Weathering Change

Confluence Gallery & Art Center is tackling what curator Caryl Campbell terms a “big conceptual topic” in its late-summer exhibit “Weathering Change.” Campbell has asked artists to explore a provocative question: How does society – and primarily the arts – adapt to an evolving, changing world?

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional artwork will reflect artists’ responses to the many changes around us, whether in the larger world – such as through climate change or forest fires, or as a result of economic and cultural shifts – or in transformations in their own personal worlds. Painters and photographers offer art that records landscapes altered by fire, exploring both the devastation of trees and the renewal in abundant birds and lush flowers.

Maria Coryell-Martin will show paintings that grow out of her expeditions to Greenland to chart receding glaciers and northern pack ice. Coryell-Martin uses her art to serve as witness and advocate for these environments.

Seattle-based documentary artists Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele, who specialize in multimedia stories about people, nature, and climate change, will exhibit their photography. Other artists, including Mary Powell, Judyth Sherwood, and Sue Marracci, will focus on the continuity of landscapes that have been preserved from human change and development.

Several special presentations are planned in conjunction with the exhibit. Drummond and Steele will present their multimedia stories on September 9 at 7pm. Coryell-Martin will give a talk about her summer expedition to the Arctic on June 11 at 7pm. The Methow Conservancy will also have a presence at the gallery, reflecting the organization’s work in conserving a range of habitats in the valley.

Confluence’s solo gallery will exhibit work by Twisp artist Jeffrey Winslow, who has created a series of oil collage portraits of 20 poets and painters. The paintings are mostly small pieces, and portray “poets and painters that caught my fancy, both famous and obscure,” Winslow said.

“Weathering Change” runs from July 31 to September 18, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 31, from 4 to 8pm.