LIBRARY ART 2023
Visit art displays at the Bandon Library in the lobby gallery and cases. Click here for background and contact information.
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The gallery is open to the public from Tuesday through Saturday during the library’s hours. Check here for current library hours.
December 1, 2023 through February 29, 2024
Elaine Dunham and Jen Ells will be at Bandon Library Art Gallery, December 1st – February 29th.
Meet the Artists: 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.
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 specialty. 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.
August 1 through September 30, 2023
Photographers Susan and Steve Dimock return to Bandon Library Art Gallery
Bandon Library Art Gallery will host a reception for Susan and Steve Dimock, whose show, “Oceans of Texture,” runs through September 30, 2023. Also showing is sculptor Deborah Unger.
Meet the artists on Saturday, August 12th at 1 pm. The reception will be held in the Sprague Room, from 1 pm – 2.30 pm. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome.
Bandon has many excellent scenic photographers, and we certainly count Susan and Steven Dimock among the very best. This show, their second with the gallery, is a deep dive into those images within their body of work that go beyond the seascape and into a more intimate examination of their surroundings to focus not just on the majesty of a rock, but on the textures in the rock. They pick out glowing bulbs of stranded kelp, the soft colors of stone and shell, or how the sun can turn wet sand to hammered gold. The Dimocks create images that are specific and yet abstracted from the larger picture. 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 multi-textured world.
The carved basswood sculptures by Deborah Unger are beautiful, mysterious, and often disorienting. She uses her characters to illustrate states of being, feelings, dynamics between and within human beings; feelings of coming apart at the seams, estrangement, loyalty and loss, the distance between us. Her figurines are in poses and situations that describe familial relationships, self-reflection, transformation. Unger carves by hand or with power tools, sews clothes, finds or makes props, sets the stage, and allows us to enter moments in her characters’ dreamlike lives.
June 1 through July 31, 2023
“The 7th Annual Mosaic Show” at the Bandon Library Art Gallery.
Reception for the artists on Saturday, July 8th at 2pm. The reception will include mosaic-making for the public. Child-safe materials will be available, and everyone can make their own 3” x 3” fridge magnet mosaic.
Curator Tracy Hodson has put together the work of 22 artists from the Pacific Northwest and beyond, demonstrating the wide range of styles and materials these artists utilize to create their mosaics.
“I am so glad to be back after the Covid years, and I thought the best way to celebrate the return of this annual show was to throw as wide a net as possible. We are showing artists who work in the Classical vein, using marble, travertine, smalti–which is a glass that has been made specifically for mosaics for about 600 years, in Venice and Murano, Italy–gold, tile, and other sorts of natural specimens,” Hodson said, “in addition to those who work in stained glass or pique-assiette–a modern form of mosaic art that uses broken or cut ceramic crockery shards. There are also glass-on-glass mosaics hanging in the window at the end of the hall, two of which were made by children, and we have two micromosaic jewelry makers this year. Both walls of the gallery are covered, and the cases are full. I don’t think even one more mosaic would have fit!”
The roster of mosaicists includes both newcomers and returning artists from as far away as Oklahoma, Maryland, and Texas. “And Brigitte Raison, who lives in France, sent a mosaic again this year,” Hodson said. “We have a solid list of artists who have stuck with us year after year, and more new ones than ever before. I hope that the show will bring in more new visitors than ever before, too. It’s not easy to see what’s happening in the mosaic world, as it’s not an art form many people know much about, and few galleries show it. As far as I know, we’re still the only annual mosaic show in Oregon, and I am dedicated to keeping it going.”
This year’s show includes work by two Bandon artists, Donn Klewitz and Bessie Joyce, and Hodson’s own mosaics will be on display inside the library on the Long Wall, along with Winchester Bay painter Rebecca McCormick. Most of the mosaics in the show are for sale, and many of the artists accept commissions
March 1 – March 31, 2023
“Merging Worlds” Paintings by Morgan Johnson and clay sculpture by Cary Weigand, at the Bandon Library Art Gallery.
Reception for the artists on March 4th 2023, 2pm, in the Sprague Room, free to all. Refreshments will be served.
Oil painter Morgan Johnson breaks the world into pieces of color and shape, creating images of a mosaic-like reality, rather than a straightforward one. This has the effect of calling our attention to the multitude of colors in a sky and its fractured reflection, the snakeskin-like textures of a tree, or in the form of a swimmer under the disrupted water. Shapes may be geometric or free-form flowing lines, but these lines and shapes of color emphasize the overall image, rather than detract–or distract–from it. The work is almost hyper-real, introducing a micro element to the macro image, merging the two points of view. Johnson’s paintings are up through March 31st.
Cary Weigand‘s sculptures are made with stained and glazed cone 6 porcelain, then combined with other materials, such as wood and hair. She finds inspiration in the materials themselves—their connection to the earth—and in the secrets of human and animal nature. She combines rougher slab work with incredibly fine detail, picking out the tiny fingers of a woman or the whorls of an ear. In her work, the animal and human worlds merge to create relationships beyond mere companionship; they all seem to speak the same mystic language, and assume the traits of one another. It is the highly skilled work of a unique imagination. Weigand’s sculpture will remain in the gallery through May 31st.
January 1 – January 31, 2023
Bandon Library Art Gallery is pleased to welcome painter Geralyn Inokuchi and jeweler Jane Ujhazi
Come celebrate the work of painter Geralyn Inokuchi and jeweler Jane Ujhazi on January 15th, 2023, from 2-4 pm! Meet the artists, enjoy refreshments, mingle with friends, and make new ones! It’s all happening at Bandon Library Art Gallery, in the Sprague Room.
Abstract painter Geralyn Inokuchi is back at Bandon Library Art Gallery, bringing with her the colors of Autumn leaf and sky, the verdant greens and rusty umbers below, the deep blues and misty whites above. We need these colors during the grey months of Winter here on the South Coast. They remind us that there is a richer pallette to come when the wheel of the year turns.
The joy of discovery is the experience of these paintings. Geri’s gift is the depth and complexity of her work. There is musicality to these paintings are hung; the violets and blues carry you from one painting to the next. Move in close to be pulled deeper into the many small moments happening within the larger canvas. Interplays of contrasting color create small eddies in the wide stream of each image, and mysterious darkness contains surprising saturations of pure color. And there is texture, created by layers of fibrous papers and sinuations of pure paint. Some of these are made of paper alone, torn sheets overlapping to build up pieces that float within the rectangle of the frame, making a nice change from a rectilinear discipline of the others. In all of these, a spirit of exploration is evoked, and the viewer is asked to take the time required to really see what is there, and to return again and again with fresh eyes. These paintings hold rich rewards for such efforts.
In the cases, Jane Újházi’s jewels reflect the inspiration she also gets from the natural world. Graceful butterfly wing and Autumn leaf porcelain mix with glass beads to make unique earrings. Some necklaces are chunky, some delicate, but all are made with semi-precious stones, pearls, and gold or silver. These exquisite elements she uses are handmade and were made by artisans from around the world. Her work has elements of both the familiar and the exotic, and all of it delights.