Exhibition Dates: January 21 - February 25, 2012
Artist Reception: February 3, 5-7pm
Exhibition Sponsors:  Puget Sound Energy

In the Main Gallery:

Jane Orleman      A Moment of Forever

Painting has given Jane Orleman a way to bring her emotions and inner spiritual life into conscious view. Over the years the size, style, and content of her art has changed to express what is uppermost in her heart. Orleman’s paintings displayed in the Eveleth Green Gallery are from the early to mid 1970’s. They represent an uncomplicated time of domestic beginnings. In 1982 Orleman celebrated her 40th birthday with an exuberant exhibit at the Ellensburg Community Art Gallery (Gallery One’s former name). That exhibit, Birthnight, was full of moons and stars. By 1992 the mood had changed considerably but again she marked her birthday with a Gallery One exhibit dealing with childhood trauma titled Telling Secrets. It has been a long time and much has happened since then but Jane Orleman feels fortunate to once again celebrate with her community and with Gallery One.

Featured in the Main Gallery and on the Mezzanine, A Moment of Forever is about love, time, space and eternity. When her husband Dick Elliott was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2007, they knew their time together was coming to a close. As Orleman began the painting, It’s Always Now, she intended it to be a love song, expressing to him her deep gratefulness for their time together. Each moment of that time still exists for her. She worked on this image throughout Dick’s illness and for a year afterwards. Her painting, Trouble in Paradise, originally had sharks in the water when she started the painting, but by the time it was finished, the sharks had gone away. The paintings in this exhibit represent an array of explorations and reflections from questions about time, cycles of renewal and transformation. Orleman’s work examines the mysteries of life and love.

In the Eveleth Green Gallery:

Jane Orleman      Looking In, Looking Out

When Dick Elliott and Jane Orleman were first married they tried to take the expected path by moving to Portland where Dick went to work in the family business. They lived in three houses the first year. A dozen of the paintings in this exhibit featured in the Eveleth Green Gallery are of those houses. But to Jane, it seemed like the houses themselves were telling them to move on. So they were led back to Ellensburg where they started a business that would allow them both to work part time and be artists full time.

Creating a home and a way of life that would foster their development as artists was exciting and challenging. They moved into a house on 5th Ave in Ellensburg and vowed to stay in it for at least five years. Later, making that rental their home, they painted the walls pink, green, blue, and yellow. Creating the space was a continual process. As time went on they added wallpaper and furnishings such as Grandma Bessie’s brass bed. Soon Jane was hanging paintings of the rooms in the rooms. In the course of portraying that time and space, Jane looked within and found her center. She moved from painting interiors of the house to painting the images inside her head. The only interior completed after moving to their Pearl Street home is First Christmas at Dick and Jane’s Spot.

According to Jane Orleman, artists tend to value their newer work most highly. They love the seminal period but, beyond an occasional piece in a retrospective, that work is seldom exhibited. While showing this work to friends, Jane had the idea to share it with her community. She has collaborated with Harry Thompson to create a book that documents the interiors and serve as a catalog for this exhibit. Copies are available for sale at Gallery One.