As summer truly begins to get its legs, the Kingston Art Gallery will be showing off its wings and strings in the month of June.
Kingston resident Harv Kolln’s wood carved sculpture will be on display along with the multi-dimensional acrylage paintings of Marylyn Miller. Coincidentally, both artists’ work takes flight through its winged subject matter.
For the past five years, Kolln has been carving small wooden spirit birds which have somewhat abstractly taken on different forms from robins to owls. Miller’s acrylic collage work just happened to be heading in a bird life direction of late.
Though organizer’s didn’t know it at the time of selecting these artists’ works to be paired, their featured exhibit will be offering a creative and eclectic connection.
Miller and Kolln’s exhibit will feted at the Second Saturday Gallery night — 6-8 p.m. June 9 — as the KAG welcomes one of its first ever full band musical acts — the Eclectics, featuring local stringers John Becker, Jim Bybee, Rich Dixon and Kimberly Lynn.
“That’s probably the biggest gathering where most of us get together,” Kolln said of the KAG’s members. “That’s the night everybody comes out to support each other.”
“Of course, we all hope to sell and make enough to pay the rent, but for me it’s most important that my work is shown and it’s seen and I can share my experience with others,” Miller said.
Both she and Kolln are retired artists-at-heart who in retirement have found the time to focus on their creative energy. Both living in the wooded reaches of North Kitsap have been drawn to nature and in turn have drawn nature into their artwork.
“Everything affects you,” said Miller, an Indiana native who came to Western Washington in the 1970s and made a home in Indianola in 2000. “I love the sky, the sun, the moon … the presence of light and dark and mood, those are what I work with.”
With acrylic paint, she uses sponges, sticks and other miscellaneous material as her paintbrushes, and then tacks on different levels of tissue paper to add additional dimensions to each piece.
Nature’s essence is available in just about everyone of Miller’s works which range in subject from a pumpkin grove to a gaggle of snow geese flying in formation over a field of golden brush illuminated by a setting sun.
That latter description will be the type which one will see at the gallery with Kolln’s bird wood work.
“(Kolln’s birds) are whimsical, but they are very nicely done,” Miller said.
Each of Kolln’s sculptures are between 3-inches to 12-inches tall, made of cedar wood and spiritually crafted. It all began some years ago when the artist was surveying the pieces of scrap cedar that were left over from the furniture he was making for a living.
“I thought maybe there are some birds in there,” he said.
As he began working with the pieces and letting them evolve, the birds began to show themselves, he said.
“You can kind of take your own imagination to them,” Kolln said. “I find a lot of inspiration in the cedar.”
For more notes on the KAG’s inspiration, including hours, prices, directions, a blog and a few pictures, visit www.kingstonartgallery.com or call (360) 297-5133.
