8th Annual Plein Air & More, June 24-26, 2016

8th Annual Plein Air & More, June 24-26, 2016 Cannon Beach has not only been named “One of the Best Art Towns in America,” but National Geographic has also listed it as “One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World.” So…what more could you ask for if you’re a plein air artist? That’s why they continue to come from around the world to capture the unique elements of this landscape “in the open air”. To celebrate this challenging artistic style and the work of the artists, the Cannon Beach Gallery Group is presenting the 8th Annual Plein Air & More festival. Scheduled for June 24-26, the event will feature nearly 50 artists creating art on location throughout the town and on the beach Friday, Saturday and Sunday. During the week, leading up to the event, several nationally recognized artists will also be conducting workshops.

Six Artists Receive Awards at Cannon Beach Gallery Group’s 8th Annual Plein Air & More Arts Festival

Cannon Beach, OR – June 30, 2015   Nearly 40 artists participated in the Cannon Beach Gallery Group’s 8th Annual Plein Air & More Arts Festival which drew thousands to the coast June 24-26 to watch them paint and create throughout the town and on the beach.  At the end of the festival, Kaline Carter from SW Art Magazine announced six awards for those painting “En Plain Air” as well as to those who represented the “& More” part of the event which opened it up to sculptors, wood carvers, glass artists, ceramicists, metal artists, jewelers and more.

Receiving awards from the magazine, along with a hand blown glass sculpture created by Cannon Beach Artist Jim Kingwell from Icefire Glassworks, were:

Brooke Borcherding, White Bird Gallery: Award of Excellence for “En Plein Air” work done onsite during the weekend and for overall body of work.

Dan Chen, Bronze Coast Gallery:  Award of Excellence for “& More” work done onsite during the weekend and for overall body of work.

Receiving additional Honorary Awards of Excellence from the magazine:

Marianne Post, Primary Elements Gallery

Joanne Shellan, DragonFire Gallery

Eva Funderburgh, Archimedes Gallery

Suzanne Kindland, Icefire Glassworks

The public was also invited to vote for their favorite artist, based upon what they observed during the “Artists’ Swarm” and in the galleries representing the weekend’s artists. Winner of the “People’s Choice Award” for the second year was Jeffrey Hull, Jeffrey Hull Gallery. He also received a glass sculpture created by Jim Kingwell.

See Event Map

 

New this year! Workshops Offered by Three Nationally Recognized Plein Air Artists. (click for more information)

Make plans now to attend one of three workshops to be held during the week leading up to the Plein Air & More Art Festival. Come out to paint and then stay for all of the festivities over the weekend. The village and beaches will be filled with artists capturing the beauty of the area and galleries will be overflowing with art. Register now! All registrations are made directly with the workshop leaders and are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Lodging: Attendees are responsible for securing their own lodging. For more information go to: cannonbeach.org.

 

Larger images available for media use by clicking. Archimedes Gallery Archimedes Gallery’s show theme for Plein Air & More will be “Overgrown,” featuring two artists.  In fact, the theme is also the title of Josh Keyes new paintings.
	Overgrown is the title of Josh Keyes’ new series of paintings that embody the theme of natural entropy, regrowth, and restoration. The imagery in these paintings illustrates a post-human world, an environment reclaimed by nature.  At first glance, the imagery calls to mind the contemporary fixation and anxiety surrounding the ever-growing impact the human presence has in relation to environmental change. The cause or event leading to the absence of humans is left to the viewer’s imagination; Josh’s focus is on the remaining landscape.
	Eva Funderburgh’s new body of work deals with the overlap of humanity and the natural world. She uses her simple animal forms to examine human motives and emotions. Storytelling and the idea of myth plays a very large role in her work, but equally so the notion of biology. Humans are intrinsically biological and the growth of cities follows the same biological imperative as a blooming flower or growing tumor. Eva tries to examine this notion of growth without pronouncing a moral judgment on it. Hence, her beasts may sometime carry entire civilizations on their back, though the question of symbiote or parasite is left open.
Bronze Coast Gallery
	Pamela Claflin has a deep love and respect for nature…especially desert and arid areas from the Northwest to the Southwest. In her paintings she wants to transfer to the viewers the reason for capturing that particular scene…be it the quality of light, color, textures, a water source in an unusual area, or the absolute beauty of a grand scene. Occasionally she enjoys capturing a building, a bloom or animal, or an etched-out life style.
	Dan Chen was born in China, in the province of Canton.  He emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1984, enrolled at San Francisco City College and studied graphic design and illustration at the Academy of Art University.  Since then, his professional career has focused full-time on nature and wildlife art in both paintings and sculptures.  His art is a marriage of the finest qualities of eastern and western art style and technique.
	Donnie Wanner’s time spent working for an automobile manufacturer set him on his artistic path. Being a quick learner with an artist’s eye, he was fascinated by the molding of metal, welding, fabricating, mold making, coloring, and the ultimate production of something that was fresh, exciting, and stimulating to look at. He is recognized as a highly skilled artist specializing in metal wall sculptures depicting landscapes of regional scenes.
Cannon Beach Gallery Hosting a Plein Air Painting Weekend, Jun 17-19 with Joanne Radmilovich Kollman, in conjunction with the “Landscape as Perception” Show, curated by Janet Bland and featuring three artists, Jef Gunn, Joan Stuart Ross & Michael Southern.
	The Cannon Beach Arts Mobile Gallery will be parked in the US Bank lot and will be showing Cannon Beach Gallery’s featured Plein Air artist, selected works from students of the CBAA Plein Air painting weekend, and selected works from Icefire Glass Studio. The Mobile Gallery will also act as an information and voting point for the Plein Air and More Awards.
DragonFire Gallery
	Seattle artist, Joanne Shellan began her career with watercolor and in just two years found success in galleries, solo shows and commissions, started winning awards and attained her signature membership in the Northwest Watercolor Society.  But the frustration she was feeling with that medium told her that something was still missing. So, after happening on a demonstration of ala prima oil painting, she gave away her watercolors and bought oils. “The dense pigment and rich texture of oils truly express the art that has always been inside me.” Today, she paints in oils and acrylics and is known for her strong design and rich color.
	Anton Pavlenko is a Ukrainian-born painter who has always been drawn to creating imagery. His earliest memories are of drawing Russian cartoon characters before he immigrated to the United States with his family as a toddler. Encouraged by his father, he persisted in educating himself about art and painting, and today remains largely self-taught and deeply inspired by the natural world.
Haystack Gallery
	Albert Van Troba has been passionate about drawing and painting most of his life. When in the 3rd grade, he won the Idaho State Art Contest in Drawing and Painting and his dream of becoming an artist and art teacher began. He has now been living this dream for 37 years. Today he is known primarily as a plein air painter and a wild life artist.
	Christine Joy paints with oils, acrylics and watercolors, inspired daily to paint wildlife, mountains and landscapes.  She says, “My artwork is a combination between impressionistic and realistic painting.  I believe that art is to be beautiful and up-lifting, so I do my best to paint in a way that brings joy to others.”
	Sally O’Neill has always been involved in the arts–painting, drawing and music. After working primarily in watercolor beginning in the 80′s, she went back to working solely in oils in 1998, and knew this was the perfect medium for expressing her obsession with light, color and atmosphere. She is both a plein air and studio artist, and is a previous winner of the “People’s Choice” award at Plein Air & More.
	Janis Ellison is drawn to the dramatic landscape of New Mexico and painted alongside her friends and mentors in the budding days of the early pastel painters of this century. Her love of nature and the outdoors was a natural companion to her passion for painting plein air. Recent honors include having a painting selected for the Pastel 100 in Pastel Journal, in competition with 3000 other artists, and notification that she will be awarded “Master Circle” status by the International Assoc. of Pastel Societies.
	Dave Bartholet is a self-taught Oregon wildlife artist. His work has been featured on posters and stamps benefiting wildlife preservation.
Icefire Glassworks
	What began as a five-year experiment evolved into a life-forming fascination with glass for Jim Kingwell, who has been playing with fire for more than 40 years. His chemistry teacher’s observations about reality inspired him to enroll in art classes, so it is fitting that melting glass requires a grounding in both chemistry and physics. His Icefire Glassworks logo incorporates the alchemical symbols for Earth, Air, Fire and Water, honoring the obvious linkage of art and science. From that, beautiful pieces of blown glass emerge that seduce the senses and stimulate the spirit.
	Suzanne Kindland was not reared to be a glass artist. It was her connection to the dream world that led her to become one at the age of 38. There were always hints, persistent nudges that would not be ignored, from favorite childhood words (horizon, crucible) to a vision of dancing in flames that led her to Cannon Beach and propelled her into the passionate world of soft molten glass. Inspired by the places she has lived, she makes blown glass pieces that express Nature in the tangled patterns of woodlands, the stark horizons of deserts, and the mysteries of deep water.
	Michelle Kaptur has been blowing glass since 1975. After ten years learning the basics of glass blowing, she moved on to paint for several years. “Painting is where I put together all the composition, color and design stuff that I learned about in school. When I came back to glass I had a much stronger sense of the design choices I wanted to make and why.” She has had her own glass studio, Glass Dancing, in Bend, Oregon since 1994, previously working with Icefire Glassworks.
Jeffrey Hull Gallery
	Jeffrey Hull began his painting career more than 40 years ago in Cannon Beach, and it is from its coastline that he draws his inspiration. Today he is widely known for his ability to capture the beauty and moods of the places where water joins land, controlling the difficult medium of watercolor, often in very large paintings. Recently he has returned to painting in oil as well, and is rarely found far from the ocean’s edge. His deep love for the area is clearly seen in his original paintings and prints.
Jewelry by Sharon Amber
	After a successful career as an art director in television and motion pictures, Victoria Brooks has pursued her love of painting, which she has been doing for 27 years.  In addition to being a talented studio artist, she is an accomplished plein air painter as well, and has won numerous “Best of Show” awards for her studio and plein air works.
Northwest By Northwest Gallery
	Jeff White’s skyscapes & landscapes in oil reflect his most memorable and moving experiences with nature. He paints the splendor of our natural world in the Northwest in pursuit of the ethereal & atmospheric light our region is known for. Jeff has won the Plein Air & More People’s Choice Vote. His painting “On the Clackamas” was featured in Southwest Art Magazine. He has been featured on Oregon Public Television’s Art Beat.
	Ivan McLean is a public sculptor working in steel, bronze, glass and wood. His work can be seen throughout Portland’s Pearl District and he has also created extensive site-specific installations within the Nines Hotel. Well known for his work in California, he has recently installed a series of spheres of different sizes and colors on Hollywood Boulevard. His 108′ steel sculpture was also selected from 10 sculptors nationally for the Newport Beach Sculpture Park.
	Kara Krieger-McGhee is a narrative oil painter with naturalist passions and Trompe L’oeil influences. This technique literally means “trick the eye”. It is a study in “seeing”, which in layman terms means that the artist works to train their eye to be aware of every little nuance in the interplay of light with objects, value with color and warmth with cool. Once grasped the artist is able to create a two-dimensional painting that causes the viewer to feel that they can reach in and grab the objects they are looking at. Her current “Not-so-still-life” series  invites people into a specific bird species’ life, with the birds interacting with their story.
	Hazel Schlesinger discovered her passion for oil painting at an early age, inspired by her childhood on the Northwest coast. The shorelines, fields, and vineyards, and later the Mediterranean countryside, have supplied the scenes and subjects of her work. She paints from a palette of predominantly warm, vivid colors and large, rhythmic brush strokes, transforming landscapes into more contemporary or abstract realism.
Primary Elements Gallery
	Because she loves the natural beauty of stone, wood and feathers, Mickie Skinner has combined her paintings of animals and nature using them as her ‘canvas’. She call it painting nature on nature. To her, it’s as if she has reproduced them in their own environment.
	Steven Krig  finds great comfort in glass as it allows him to partner with the light. Glass is a unique  medium in this regard.  He says he can’t hold light in his hand so he simply befriends glass in an effort to influence light’s path. Light will continue to work its brush,  introducing countless subtle changes to the paths he creates for it long after his hand has left the imagery.
	Marianne Post is an avid outdoors woman whose subject is “naturally” the landscape. Using soft pastels in a “painterly” impressionistic style, her award winning work reflects quiet morning vistas, light glinting off the water’s surface and the grandeur of the Oregon high country. It also conveys her fascination with nature, light and color.
	As an Oregon native, Mike Rangner has enjoyed a successful career as a professional illustrator in the Portland area for more than 20 years with clients including Nike and Standard Insurance and awards and honors from service organizations including the Oregon Food Bank, and Goodwill Industries.A recent move to the Mid-Willamette Valley has allowed him to further strengthen his love of plein air and studio painting by capturing the vast and diverse Oregon landscape that lies one hour in each direction of my home and studio in beautiful Northwest Albany. The diverse body of work includes pieces featuring landscapes across the Pacific Northwest including the Columbia River Gorge, Eastern Oregon, Coastal scenery and the rich farmlands of the Mid-Willamette Valley.
White Bird Gallery
	Brooke Borcherding is dedicated to an ongoing inquiry of building the landscape through paint.  Growing up painting palm trees of southern California, she moved to Oregon which inspired her to take an easel outside for the first time in 2009.  She received her BFA from the University of Oregon in 2010, but is mostly self taught by observing/ responding to nature.  With a practice of both plein air and studio painting she now works as a full time artist in Seattle WA.  Her current work of deconstructing the landscape aims to shed light on the beauty of ordered chaos.
	Gretha Lindwood’s paintings are best described as “crisp, refreshing, and vivid.” Vibrant color and strong design are hallmarks of her work developed during a 30-year career as an illustrator and graphic designer. Using soft pastel sticks, recompressed powdered pigments from the earth, she makes her marks on artist grade sandpaper to express the effects oflight and atmosphere as she paints the landscape en plein air.Recent awards for her work include “Best Pastel” at the 2013 Pacific Northwest Plein Air Competition. She has also won recognition for her work at shows in Laguna, Carmel, and Los Gatos.
	Dave and Boni Deal. This husband and wife team has collaborated in clay for more than 30 years, working full time at their rustic home studio in the Cascades. They have worked almost solely in raku since the 70’s, and are known for large classical forms and intricate surface designs. A unique aspect of their pottery is the focus on the native environment… the plants, geology, and wildlife that are reflected in the themes and materials used in their work, like the heron urns, leaf imprint pots and landscape triptychs. During the weekend, they will be doing a raku firing on the beach at sunset.
	Pamela Wachtler-Fermanis’ work reflects the impressionistic style of “The Philadelphia 10.” a group of Moore College painters of the 1900′s.  Her pastoral landscapes invite the viewer to pause and walk down the lane.  She says, “The world is a beautiful place and that’s what I try to capture in my paintings.  Even ordinary life offers magical moments for my canvas.”
	For 30 years Michigan Native Debra Carnes  has been hand-crafting woven works of art from ever-changing materials. Her pieces have been displayed in juried shows and galleries in Michigan, Florida and Oregon.  Her baskets and sculptures are currently inspired by the  growing concern to create sustainability; using natural, found, and traditional materials that also give the viewer a sense of the local beauty that inspires her to weave.