This Friday, set sail on January’s gallery cruise
Published 10:30 am Wednesday, January 7, 2026
It regularly happens in January: Vashon’s monthly gallery cruise, typically held on the first Friday of the month, moves to the second Friday. Head out to see new artworks, hobnob with friends, visit local businesses and grab a bite to eat from roughly 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9.
Island Sunsation
There’s a new stop on this Friday’s cruise: an open house for Sarah St.Germain’s new business, Island Sunsation, a tanning salon adjacent to her hair salon in Thriftway Plaza. From 5 to 8 p.m., the event will feature refreshments, beverages and a chance to win gift certificates at the salon. Works of art by Marianne McDonnell will be on display, along with kitchen and bath designs by Julie Hart of Poppy & Company.
McDonnell, who now lives on Vashon, was born in California and grew up among orange poppies and oak trees. Her family moved to the Northwest, where she first lived on Friday Harbor and then in Gig Harbor. She graduated from The Evergreen State College with a degree in performing arts and, since that time, has dedicated her life to artistic pursuits in one form or another. After nearly four decades, she has found her passion in painting works with bold color — a tribute to the beautiful places she has lived.
Swiftwater Gallery
Swiftwater Gallery will show work by local artist members at a reception held from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9. At 6 p.m., Yulia Ivashchenko will demonstrate her technique of wet felting.
Ivashchenko will make a simple beanie hat to demonstrate the process of laying out wool fibers, spraying them with water and then agitating them to cause the fibers to bind together and create felt. She will also show how to integrate other fibers into felted art and discuss the versatility and many uses of felt. Other examples of her felted clothing, shoes and other artistry will be on display at the gallery.
VALISE
2026 marks VALISE Gallery’s 17th year of presenting exhibitions in the heart of downtown Vashon.
January’s offering, “The Food Show” — about preparing, serving, eating, talking about and looking at food from all angles — will have an opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9.
The show is a fundraiser for Vashon Food Bank, with visitors encouraged to drop off canned goods or signal their support with cash donations.
Collective members have collaborated on a surreal sculptural installation in the show — the Purple Camel Cafe — and there will also be painting and mixed-media works covering the walls.
VALISE artists tend to describe their works in whimsical ways and this month is no different.
“I will be serving you art on a plate,” Dot Cherch said.
Pascale Judet said she will share “small bites with sentimental value,” while Gregory Burnham mysteriously declared, “Tofu is better for you than Soylent Green.”
Other collective gallery members showing work in the show include Jiji Saunders, Lenard Yen, Liz Maxfield, Bill Jarcho, Hita Von Mende, Sharon Shaver, George Wright, Rachel Lord Kenaga and Robert Passig.
Regular gallery hours are 1 to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Vashon Center for the Arts
A group exhibition, “Creatures Among Us: The Art of Companionship, Wildness & Wonder,” featuring 55 artists and more than 80 works of art celebrating animals, will have an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9, at Vashon Center for the Arts.
“From beloved pets to wildlife, from symbolic creatures to imagined beings, the exhibition reflects the enduring bond between humans and the animal world,” said Lynann Politte, gallery director of VCA.
The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing, mixed media and photography. Artists hail from across Washington, as well as California, North Carolina and Texas.
The show, Politte said, builds on the success of VCA’s popular bird-themed exhibition last January, expanding the focus from avian life to all creatures — domestic, wild, real and imagined — and is an “invitation to notice, appreciate and care for the living world around us.” The exhibition runs through Feb. 1.
Regular gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. For more information, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org.
Vashon Senior Center
An exhibition of Jeff Good’s paintings will have an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9, at the Vashon Senior Center. Good, who began painting in the 1970s while a student of architecture at the University of Kansas, has had his paintings exhibited nationally and internationally during the past 15 years.
Good says his favorite medium is watercolor because of “its transparency and fluidity and, most importantly, the pure pleasure of letting the pigment and water create effects on the paper in a very spontaneous and rapid manner.”
Good retired as a principal of GFF Architects in 2016 and currently devotes a great deal of his time to painting and practicing architecture in his studio on Vashon. Learn more at jefflgoodart.com.
