Page 5 - WashCountyArts_Fall13.indd

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washington county arts guide
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September — November 2013
By Cindy Dauer
A t just a glance, it’s
clear there is
something different
about the house at 1914 Elm
St. in Forest Grove.
The front steps are painted bubble
gum pink and drizzled with gray
paint. A sign on the porch reads “Art
Gallery.” Another sign indicates that
“The Artist is in.”
Up the stairs and through the
doorway, enter the studio and gallery
of artist Helvi Smith. This is where
the travel-agent-turned-artist hangs
her paint-splattered apron. This place
is full of creative energy.
Inside, neon orange walls are
covered with Helvi’s original
paintings. The hardwood floor is
warm with sunlight. Toward the back
of the building, Helvi keeps her
somewhat unconventional tools in
multi-colored lockers and busy
storage bins.
Instead of paint brushes and
palettes, she prefers squirt bottles
and bamboo skewers. She also uses
canvas that is recycled (previously
painted) and right off the roll
(unstretched).
Her medium, too, is unique. Helvi
specializes in using recycled house
paint that she finds at garage sales,
thrift stores — and is sometimes even
donated on her front step. She keeps
the house paint in an assortment of
bottles and jars organized by color.
Helvi’s vibrant studio is just one
dot on the map in Washington
County’s growing arts scene, and just
one of nearly 50 artist studios in the
region that will be open to the public
Oct. 19 and 20 as part of the annual
Washington County Open Studios
tour.
The tour, a project of the
Washington County Art Alliance, is in
its fourth year. Featuring artists in
nearly every medium, the tour lets
the public glimpse the creative
process in progress and see the local
places where art is made.
“It’s a chance to meet the artist
while they have paint on their hands,”
said Peg Weber, a book artist,
founder, and coordinator of the event.
Open Studios is free to the public,
and visitors can design their own self-
guided tour to see as many or as few
studios as they please. Some
participants like to plan their tour
route by geography, others by
medium or favorite artists.
Information about the artists and
maps to the studios can be found
online, and information books can
also be picked up at any participating
artist studio or business sponsor.
With artists from around the
county participating in the tour,
sometimes just getting to the studio is
half the fun.
Take the trip to North Woods
Figured Wood and the studio of Susan
Curington near Gaston: Travel south
down Highway 47 toward wine
country and take the turn west
toward scenic Hagg Lake. Drive past
the low-lying grassy fields where you
can sometimes see the elk run, past
the Stimson lumber mill and across
the dam.
There, among the foothills of the
Coast Range, you’ll find 80-acres of
original homestead land in the Trask
River Watershed.
Curington and her partner, Les
Dougherty, live there under the shade
of big leaf maple and white oak trees.
From this property they run North
Woods, a business that provides
unique pieces of figured wood to
craftsmen around the country. The
couple also tends a garden that is the
inspiration for many of Curington’s
paintings, and act as stewards of the
land.
In addition to touring the North
Woods warehouse full of unique
locally-sourced figure wood and
sprinkled in places with a light
dusting of sawdust on the floor,
visitors get to see Curington’s acrylic
paintings of fruit and flowers as well
as her 3D assemblages made from old
trinkets and treasures found among
her grandmother’s things in the attic.
While for some studios part of the
charm is the setting, for others, it’s
the unique form of art being practiced
there.
Among the tools in Pam Nichols’s
Tigard-based studio are a blowtorch,
beeswax, an assortment of rusty
objects and old fabric patterns among
dental picks, dog combs and ceramic
tools.
Nichols, an encaustic artist, travels
to Eastern Oregon once a year or so
and digs through piles of rusty scrap
metal to find unique pieces to
Washington County Open Studios Tour coming in October
Take a peek inside artists’ creative spaces
Tour continued on page 6
Forest Grove resident and painter Helvi Smith uses mostly recycled house paint she finds at garage sales and thrift stores to create
whimsical, abstract pieces.
cindy dauer