Childhood’s End

Form a Line at Childhood’s End

Line is the way we first learn to make a mark. From crayon drawings of infants to Kathe Kollwitz to a Leonardo da Vinci cartoon, quality of line has varied ways of evoking and portraying our experiences of life around us. Line is subtly seductive in its simplicity or can be bold, dynamic, and dramatic. The emotions we can evoke using line are as varied as any gestural mark possibly could be. “Form a Line” at Childhoods End Gallery July 31 through September 20 s a visual exploration of observations from nature through expression in line.

Slow Work by Susan Christian and Steve Belz at Childhood’s End

Slow Work is an excellent art exhibition featuring paintings on wooden lathe with a sea full of blue by Susan Christian and bonfire fired pottery by Steve Belz at Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia — thought provoking, deceptively simple and beautiful art. This is a must-see exhibition through July 26.

Atmospheres at Childhood’s End Offers a Much-Needed Breathing Space

Each artist in Atmospheres at Childhood’s Eng Gallery offers not only a different environment, a different perspective, and a unique distance from their chosen subject matter, but also a different emotional response and interpretation. Albala’s Distance, suggesting meditation; Eshelman’s middle Distance, suggesting serenity; and Mathie’s close-up, suggesting awakened physical senses, are all encompassed in this show. Three very distinct individual viewpoints are able to live happily in the same gallery with unity in discourse – open through April 19.

Refuge and Remedy — Marilyn Frasca at Childhood’s End

Marilyn Frasca’s drawings, on view through Nov. 16 at Childhood’s End Gallery in downtown Olympia, exist at the intersection of dreams and stark reality, “I had arranged to do this one-person show years ago,” she said, “and in the process, the world fell apart. I’d look at the abstract images and I’d see horrible things because I’d been hearing about them. … I thought, ‘I’m going to have to cancel this show. I can’t work.’ ”
(And then) Frasca found her way through after she heard historian Heather Cox Richardson encouraging artists to work. “She said many artists she knew had trouble working during that time and that what the world needed was for them to work,” Frasca told Oly Arts.

Dive Into Summer Reading List at Childhood’s End

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.

Paper Trails at Childhood’s End

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.

Iconic Mural to be Restored and Rededicated to the Japanese Community

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.”

Don Freas Sculpting a Life

“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.

Review: This Old World

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.”

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