I have been writing this column, Ebb & Flow (previously First Friday Focus) since August of 2019.
My main purpose was to draw the community’s attention to a particular artist exhibiting their
work somewhere on Bainbridge Island, and mostly support local and regional artists and
exhibitions I felt should be highlighted. Of course, I could only select one or two artist or one
project at a time. There have been 32 times now, and as I near three years of this assignment, I
have decided it is a good time to move on to other endeavors.
Heading into this column concept, I felt I had a pretty good understanding for the arts
happening on Bainbridge Island and the surrounding area. I had helped form the Bainbridge
Island Museum of Art and the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network as a founding board
member. I had already helped found the Kitsap County Arts Board and later restart the Island’s
Public Art Committee, serving as Chair of both for a time. Before those I had years of writing
critical reviews and articles on jewelry and metalsmithing having been trained in art history (an
MA) and as a metalsmith/sculptor (an MFA).
Only a few months into this assignment the pandemic cloud formed, and its heavy curtain fell,
closing businesses and isolating the population. I admired how the art community navigated
this awful challenge to keep in touch with, and keep offering relevant, educational experiences
to community members. They all seemed to find silver linings, forced to new approaches and
solutions, finding wonderful additions, and becoming stronger.
While I did not select the title of my column to reflect this new world situation, it was an apt
choice. There has been some “ebb,” where there have been shifts or losses, but plenty more
“flow,” which can be synonymous with growth. As I end my column, I would like to reflect on
where I see the Island’s art scene and more specifically in the visual arts now and heading into
and beyond 2023.
Around the edges of the visual arts, there have been wonderful advances for the community.
This year the City’s first Poet Laurate was installed. Michelle Bombardier was a great choice to
fill the two-year post. She has already enlivened the island helping expedite poetry reading
events at BARN and other venues in hopes to “kindle greater appreciation of poetry on the
island.” Watch for the rare but wonderful visit from two-time National Poet Laurate, Billy Collins, at the high school and at BIMA in April. There will also be the inauguration of the Bainbridge Island Film Festival (BIFF) in September. BIFF, with co-sponsorship of Arts and Humanities Banbridge, will show contemporary films by and/or including community members over four days in the Island’s film venues. It will include a youth category.
The Arts and Humanities Bainbridge (AHB) organization developed a digital replacement of
their quarterly Currents Magazine and used the new vehicle to greatly expand coverage of all
things cultural happening on the Island. It has expanded its scope each year since launching
“Currents Online” in 2019. In 2022 AHB orchestrated the successful establishment of the
“Creative District.” This is the State’s eleventh official recognition of a city as a Creative District.
The designation helps promote and support the arts in a city, pulling together many cultural
organizations and their activities, which also aids artists and business allies. One of the central
events put on by the new district is the Bridge Festival. Look for this annually in the fall.
This year the Bridge Festival has an extra special presentation. It will celebrate the opening of
the Buxton Center for the Performing Arts. The sixty-six-year-old organization wisely used the
closed-down Covid Epidemic years to not only renovate the thirty-year-old Bainbridge
Performing Arts building but upgraded it to the nines. It will include many added features and
types of performances. It will also continue some art exhibitions around the new facility. This
island treasure serves individual community members from youth classes, plays that allow
people to stretch themselves to entertain us all, and comedy relief, which we all need.
The Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery is celebrating its seventy-fifth year in 2023. It is one of
the oldest craft-based galleries in the country but expanded beyond the early restricted
definition of “craft” years ago exhibiting all the fine arts today. The gallery has a stellar line up
of exhibitions planned throughout its special year. Some are familiar themes of youth and fresh
talent, and selected Island artists. An exhibition by glass artists from the Lummi Nation, Dan and
Raya Friday is scheduled. Dan was featured in the Netflix show “Blown Away,” which is a fun
series. Another will be a solo exhibition of Yakima Nation member Leo Adams, who has been
exhibiting for sixty years, and renowned for much of his career. Also rare will be the woven
jewelry of internationally renowned UW Professor Emeritus Mary Lee Hu to help close out the
year.
Executive Director Debra Ruzinsky pointed out that “BAC” is more than what you see along
Winslow Way. They teach at “all the island senior living centers, have revived a programming
partnership with Island Volunteer Caregivers, offer drop-in workshops, classes and in-gallery
artist talks which are also available on their YouTube channel. The cannel has over seventy
videos to date.”
Winslow Art Center is also an example of what you cannot “see” so much physically, but which
has many rich and dynamic artistic offerings for the community. The art school was located
downtown in the Winslow Way Mall, offering exhibitions and classes, and the Plein Aire
Competition. The covid pandemic only took away their physical location, but not their mission
or passion. Director Martha Jordan founded the school in 2011 but went virtual in 2020, quickly
learning Zoom’s instructional benefits, successfully and dramatically increasing their class
offerings. “Today the Center offers nearly 80 online classes with instructors recognized from a
regional to a truly international school with instructors and students participating from across
the United States and around the world.” The Center is offering trips to Italy again, both in the
spring and fall with familiar instructors. And there is a robust and free “Art Chat” on Thursday
mornings with guest artists welcoming artists of any skill level to join in.
The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (“BIMA”) is also celebrating this year. It is marking its
tenth anniversary. The main celebration is the “Spotlight” exhibition due to open the end of
June. The artwork was selected by renowned jurors, offering regional artists a chance to exhibit
at the museum. The exhibition will fill the entire museum. The museum is also initiating the
BRAVA Awards this year. The Bainbridge Recognizes Achievement in the Visual Arts is a set of
awards recognizing artists in the Emerging Artist, Artist Book, Children’s Book Illustrator and
Native American / First Nations (Salish Sea Region) categories. These will be substantial awards
and the process is underway. Of course, the museum has many exhibitions lined up that are so
easy to drop by and take in the ever-revolving shows as a free-to-enter museum. At ten years
old, the museum has developed a multifaceted set of cultural offerings beyond exhibits, from
smARTfilms to lectures and exhibition tours, many videos of artists and their work, drawing
classes, to many youth-family and school programs, and festivals. Music to our ears.
The core galleries in Winslow remain strong. Besides the “BAC” Gallery, the long-standing
Jeffery Moose Gallery continues. Moose helped found the Net Contents Gallery on Bainbridge
in 1989 in the Lynwood area, then opened the Jeffery Moose Gallery in Seattle in 1994 where it
thrived until he moved back to Bainbridge along Winslow Way in 2017. While the Island said
goodbye with thanks to the Roby King Gallery after thirty-two years, we welcomed the JGO
Gallery in the same location in January. It will show many of the same artists, and binging plenty
of new ones to the community. The Bergh Photography Gallery at Winslow Grove continues as
does the Wendy Armstrong Gallery inside the Amelia Wynn Bistro across the street. The library
continues to offer art exhibitions and presentations.
Several galleries were lost this year, however. The Amy Roberts Sculpture Gallery and the
Steven Frye Photography Gallery had to close due to extreme increases in rent ahead of the
Winslow Center Mall overhaul underway. That said, the owners’ representatives have
suggested there might be a mural in its future.
There are a few venues outside of the Island’s Winslow core. There is the Bainbridge Artisan
Resource Network (“BARN”), run more recently by Grae Drake, as a school, it offers a
staggering number of classes ranging from Kitchen Arts to Jewelry to Glass, Book Arts, Textiles,
and more. It serves youth to the elderly, building strong community through shared activities.
With community input, it can expand to additional studio and media offerings in the coming
years. As a venue, it offers art exhibitions as well as lectures and other community gatherings.
Heading north to the Day Road area, the Gallery at Grace Episcopal Church holds exhibitions.
The Cascara Gallery shows the woodwork of David Kotz. And Large Art Studios is a collective of
artist studios which occasionally mounts an exhibition. Down in the Lynwood area to the south
there is the Peaceful Spring Designs Gallery showing work by artist-owner Theresa Killgore and
several others. Unfortunately, the Lino Tagliapietra Glass Gallery next door did close during the
epidemic. It was an associated gallery for the glass master’s works and his main gallery remains
in Seattle. Around the corner is Patricia Orellana Fine Art, open by appointment. All three
galleries had opened around the same time mid-2021 at The Roost.
The Bainbridge Island Parks District has also jumped into the arts with its “Walkabout” Program.
The visuals are mounted on all-weather stands and are easy to read. The all-weather panels
cover different subjects “such as history, discovery, poetry, art displays and elder wisdom” from
local/regional artists. A QR Code adds additional information when using that App. The stands,
set around the pond feature at Battle Point Park, were installed in 2001 but are taken down
during the winter season. As a pilot program it may expand to other parks in the system. Of
course, Battle Point Park has the art-filled Kids Up: The Next Generation of Play(ground),
reopened in 2021, and the ten-foot bow string sundial on the hill above the Ritchie
Observatory. Other parks in the system also contain artworks to enjoy.
Both the BARN and the Bloedel Reserve will be involved with this year’s Bridge Festival. The two
organizations have been mutual supporters for exchanges such as artists from the Creative
Residency Program at Bloedel creating and lecturing at BARN occasionally. Some of their past
Creative Residents have exhibited at BIMA. There have been artworks from BARN Members at
BAC exhibitions, and there have been events where the city has shared its art involvement with
and through Island organizations, such as the Poet Laurette reading at BARN.
Perhaps the longest, and successful of collaborations between the City of Bainbridge Island and
cultural non-profits has been with Arts and Humanities Bainbridge (“AHB”) and it’s Public Art
Committee (“PAC”). This strong relationship began in 1992. Arts and Humanities, led by
Executive Director Inez Maubane Jones and PAC Committee Chair Steve Rabago, oversees the
City’s public art programming, its collection, purchasing of artworks. Over the past five years
they have overseen the “Something New” exhibition program of temporary outdoor sculptures
around Winslow. You can find the five sculptures -and much more- on the “Otocast” App. Give
it a try. The current exhibition is up into June. There is still time to vote for the most popular of
the set until April 14, with an announcement of the People’s Choice Award the following week.
The new set of “Something New VI,” will go up for a year in July. Last week (3.28 th ) the City
Council approved another five years of the popular program.
The Public Art Committee’s next project is the selection of a major new permanent artwork(s)
for the new Police Department and Court facility. That process is underway as this is written.
AHB supports artists and community creativity in so many ways they are too numerous to
mention here. Just log into the Currents Online website and discover what is going on.
There are also several substantial and much-loved art-filled events where great artwork
appears for a day or two then recedes back into studios around the island. There are two
annual art tours, and both are held in August and December. These are the Bainbridge Island
Studio Tour and the Bainbridge Island Working Studios Tour. Both are self-directed tours where
the public visits a studio with several artists sharing a studio space for their sale event, then
move along to another studio location to see more artwork. There is also the incredibly popular
Modern Quilt Guild Festival, coming up on its eleventh year that is held at various locations year
to year. One issue is its size, the growth of the festival makes finding the right venue a
challenge. The Guild is part of the Kitsap Quilters membership, itself in its 36 th year.
While the studio tours connect artists on the Island with community members, they give a
glimpse into the creativity that lives here. Spread around are individual studio artists who offer
classes to the community sharing their expertise and artwork and encouraging creativity in
others. I am sure there are plenty of creative activities I have not touched on. There are many
non-visual and cultural offerings as well. There are too many to list. What is amazing is the
cooperation between the Island’s organizations. With respect and support of each other’s
missions and programing, they also collaborate to an unusual extent, sharing, hosting and co-
hosting, even blending their offerings for the community. What should be clear is that the state
of the arts on Bainbridge Island moving forward, 2023 and beyond, is strong. And that is a
wonderful thing.
ABOUT BILL BARAN-MICKLE: 2020 Island Treasure Awardee. Recently Bill has enjoyed exhibiting in international art biennales. Of the nine biennales he has participated in, he has received five awards, including a 3rd and 2nd Place for Sculpture (2011, 2018) in the Chianciano Biennale at the Chianciano Art Museum in Italy, and a 1st Place for Applied Art in the inaugural London Art Biennale in 2013. More recently his works were exhibited the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, the Roby King Gallery and Bainbridge Arts & Crafts Gallery. Bill is the designer of the 10-foot Equatorial Bowstring Sundial at the Richie Observatory and the large “Salmon Run” relief sculpture at the entrance to Kids Up: Next Generation of Play playground, both at Battle Point Park, Bainbridge Island. Bill has reduced his volunteer workload recently, nownincluding this column, to concentrate on a book about metalsmithing that has been on his mind for a long time.
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