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.

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.