September Featured Artists
This month, Tom Saknit and Martha Collins are featured artists.
Meet the artists during Art Walk.
Saturday, September 6th, 5 to 8 pm.
Light refreshments are served.
Tom Saknit
Port Townsend Gallery is pleased to once again feature Tom Saknit’s unique Redacted Photography™ with the presentation of 10 new pieces from his Pacific Rim suite. Leaving only the most notable elements highlighted through a highly graphic sensibility, his photography is intended to be viewed as an impression of a memory. Images from the current addition to the collection include locations from Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan as well as Hong Kong and Vietnam. Says Tom, “My grandfather was a world traveler back when that was something special. I remember sitting on the floor in his crowded living room with 25 or more family members, watching his carefully curated carousel tray slideshows in his darkened living room. We listened in wonder and awe to his stories of people, places and adventures which we had only seen in magazines. I have no doubt that instilled in me a wanderlust, a profound desire to experience other cultures, sites and views.” Tom invites you to join him in an ongoing dialogue with his work, where you fill in the negative spaces that surround the story he tells.
Learn more about Tom HERE.
Martha Collins
Martha Collins has enjoyed her work for half a century. She is an artist with wood, using the colors and grain patterns of hardwoods and natural or dyed veneers to make small intricate bowls, jewelry and tableware. This month her work is featured at the Port Townsend Gallery.
Martha was trained by the State of Michigan as a cabinetmaker in the 1970’s. She was the first woman through the program because Title IX had been passed by Congress giving women the same opportunities as men.
Apprenticing in a shop where wooden jewelry was made, she was immediately hooked on lamination. She uses sustainably yielded hardwoods from around the world and Maple veneer that has been dyed, creating a block of striped material. The block is sliced or mitered, rearranged and re-laminated. The new block is lathe turned into bowls or bracelets. Her newest project is the “Odyesse” Series which combines different patterns of lamination in a single piece. Collins says that her career has been a joy and the “Odyesse” series is the culmination of her journey. She has been accepted to the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show for the last 5 years and is preparing for the Philadelphia Craft Show in November.
Learn more about Martha HERE.