan Elster’s new show, The Sentinel of the Forest, opens at The Photographer’s Gallery at the Ashland Art Center on Friday, September 6 for the First Friday Art Walk and continues through the month of September.
Northern Spotted Owls are perhaps the Pacific Northwest’s best-known wildlife species. In the early 1990’s they were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Logging operations were suddenly curtailed and many even shut down. To the logging communities, the owl became a symbol for government overreach and economic hardship. To the environmentalist, spotted owls represented man’s irresponsible stewardship of the environment. Northern Spotted Owl populations continue to decline and the long-term survival of the species is questionable.
In July of 2019, I accompanied a wildlife biologist in southern Oregon. I was rewarded with a couple of the most memorable encounters to date with Strix occidentalis caurina. I hope these images will help you see Northern Spotted Owls for what they are, (fascinating, beautiful, majestic creatures), not a symbol of a bitter political argument that has gone on for decades.
Dan Elster is a wildlife photographer based in Ashland, Oregon. He hopes his images serve as reminders that we don’t own the earth, we share it.
Dan Elster, Owl photograph
Oak Leaf Studio
The Importance of Water, pastel paintings by Leif Trygg
Water, with its reflective light properties, can be a major influence in landscape art and especially so in the pastel paintings of Ashland artist Leif Trygg at Oak Leaf Studio. Trygg’s new work Stone Bridge San Francisco is featured this month along with pictures of rivers, streams, waterfalls and the ocean. The new pastel is of Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park.
Also on view is a small collection of dramatic Pacific Northwest photographs from Bend photographer Bob Trygg that feature water as well.
Fall Print Sale September is Oak Leaf Studio’s annual Fall print sale with all Leif Trygg prints 25% off their original price. This includes framed and loose prints.
Trygg, “Lagoon” pastel painting
Please see attached “Spotlight Exhibits” and the September Gallery Tour Map.
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