By Alec Clayton
The gallery space once known as Salon Refu is now Lucy Gentry’s studio. “For Arts Walk,” Gentry says, “Susan Christian and I, plus a wonderful, Seattle artist named Lauren Boilini, are showing at my studio. Lauren’s work is really wonderful. Susan will be showing some paintings and a stick sculpture. I will be showing new, sculptural dresses, and I am continuing to explore salt.”
Yes, salt: Gentry makes amazing, sculptural forms out of salt. These must be seen to be believed. Gentry’s also a costumer for many shows at Harlequin Productions. She turns her dressmaking talent to fine art by creating sculptural dresses with a surreal, steampunk quality.
Boilini’s often large-scale paintings depict fighting, as in a recent series about animals in jungle combat. “In my current body of work, I examine excess,” Boilini says. “This idea of gluttony is reflected in our current culture, where images of excess become meaningless and fall into the realm of pattern. We are a hedonistic society always looking for more, until the ‘more’ we are looking for loses its meaning.”
Christian paints and assembles old sticks to create vibrant, abstract forms. She paints mysterious scenes that speak of loneliness and longing and stimulate the imagination. Often her paintings are long and thin, as many as 10 feet in length and one or two feet in height. Her stick paintings are sometimes propped against walls, hung from ceilings or put together in more traditional, rectangular formats. She says she doesn’t know yet which works she’ll show for Arts Walk. The show, she says, will be “a collaboration about enormity, about muchness.” She also reveals Olympia artist Anne de Marcken may be added to make this trio a quartet.
WHAT
Lauren Boilini, Susan Christian, Lucy Gentry
WHERE
114 Capitol Way N, Olympia
WHEN
5-10 p.m. Friday, April 26;
Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, April 27
HOW MUCH
Free
LEARN MORE
360-280-3540 (Christian)
360-561-3904
(Gentry)