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Diane Culhane, “Hanging the Moon and Stars,” acrylic, 44 x 34 inches
On July 3, Bainbridge Arts and Craft will hold its first First Friday gallery opening since March. You won’t have to battle the crowds that would usually celebrate the Fourth of July with the community street music and dancing that evening. However, you may need to form a spacious queue outside the gallery due to the COVID-19 social distancing guidelines. The reopening exhibitions will feature the paintings of Diane Culhane, Danis Morgan, Susan Murphy, and Chris Lehwalder as well as glass work by Dennis Rogers. The gallery will also be featuring the Class of 2020 Art Show.
Diane Culhane is exhibiting 10 acrylic paintings in her own Culhane Style, a style well known and well-loved far beyond her art exhibitions. Her works are layers of her observation, providing a narrative adventure. These are busy, full, action-filled tableaux. Seeing them in person, up close, will help you enter each story. Find where you’d be in them, and imagine where you’d be going. Enter her fantastical world.
Culhane has written and illustrated, with her paintings, at least eight books geared toward children as well as adults. An excellent way to understand what is going on in her artwork, her work method, is the description of one of the books, If You Can Doodle You Can Paint, which was listed as one of the Best Books from the Library Journal in 2017. Take a regular doodle, something you may mindlessly draw in the margins, and build it up with other ones, experimenting or discovering how they may relate, then slowly build a personal expression. It will be your story done in a very personal style. She often teaches young and old students from around the Northwest using her books as text and inspiration.
The Senior Art Exhibition offers the community artwork by 8 talented students. Take a look at these artists early in their careers. By doing so you give them a much-appreciated send-off in a year that has seen the schools shuttered, and graduation celebrated by a drive through diploma pick-up procession. Among the young artists are several works each by the two Art Scholarship winners, Emma Lahtinen and Helen Gu.
ABOUT BILL BARAN-MICKLE: 2020 Island Treasure Awardee . Recently, Bill has enjoyed exhibiting in several international art biennial exhibitions. Of the three in which he has participated, he won Third Place for Sculpture from the European Confederation of Art Critics in the Chianciamo Biennale, at the Chianciano Art Museum in Italy in 2011, and First Place in Applied Arts in the London Biennale of 2013. In 2013 alone, he will have participated in eight exhibitions: from London to a two-person exhibition near home. In addition, Bill was asked to be a representative for CCAC’s exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Metals Department, and a mix of group shows in New York City, Miami, Seattle and Las Vegas. Bill is the designer of the 10 foot Equitorial Bowstring Sundial located at the Richie Observatory in Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island, WA and completed in 2015.