by Guy Bergstrom for OLY ARTS
Before the performance of the international hit Stomp on Jan. 22, the Washington Center for the Performing Arts is holding a free reception and viewing of three local painters.
The Ways We See features the work of Lois Beck, Betty Knold and Mia Shulte, none of whom see the world in quite the same way as the lens of a camera.
Lois Beck is a printmaker who uses woodcuts, rubber blocks, etchings, linocuts and other methods to create her work. She says she got her start as an artist late, taking her first art class during the last year of her degree plan at The Evergreen State College, where she’d been taking various courses for 30 years. She describes her artistic process as layers of ink and multiple passes. Recently, she started including collages in her prints. Beck’s work has won a number of awards at exhibitions and contests in the Northwest.
Becky Knold creates paintings, sculptures and cylinders. Her paintings feature bold colors and shapes designed to “pull the viewer in to explore imagined spaces, depths and mysteries.” Knold says it’s no accident that her paintings don’t resemble photographs. “My intention is not to record how something appears outwardly,” she says, “but to express a response to what is not apparent.”
Mia Shulte calls her work a mix of abstract and expressionist styles. Born in Turkey, she lived in Europe, the Middle East and Washington, D.C. before coming to Olympia. Her work has been shown around the state. She now works full time as an artist, often taking inspiration from nature in the Pacific Northwest and incorporating landscapes in her work.
What: The Ways We See
Where: Washington Center for the Performing Arts,
512 Washington St. SE, Olympia
When: reception 6-7:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017;
show through March 14
How much: free
Learn more: 360-753-8586 | Washington Center