Local talent

MOSES LAKE — Oil portraits. Photos. Welded sculptures. Intricately painted feathers. Virtually anything a local artist can create is on display at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center.

“I keep telling everyone, there's something for everyone in this show, literally,” said Museum Director Dollie Boyd. “Because there's so many different styles and types of mediums. There's photography, there's this kind of upcycled work. There's paintings and illustrations. So it's a really cool mix. And I think everybody will find something they like.”

This is the second year the museum has thrown open its gallery to its members and invited them to show off their creations. About 32 artists entered 90 artworks this year, which pretty well maxed out the available space, Boyd said.

“We invite our museum members to submit up to three pieces of artwork,” she said. “We guarantee that at least one will get in. This year, we did accept, I think, everything that was submitted, but we're kind of topped out. So if this exhibit grows next year, we might have to be a little more choosy about what we decided to take in.”

As you walk in the door, one of the first paintings that grabs the eye is an acrylic by Rosalind Reed entitled “Speedy.” Speedy was a beloved pet who died, and the artist memorialized him on canvas, Boyd said. Beside it is “Splendor of the Iris,” a watercolor by Moses Lake artist Judy Kalin.

One artist showing for the first time is Andrea “AJ” Johnson of Moses Lake, who has three welded metal sculptures on exhibit. Johnson works in accounting by day and has a studio where she creates in her spare time. Her sculpture “Owl Love” has already sold for $125.

“The owl is out of a horseshoe,” Johnson said. “I've made quite a few owls, but this is a bigger horseshoe so I wanted to do, of course, a bit bigger owl with it. I basically grind everything down. Usually, everything that I use to make any of my pieces has a lot of rust on it because I get a lot of metals from people just giving it to me. I clean it all up, and I might put a little gloss on it to keep it shiny, and I weld it all together.”

All the artwork is for sale, and as of Friday morning 14 had been sold. Soon it will be 15, as one of the museum volunteers confided that she has one she intends to buy when the exhibit is over.

The exhibition isn’t entirely without its limits, Boyd said.

“We do have some limitations on what we can hang from our system,” she explained. “There's a weight requirement and sort of a size requirement. We accept pretty much any medium. We do reserve the right to take out anything that we feel is inappropriate, or might be a copyright violation… And we do have some hanging requirements, you have to have a wire on the back of frames to hang things, so little technical things like that.”

The exhibition began Dec. 2 and will run until Jan. 27. The public is encouraged to drop by for a look, and cast a vote for their favorite piece as well.

Many of the exhibitors also have works for sale at the museum on consignment. The one thing they all have in common is museum membership.

“It is sort of a sneaky way to get people to become members of our museum, but I'm pretty upfront about it,” Boyd said. “I want more people to be museum members. That's one of the reasons we lowered our membership down to $1; you can become a member at our basic level for $1. And we've had a lot of people take advantage of that.”

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.