o What: Opening Reception for “YES!”
o When: 5:30 to 9 tonight. Exhibit runs until June 29.
o Where: North Bank Artists Community Project Gallery, 1005 Main St., Vancouver.
o Information: North Bank gallery website and 360-693-1840.
“YES!” is about big ideas and big art.
Inspired in part by the message of Yoko Ono’s famous mid-1960s art installation — where visitors ascended a ladder and used a hanging magnifying glass to focus on the tiny word “YES” — the latest North Bank Artists Gallery exhibit aims to impart a message of positivity.
“It encouraged people to look up to see the word ‘yes,’ and it being a metaphor for being positive,” said exhibit curator and Vancouver artist Erin Dengerink.
The group show, which opens today, features work by Dengerink and four other Northwest artists. Though their styles are varied, each of the artists’ pieces are tied together through their use of non-traditional materials. The works are big too, not just in feeling, but in size.
On one wall, two large, fantastical drawings by Dengerink show her children — Amelia, 14, and Annabel, 11 — seeming to float while looking forward and upward. The girls were somewhat blase about their likenesses being used in the show, mostly because they are now used to being drawn by their mother, who has devoted so much of her life to her craft after journeying into the professional art world a few years ago.
“So for them, it’s old hat,” Dengerink laughed.
Other pieces in the show include water-filled sculptures of black porcelain by Portland’s Terri Bradley and a wall covered in rows of silverware crafted from fragrant cinnamon bark by Lindsay William of Portland. The exhibit also includes work from two Seattle artists: Danielle Foushee, who is exhibiting a sculpture that drips blue ink, and Sarah Paul Ocampo, who will show a quiltlike installation made of debris she collected from New York sidewalks over the course of two years.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the other artists’ work,” Dengerink said on Monday during a break from setting up the exhibit with the help of her mom. “It’s coming together beautifully.”
Along with the group show, on display until June 29, another room in the gallery will showcase more of Dengerink’s work, including “Joy,” where water slowly drips down from brass holders onto special paper that changes colors when wet.
“It’s coming together beautifully,” Dengerink said.
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