Summer Reading List at Childhood’s End Gallery gathers a diverse sampling of what the book arts can do. Childhood’s End is Olympia’s premiere art gallery, and this exhibition should not be missed. The artists are: Susan Aurand, Malpina Chan, Camella Gumaelius, Robin Gumaelius, Lucia Harrison, Randi Parkhurst, Shu-Ju Wang and Suze Woolf.
The current Childhood’s End Gallery show, up through December 23, is visually impressive and stimulating and yet simultaneously very relaxing to be with, demonstrating the versatility, and diversity of paper. The variety of styles and skills of the artists are cohesively unified by their shared love of the material.
Artist Austin Davis said, “It was really exciting to be asked to restore this amazing artwork. Having grown up nearby, I’ve seen this mural for years. I had my high school senior portrait taken in front of this mural. And now I have the honor of restoring it and working side by side with Joe [Tougas], who first painted this mural.”
“I remember the crisis one day.” Sculptor Don Freas, already a well-respected craftsman who’d shown his furniture in galleries, said. “I said, ‘No, I can’t make a chair. I want to do something new.’ And it became a sculpture.” This retrospective at Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia through April 21 is a meditation on Freas’ creative process.
This Old World at Childhood’s End through June 11 “is a show made by artists who have lived a full life, it is eloquent, and expertly executed but is also experimental.”