This first Friday will be full of creativity on display. Most galleries and art spots will be open from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday night.
The Hardware Store Restaurant
The restaurant’s gallery will feature the work of Jane Spakowsky throughout the month of September with an opening reception on Friday evening. Spakowsky grew up immersed in the artistic culture of Vashon. Currently, she spends much of her time working on mixed media portraits layered with collage papers, inks, pastels and paint. She also enjoys making distressed cloth and clay art dolls and salvaged saint assemblages with hand-sculpted faces and halos of rusty nails.
Judd Creek Ranch Gallery
The gallery will open “Chadogu, Implements of the Japanese Tea Ceremony” from 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday. Tea will be served all evening.
Open Space for Arts & Community
“Festival 25: Catch Us While You Can,” a month-long celebration of visual artists and musicians who have shaped the island’s cultural landscape for 25 years or more, will open. Hosted by Open Space and sponsored by VIVA, Vashon Events and 4Culture, the exhibit will include work by dozens of veteran Vashon visual artists and performances by equally well-aged musicians. At the opening, Kat Eggleston, One More Mile, Portage Fill Big Band and Bob Krinsky will play. The party will continue throughout the month with gallery hours each weekend except Sept. 14 to 16, salon discussions with venerable visual artists once a week and a final weekend festival of visual and performing arts. For complete information, visit openspacevashon.com.
Point Robinson Picnic & Gallery Walk
Bring a picnic dinner to Point Robinson lighthouse and see children’s artwork created during the Low Tide Festival on display from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday.
VALISE
Australian photographer turned Vashon transplant, Julian Dahl, and Seattle artist, Jon Haaland, will open “Badlands,” a joint exhibition of post-apocalyptic landscape photographs and paintings at VALISE Gallery. Both artists made work that explores the principle of entropy and the beauty of familiar forms that have been changed by time and decay.
During the past two years, Dahl has photographed dead trees and stumps on Vashon beaches. He shot them mostly at night with wireless flash heads. He describes his work as showing “close-up beach-scapes looming from the blackness, lit from within like post-apocalyptic magic lanterns.”
“To me, decay and collapse are aesthetically more appealing than conventionally ‘beautiful’ images,” said Dahl.
Haaland’s three-dimensional paintings echo this mood with his use of dirt, fire, oil paint and torn pages from history books arranged in blackened strata.
Vashon Center for the Arts
A preview party for Vashon Center for the Arts’ upcoming auction, “Masquerade,” will feature artworks that will be up for bid on two gala evenings, Sept. 21 and 22. Auction items, including trips and other experiences, will also be previewed at the First Friday gathering. This year, local restaurateurs Dre Neely and Pepa Brower will be in charge of catering the affair with wood-fired pizzas for the crowd. The Sept. 7 preview is free; for tickets to the auction, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org.
VIA
Vashon Island Intuitive Arts will show the acrylic mixed media work of Diana Comstock.
