Photographer Michael Miller begins with things like coral, a tomato, or even an ordinary screen door, and goes in close. The macro photograph is then manipulated to find a new and dynamic image that realizes his vision; he strives to find the beauty in unremarkable objects. The process is mysterious but surprising in its clarity. He seems to see what’s latent there, before he makes the photograph, and experiments with a wonderful freedom. His images are filled with light. Some compositions beg to be called surrealism, such as “Green Sphere.” I am so pleased to have Michael at Bandon Library Art Gallery for the first time.

The work in the cases harmonizes with Michael’s photograph. A selection of Ken Ayers’ sculptures return to the gallery. These bronzes all started with plant parts, but are not copies of them. Instead, Ken put disparate elements together—a leaf from this plant, a stem from another, seaweed, a pod, some twine, a bulb—to create otherworldly flowers and plants; plants that have more than a touch of the surreal about them. They are unnatural yet graceful, strange yet intriguing, and both familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously. They are beautiful.

The gallery is open during regular library hours, 1204 11th St. SW, in Bandon City Park. For more information about the gallery, visit the Bandon Library Friends and Foundation website, Bandonlff.org.

Article courtesy of Tracy Hodson, photo by Michael Miller.

The abstract paintings of Elaine Dunham are just what we need to banish the dark of winter. Her playful, bright canvases are very welcome as the nights draw in. Using movement and color, patterns shift and dance in the energetic exchange that is Dunham’s speciality. Works like “Around Ashland” evoke a joyful response while the muted palette of “Swing Time Menagerie” creates a more thoughtful encounter. But taking in all of these paintings is a delightful experience.

Bandon High School art teacher Jen Ells showed her paintings earlier this year, and now fills the cases with her ceramic pots, bowls, and mugs in earth tones and soft colors.

All works are available for purchase.

Please join us for a reception for both artists on Sunday, December 3rd, at 2 pm in the Sprague Room. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome.

Photo credits: “Around Ashland” and “Swing Time Menagerie” by Elaine Dunham; honey pots by Jen Ells.

The gallery is open during regular library hours, 1204 11th St. SW, in Bandon City Park. For more information about the gallery, visit the Bandon Library Friends and Foundation website, Bandonlff.org.

Painter and collage artist Susan Lehman is a master of subtlety, whose work pushes the edge of what is possible in a two-dimensional medium. Using fabrics, fibers, mesh, paper, and sculpting paste, Susan creates an undulating surface, pocked with craters or rising up into wrinkles before she paints. She then applies acrylic paint, inks, and metallics, and may further manipulate the surface by scratching or otherwise distressing the paint. The result is a complex painting with sculptural effects that takes time to fully absorb.

The main series of works on display, “A Delicate Balance,” made during the last 14 months, is a direct response to the challenges of lockdown: isolation, fear of what’s outside, feelings of being lost and cut off, memories of the beauty of nature, and trying to find hope and a way back into the world. Using a limited but dynamic pallette of black, white, grey, and metallic golds and coppers, Susan summons feelings we all experienced during this period of forced isolation: that of being stuck inside, looking out at a world drained of color and life, our loneliness at separation from other people, dislocation as our usual routines came to a sudden halt. These works are delicate and precise, invoking both the inner storms and quiet lulls that marked this stressful time. But Susan doesn’t leave us there; she then takes us outside and into light and color with the three newest paintings, including “Looking Towards Shore,” with its lovely turquoise seawater and misty sky. She tells us it’s not over yet, but we’re on our way home.

Janice Horne’s “A Murder of Crows” is assemblage at its most whimsical and fun. Riffing on the noted intelligence of crows and ravens, as well as their reputation for being tricksters, Janice playfully assembles collages and sculptures to celebrate these fascinating birds. With a wide variety of materials and both a sense of humor and a great respect for her subject, she creates scenarios in which crows are messengers, carriers of the seed of life, or gatekeepers of Time itself. She imbues her crows with mystic power, yet Janice’s mini stories are grounded in the real activities of corvids. It is a pleasure to have these delightful pieces in the cases.

The gallery is open during regular library hours, Tuesday through Saturday, at the Bandon Public Library, 1204 11th St. SW, in Bandon City Park. For more information about the gallery, visit the Bandon Library Friends and Foundation website, bandonlff.org.

Article courtesy of Tracy Hodson. Art images “Looking Towards Shore” by Susan Lehman; “Tricksters of Time” by Janice Horn.

Artists Reception: Saturday, February 29, 2020, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Library Sprague Room.

Just as it is easy to take a good photograph of a beautiful woman, so too it is easy to take a good photograph of beautiful scenery such as we have here— in abundance— in Bandon. The ocean just sits there looking gorgeous, and one aims a camera at it; after that, it’s just a matter of the degree of artistry the photographer brings to bear on the scene.

Bandon has many excellent scenic photographers, and we certainly count Susan and Steven Dimock among the very best. But a deep dive into their body of work reveals that they have often gone beyond the seascape and into a more intimate examination of their surroundings. They focus not just on the majesty of a rock, but on the textures in the rock. They pick out the lone and glowing bulb of stranded kelp, or water streaming off a cluster of mussels, or the play of light on a small patch of sand and sea, creating images that are specific and yet abstract. They capture a mood, a moment, something unique and fine. It is an unveiling of the small mysteries that make up the whole of our world.

William Blake urged us “…to see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.” With this show the Dimocks offer us a chance to do that, and spur us to make such efforts on our own.

Jane Ujhazi returns to Bandon Library Art Gallery with another collection of her one-of-a-kind necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, made of semi-precious stones, worked metals, and beads. An avid collector of antique and tribal beads, she constructs her pieces to marry the contemporary with the ancient. Inspired always by the natural world and its gifts of beauty, as well as the long tradition of self-decoration that has ever been a part of being human, her work evokes many times and many lands. Jane’s studio is appropriately called Terra Nova— New Land— a place where each piece is a small treasure, a work of art like no other.

The gallery is open during regular library hours, Tuesday through Saturday, at the Bandon Public Library, 1204 11th St. SW, in Bandon City Park. For more information about the gallery, visit the Bandon Library Friends and Foundation website, bandonlff.org.

Article by Tracy Hodson. Art images “New Life” by Susan Dimock; necklace by Jane Ujhazi.

Human beings have been telling and retelling stories since the beginning of time, stories whose function is to untangle the mysteries and describe the truths of our world. Out of these stories grew symbolic figures so pervasive as to become iconic and universally understood, allowing cultures to communicate across time. Angela Passalacqua draws upon such iconography, creating paintings whose stories we recognize, even as we puzzle out their specifics. The technological world vies with nature in ‘The Sextant and the Apple;’ the implacable Oracle speaks, Hermes delivers her message; the Zodiac tells its tale of human and cosmic evolution; the calm innocence of the cherub reminds us of the need for simplicity in a complex world and, always, dreams—our own, private oracles—thrust themselves into our consciousness. There is much more to life than what we experience awake, and more to know than what we can deliberately learn.

Painting with oils on wood, Angela creates surfaces that are textured, fresco-like. They feel old, their colors glowing softly as though mellowed with time. Birds, maidens, moons, ships, clouds, musical instruments, float through these images that are both Classical and entirely contemporary and original. The multiplicity of these images reflects the depths of understanding available to us; they tell stories we already know, yet need to hear again and again.

Certainly no world has so thoroughly understood and harnessed the power of storytelling through iconography as the world of advertising. Images that bypass the analytical process to speak directly to, and manipulate, human needs and desires is the goal of advertising, and these images work to great effect, as we often know to our cost! But through the lens of nostalgia, and with admiration for the imagination and talent of the artists of yesterday, we can appreciate this collection of vintage tins, shared by Dawn Vonderlin. Look beyond the surfaces to find the hidden treasures here: take note of the surrealistic image on a can of Colgate’s Baby Talc: the baby holds a can of talc, which baby holds a can of talc, and so on and so on, presumably to infinity. The charm of this collection lies in such cleverness, as well as the callback to that impossibly perfect place where we never lived, the past.

The gallery is open during regular library hours, Tuesday through Saturday, at the Bandon Public Library, 1204 11th St. SW, in Bandon City Park. For more information about the gallery, visit the Bandon Library Friends and Foundation, bandonlff.org.

Article by Tracy Hodson. Art images “The Sextant and the Apple” by A. Passalacqua; Vintage Colgate Baby Talc tin, courtesy of D. Vonderlin.