Gallery Showcasing Kinkade Pieces
FROM FOR THE RECORD (Friday, August 7, 1998): Correction Name wrong: Spokane artist Peggy Winkel is exhibiting artwork at the ART Gallery in Auntie’s Bookstore. She was misidentified in Thurday’s IN Life section.
Nick and Michele Follger have created “a nice marriage” between their artistry as photographers and the limited-edition prints of Thomas Kinkade, who calls himself the “Painter of Light.”
After some 30 years in the business, the couple needed larger quarters. They bought and remodeled an older home in Lincoln Heights - and 18 months ago, the Nick Follger Studio and Gallery, 2728 E. 31st, was born.
They gained enough room to include a gallery, said Michele Follger.
They contacted local artists about hanging their works in the gallery, but none had a sufficient supply of extra pieces for a continuous display, she said.
“We love Kinkade’s work,” said Michele Follger, and decided to display his art entirely different than any other area venue.
Kinkade, an Englishman whose main studio is in California, is known for his utilization of light, a vital component for photographers as well as artists.
At Follger’s, Kinkade aficionados can sit by the hour on stylish, comfy chairs and davenos in a separate room filled with the artist’s works. There they can play with the special room’s lighting, casting individual beams of light on various spots of a single painting.
With each light variance, a new dimension to the work is seen.
The highlights of Kinkade’s art is a singular feature - but he’s not the only one to add the paint strokes that make the picture glow, said Michele Follger.
He hand-trains finishing artists to highlight some of his pieces.
In November, such an artist will visit the gallery to paint additional highlights on prints already owned by area residents.
When visitors arrive at the gallery to admire the painter’s pieces, they become enthralled with the photography display they also see, Michele Follger said.
Art lovers realize that photography is an art also worthy of hanging of the walls of their homes, she said.
“It’s a win-win situation,” she said of the Follger-Kinkade union.
The gallery is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and by appointments on Saturdays.
Three women, visions, stories
The artwork of three Native American women artists and poets from the Pacific Northwest is on exhibit in the Chase Gallery in Spokane’s City Hall.
The show, curated by poet-artist Anita Endrezze, includes works by Elizabeth Woody from Portland, Gail Tremblay from Olympia and Endrezze.
Woody’s works include a photo-collage of xerography (photo-copier) of family photos, which incorporate text from her writings.
Tremblay’s pieces of mixed-media sculpture include mounted poems. Endrezze has watercolors and poems in the show.
An artists’ reception will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 21 in the gallery, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. The exhibit will be available through Aug. 28.
Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and whenever the City Council is in session.
Tribal baskets galore
Turn-of-the-century baskets woven by members of the Inuit, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimsian Northwest Coast tribes and the Fraser River Plateau Tribe are on display at the Cheney Cowles Museum.
Alice Wurster donated the baskets, which she collected between 1930 and 1960 while living in Sitka, Alaska, to the museum.
Included are an Inuit lidded basket, ca. 1900-1920; a Tlingit rattle-top lidded basket, ca. 1900; and others created as recently as 1950.
The Cheney Cowles Museum is recognized as one of the top 10 museums nationally for its array of baskets, said Lynn Pankonin, curator of the museum’s American Indian Collections. Its Plateau Indian collection is America’s premier collection.
Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with extended hours to 9 p.m. on Wednesday; and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays. Admission is $4; $3 for those 65 and older; $2.50 for students and children 1 to 16 years old; or $10 for a family. On Wednesday, admission is half price from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and free after 5.
Collages, figures
“An Elemental CoOperation,” an exhibit of Betty Winkel’s papier-mache figures, two-dimensional collages and unique figurative drawings, is on display at the ART Gallery on the second floor of Auntie’s Bookstore at Main and Washington.
Winkle is known for incorporating a sense of humor into her artwork.
An artist’s reception will be at the gallery from 5 to 7 p.m. next Friday, Aug. 14, with live music and refreshments.
Also showing at the ART Gallery are the hand-drawn visions of the “Lord of the Rings” and the “Hobbit” book series by David Wagner; and Jason Corcoran displays his newest paintings of imagination and Spokane imagery.
The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
In area galleries
“Beside the Lake, Beneath the Trees,” a mixed-media exhibit of favorite Priest Lake subjects by Don Nepean and Linda Brisbois, is open at the Entree Gallery in Nordman, Idaho, close to the lake.
The show takes its theme from Wordsworth’s poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”: “beside the lake, beneath the trees, flutter and dancing in the breeze.”
Other artists featured in the show are Betty Billups, Betti Jemison, L.R. Montgomery, Steve Osborn and Jan Wilhelmi.
Visitors can meet the artists on Sunday and Aug. 16 from 1-3 p.m. Brisbois will demonstrate porcelain painting on Aug. 16.
The gallery, two miles east of Nordman on Reeder Bay Road, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Homefront, 1941-45,” an exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution, will open at the Cutter Theatre in Metaline Falls, Wash., on Saturday.
Hours for the free display are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends through Oct. 2.
On Saturday will be a 1940s Community Dance in conjunction with the opening. A 14-piece swing band from Canada, Sounds of the Forties, will begin playing at 7 p.m. Veterans are invited to wear their World War II uniforms, “or parts that fit,” said Becky Martin, Cutter executive director.