((Left) Tsunami Bowl by David Lloyd Warren, (Right) Metolius Creek by Barb Gonzalez)
Fall in Sunriver has its own quiet magic. Shorter days bring golden hour to the afternoons. The crowds thin out, and there’s room to notice the colors, textures, and shapes as they change with the season. This month’s Artists’ Gallery Sunriver featured artists welcome the inspiration these colors and images bring and invite gallery visitors to go out and see the magnificence of Autumn in Central Oregon.
Laura Jo Sherman is a pastel artist whose gentle colors calmly express the beauty of flowers, nature and animals. After a lifetime of painting with pastels, her goal remains the same: to share something true through color and shape. Her subjects change with her interests which are currently the shapes and colors of flowers and wild mustangs. New pieces include a reflection of autumn leaves, their gold captured in soft pastel strokes. The dynamism of a wild mustang is amplified by strong, broad marks on energetic sienna orange. Likewise each flower painting uses colors and techniques that bring out the character of the blooms.
Some photos do more than show you a place. They make you feel something: the quiet light on the Cascades at sunrise, a river moving over moss-covered rock, the stillness of a night sky far from town. That’s what Barb Gonzalez aims for in every photo she takes.
Barb embraces the beauty of all seasons in Central Oregon, but autumn may be her favorite. The stunning landscapes come alive in bright reds, oranges and yellows as the leaves of the vine maples and aspen groves change. She also specializes in night, Milky Way photography and unique wildlife portraits. After studying photography in high school and college, she always had photography on the side until she made it her career in 2008, taking travel photos for the Bend Bulletin, Eugene Register-Guard, and other Pacific Northwest magazines. She now returns to the best of the area to create stunning photos of the ever-changing landscape with fresh eyes and years of experience honing her photography skills.
On Saturdays, Barb is offering to take others on fall workshops, sharing her secret locations and teaching iPhone, smartphone and digital camera photography. Each week she will scout to find peak colors. Sign up at the gallery or online.
Stacey Colgan’s newest scarf creations use a beautiful fall color palette. Stacey employs Nuno felting on her scarves and cowls, purses, bracelets, necklaces, vases, and wall art. She has learned from online videos and classes from well-known European Felters that helped her build her unique style. The technique uses wool, fabric, silk, soap, water, and a lot of hand agitation to turn separate fibers into one new piece of cloth. Many scarves are reversible, with both sides showing stunning detail of flower or leaf shapes.
Nature is Stacey’s biggest inspiration, but so is a trip to the thrift store. She loves finding fabric other people don’t want anymore and turning it into something new. Some of her silk comes all the way from Margilan, a small town in Uzbekistan where silk making has been passed down for thousands of years.
David Warren remembers cutting up paper as a kid growing up in Denver, taping the pieces together to build shapes and objects. He set out to become an architect, but life took him toward architectural illustration instead. Missing the feel of working with his hands, David took a class in building with clay. He fell for the tactile side of it right away. He shaped a form and watched it come together in real time. He brought his design background into his clay work, creating whimsically shaped objects and flowing bowls with a modern art flair.
These days, his ceramic pieces explore how a shape, a function and object can blur together. He builds using a slab roller and extruder, sprays his own glazes and juxtaposes smooth glaze with rough textures.
artistsgallerysunriver.com • 541-593-4382 • 57100 Beaver Dr., Bldg. 19