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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Local artists get museum spotlight

MAC, Saranac gallery work together for two-month show

Lisa Nappa is among the artists exhibiting work at “Saranac Art Project.”

Beginning today, 16 members of the artist-owned cooperative gallery Saranac Art Projects will be showing their own works in the galleries of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

The contemporary works are large and small, and include ceramics and porcelain, charcoals and mosaics, figures and abstracts, installations and video. Most of the works are for sale, and all told, there are more than 70 pieces in the show – which will run for two months. Among the artists featured are Jo K. Quetsch, Hannah Koeske, Lisa Nappa, Dan McCann, Carrie Scozzaro, Kurt Madison, Jeff Huston and Bradd Skubinna.

Forrest Rodgers, the MAC’s executive director, said this is the first of what they hope will be many shows to include local artists and is part of a larger effort to highlight Spokane’s thriving and energetic art scene.

“For so long, the MAC was seen by so many of the local artists as beyond their reach, and not very welcoming, candidly,” Rodgers said. “And we have a real emergent arts scene here with Terrain and the Saranac, and there are many others who look to the MAC as a place that can help them achieve more visibility in our own community.”

To this end, last year the MAC’s director of museum experience, John Andrew Moredo-Burich, reached out to various artists guilds and galleries looking for participation. The Saranac quickly responded, and was able in short order to pull together quality works from its membership. (The Spokane Watercolor Society is up next, with a show opening Sept. 30.)

Moredo-Burich said there are a few of the artists in the gallery who show exceptional talent – artists who will be ones to watch for decades.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and when they unveiled them, I went, ‘Whew,’ ” he said, adding, with a laugh, “My first reaction was ‘How much is that?’ ”

As Rodgers pointed out, “By inviting different guilds and different communities and collaboratives in, we’re really helping to demonstrate what’s already here.”

Earlier this week, artist Skubinna was at the museum hanging his pieces, two 9  1/2-foot-tall mosaics titled “Arch I” and “Arch II,” along with 29 small sketches. From a distance, the intricate arch works would look at home in a mosque in Istanbul. The colors are as vivid as the patterning. Get close, and you can see the arches are made not with glass or tile, but with torn bits of packaging. Pasta packages, candy bar wrappers, any bits of brightly colored trash that come his way.

Both these pieces have exhibited before. “Arch II” was shown at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington, while an earlier version of “Arch I” was at North Idaho College earlier this year.

Huston, the Saranac Art Projects’ interim president, will have a small concrete installation with video projection in the show. He said the Saranac membership was thrilled at the chance to exhibit at the MAC.

“It’s all very strong work and it’s very exciting,” Huston said.

Saranac, opened in 2007 in the historic Saranac Building at 25 W. Main Ave. in downtown, is an artist-owned nonprofit cooperative with as many as 24 artist members.

“The artists make art in a variety of mediums. Some are painters, some are installation artists, some are video artists, some are sculptors,” Huston said, “but it’s all very different. It all has a different feel to it. What brings it all together and what brings the gallery together is the mission of bringing a contemporary art practice to Spokane that challenges the community.”