Gallery finale features 12-plus artists
For most of the past two years, downtown Juneau's Empire Gallery at 235 Second St. has been a haven for risk-taking artists.
But now a pizzeria plans to lease the space from the Juneau Empire and is waiting approval of a liquor license.
This month's Empire Gallery show, "Abstract & Mixed Media Exhibit," a combined exhibit with at least 12 Juneau artists, will open from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5. It's being billed as the space's "Season Finale" and could be the final Empire gallery show. The exhibit will run through September.
"I probably won't have something for October," said Juneau artist Heidi Reifenstein, who has run the space with Miah Lager from December 2001 to April 2002 and October 2002 to now.
Reifenstein and new co-manager Sarah Elliot hope to secure a new space for art.
"I will try to have something for Gallery Walk," Reifenstein said.
The Empire Gallery is open at various times during the afternoon or art-lovers can call 321-3959 to arrange an appointment.
This month's show includes work by Roxanne Turner, Dave Woodie, Paul Gardinier, Diane Baxter, Sarah Elliot, Chuck Taylor, Alan Munro, Paige Bridges, Jane Stokes, Charlie Meacham, Pua Maunu, Reifenstein and others.
Baxter, back in town after living on Whidbey Island in Washington state for 10 years, will show three new mixed-media "bundles," or assemblages, of goatherd twigs and wraps. Known in town for her clay work, Baxter plans to have a bigger bundle show in March 2004.
"This is all organic matter that was going to decompose, and there a lot of variations with colors and subtleties, and I just like that visually," Baxter said. "There's tension here. Society, cultures and people have always bundled up their things. You bundle up things to take to the market. People bundle babies. I like the word, and I like preparing things too."
Baxter turned to sticks and organic material because she couldn't find enough space to work with clay. Her "Bundle With Parts of Mount Roberts For Color" includes sticks, clay, fabric, paprika and sealer. The paprika gives the organic sculpture scent.
"Bundling is an undercurrent of archaic parts of society and parts of mankind that aren't practiced anymore," Baxter said. "Nowadays we don't have to do it for survival, but it's how our species got to where we are now. For me, its symbolic. It's a meditative process."
Munro, a longtime Juneau resident and artist, will show at least four new paintings - landscapes, semi-abstract and completely abstract. All were completed in the past two months.
"It's a little schizophrenic, I guess," Munro said. "I suppose it's four different artists, four different temperaments, four different attitudes."
"I work with a variety of themes. I jump around and do various things. It's just how I happen to be feeling. You're confronted with a problem off the bat, and that's a bare canvas. To me getting started, it is like the way a carpenter starts with a superstructure. Then you build on it."