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Current ExhibitionOct 16 - Nov 27 Exhibition Extended through January 8
25! A Silver Legacy
The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center celebrates a quarter century of its history with an exhibition titled 25! A Silver Milestone on view from Oct. 16 – Jan 8. The show opens on Oct. 16 with a public reception from 2-4 pm. 25! pays tribute to more 164 exhibitions, myriad live programs, twelve seasons of Art Outside and the community of patrons, volunteers and visitors who have shepherded and/or enjoyed the creativity that has thrived on the former Webster Estate since 1986. That was the year that the home of newspaper heiress Esther Barrows Webster was transformed into what was to become the Olympic Peninsula’s contemporary art museum, the westernmost in the contiguous US.
Duncan McKiernan, designated by Webster as the first director, engaged iconic Northwest artist George Tsutakawa as the initial exhibitor, setting a museum quality precedent for all that was to follow. Tsutakawa, known for fountains, sculptures and paintings that fuse Eastern and Western influences into a high modernist style died in 1997. His sumi brush painting, Point of the Arches, depicting a favorite Peninsula haunt for this frequent visitor from Seattle, is one of the original works by 28 artists who comprise an exhibition that also includes a wealth of documentation.
“How to pack a sense of all that history into this modest space poses quite the challenge,” said PAFAC director Jake Seniuk, who succeeded McKiernan in 1989 and has served as the curatorial force behind the Center’s programs ever since. “It’s been quite a run,” he reflected. For this exhibition Seniuk selected one artist (and in a couple of cases two) from each year, artists who he felt told an important part of the PAFAC story. The choices include art world luminaries like Tsutakawa (1986). Another is primal abstractionist Leo Kenney whose faded significance in the annals of Northwest art the Center’s 1996 exhibition helped to restore.
William Morris, whose 1999 show demonstrated why many regard him as the greatest of Northwest glass masters is here. As is Philip McCracken (2001), dean of a generation of post-WWII Northwest sculptors who plumbed archetypal resonances in the abundant nature of our region. There are quirkier talents, too, like faux fossil king Richard Cook (1993), who tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek sought to rehabilitate the cracked theories of an 18th century German paleontologist with bizarre specimens carved meticulously in stone. Or conceptual artist James Pridgeon (1991), who as the official artist for Seattle’s 1990 Goodwill Games, designed a sculpture to be launched into space that unfortunately could not raise enough funds to board a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Beginning with McKiernan the Center has been staffed by artists. Continuing with Seniuk and long-time assistant and education director, Barbara Slavik, they have brought a creative flair that has allowed them to craft innovative programs inexpensively with a bevy of in-house skills. Seniuk and Slavik had twin exhibitions in 2003 and are represented by "Olympic Crossing" and "A Penny for Your Thoughts" respectively. The former is a photo triptych commemorating Seniuk’s solo one-day run across Olympic National Park in 1994. Slavik’s assemblage of curios and artifacts dispenses Lincoln heads for the viewer’s participation and response. McKiernan’s iconic "Cormorants" sculpture holds the torch for 2010, the year he was given a retrospective exhibition with his late wife Peach. Other artists in the show include husband and wife duo Dennis Evans and Nancy Mee, who shared an exhibition in 1998 to coincide with the completion of their controversial "Nine Muses" glass murals at the then new North Olympic Library.
Dorothea Morgan (1987), Peggy Fogliano (1988), Stephen Yates (1989), Charles Miller (1990), Stephanie Lutgring (1992), Tom Jay (1994), Alfredo Arreguin (1995), Barbara Berger (1997), Mary Randlett (2000), Allen Moe (2002), James Lapp (2004), Shorty Robertson (2005), Ann Morris (2006), Anne Hirondelle (2007), David Eisenhour (2008), Michael Paul Miller (2009) and Charlotte Watts (2011) round out the show with powerful works ranging from children’s book illustration to Australian aboriginal art, brawny bronze sculpture to delicate ceramics, portrait painting to historical allegory, transcendental photography to gestural landscapes and much more.
There are, of course, many greats missing. There just wasn’t room for the likes of Trimpin, Charles Stokes, Gayle Bard, Gerry Tsutakawa, Marilyn Lysohir, Guy Anderson, and literally hundreds more within the space available and format of the show. As a group the chosen artists represent the breadth of what PAFAC has shown in respect to medium, style, sensibility and importance to the Center’s evolution. The missing are represented in a treasure trove of documentation that frames the original works by these representative masters. A full collection of the Center’s acclaimed On Center program guide is hung out to dry on a clothesline. The walls are peppered with scores of posters and show announcements. A continuous slide show loops through hundreds of sparkling images of exhibitions, events and people. The twelve seasons of Art Outside are glimpsed in a wall of 56 installation photographs. Seniuk will present a slide lecture on the Center’s quarter century life at Peninsula College’s Studium Generale series at noon on November 17. He will repeat it at the Center for PAFAC’s birthday celebration on Sunday, November 20 at 2 pm. Admission to both events and the exhibition is free. Come sample the immense variety of work that has greeted visitors to what many have regarded as “a jewel in the crown of the Olympic Peninsula.”
1986 George Tsutakawa 1987 Dorothea Morgan 1988 Peggy Fogliano 1989 Stephen Yates 1990 Charles Miller 1991 Jim Pridgeon 1992 Stephanie Lutgring 1993 Richard Coo 1993 Charles Stokes 1994 Tom Jay 1995 Alfredo Arreguin 1996 Leo Kenney 1997 Barbara Berger 1998 Dennis Evans & Nancy Mee 1999 William Morris 2000 Mary Randlett 2001 Philip McCracken 2002 Allen Moe 2003 Jake Seniuk & Barbara Slavik 2004 James Lapp 2005 Shorty Robertson 2006 Ann Morris 2007 Anne Hirondelle 2008 David Eisenhour 2009 Michael Paul Miller 2010 Duncan McKiernan 2011 Charlotte Watts
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sponsored by 
l-r, McCracken, Arreguin, Lutgring, A. Morr
Cormorants by Duncan McKiernan
Goodwill Constellation by James Pridgeon
Take Me to the River by Charles Miller 
l-r. Slavik, Evans, Seniuk, Moe, Berger, Hirondelle, M. Miller, Stokes