Exploring paper, paint in the name of art

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QUINCY - Taped to a back wall a piece of art is coming together in a tangle of paper legs.

Quincy artist Danna Dal Porto is working on pieces for her solo show at the Moses Lake Museum and Art Center this coming fall and is up to her elbows in textured paper and glacé samples.

"Once I get going, I work pretty fast," Dal Porto said. "Seventy percent of my work is thinking."

Dal Porto works with both paint and mixed media and focuses largely on wildlife.

Her studio, set a few hundred feet from her home, is full of windows and designed to be a house when not in use as a studio.

The walls are cluttered with found objects, photos, odds and ends from Dal Porto's years as a teacher, and other brick-a-brack.

She insists there is an order to the studio, even if it is not immediately apparent.

"I have this horrible habit of buying paper," Dal Porto said.

Some of the paper features heavily in her work, while other sheets get bought as a just-in-case effort.

The mixed media collages Dal Porto has created start with a single sheet of paper and are layered with textured paper, enlarged images of animals, or whatever fits best in the space, like a puzzle with no initial end image.

"It gives me pleasure to problem solve these pieces," Dal Porto said.

Once a piece is complete, the backing piece it began on is cut in half, with the other half becoming another art piece backing, boarded and framed.

Dal Porto also builds her own frames for her pieces. Doing a gallery finish on some and fully encasing others in wooden  or metal frames with Plexiglass over them for protection.

Dal Porto said she has some of the pieces for the upcoming show figured out. It is a matter of having the time to create them, she said.

After teaching for 37 years in Grant County schools and volunteering with various organizations that range from the Grant County Democrats to 4-H, Dal Porto and her husband, Steve, now spend weekends running Labradors at course competitions in the Northwest.

"I have all this stuff, so I'm not worried," Dal Porto said, gesturing to paintings and mixed media pieces in storage rows. "I would like to have all new stuff in the show but we'll see."

Dal Porto said she also prefers to have space between her pieces during gallery shows.

"I like to have visual space around it," Dal Porto said.

Over the years, Dal Porto has found she enjoys placing a box in some of her work. Since wildlife features so heavily in her pieces, she likes to think of the box as having several meanings depending upon the viewer's point of view.

"The box is kind of representing man's intrusion but also functions on several levels," Dal Porto said. "Is it a trap or is it a refuge?"

The box comes and goes in her pieces and she is not sure if a few will show up in her autumn show or not.

Dal Porto has also taken on several animals that are difficult to recreate: crows, cranes, ravens and foxes. She researches her subjects as thoroughly as possible to become as familiar with their images as she can.

"I have my own mental image," Dal Porto said. "I feel quite comfortable doing the images I'm doing now."

Dal Porto is trying to offer something different in her upcoming MAC show. She is hoping to offer small glacé, or glazed, paintings to give people a more affordable option for buying art.

Some of the images are previous pieces that will be reworked, made smaller, and given a glossy finish that will resemble a clear-coat.

"I'm really interested in the glacés," Dal Porto said.

Her journey to art was a somewhat different one, that began when determining what her major should be at the University of Puget Sound.

"I dabbled in drama for a while and that was ridiculous," Dal Porto said. She also tried majoring in English and, in the meantime, took a few art classes. A mentor of hers looked at her pieces and encouraged her to pursue art.

After deciding on an art major, Dal Porto had to figure out how to turn art into a career and decided to teach.

"I wanted to be a marine biologist," Dal Porto said.

She said former Washington State Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, who was in office from 1977 to 1981, was a marine biologist before entering into politics.

"She was really a trail blazer because not very many women had careers back then," Dal Porto said.

Marine biology fell by the wayside thanks to a required chemistry minor.

"I could do the chemistry but I couldn't do the math," Dal Porto said.