CREATURE COMFORTS
July7 – July 29
Opening Reception: July 7, 5-7 pm
Opening Introductions: 5:45 pm
Opening Sponsor: Jackie Silva and Daria & Randy Wheeler, Ellensburg Pet Center

Gallery One Visual Arts Center has a full slate of activities set for July. We are excited to present a group exhibition, “Creature Comforts” by Thorp, WA artists, Renee Adams, Howard Barlow, Lorraine Bergquist, Justin Gibbens, and Natalie Schmidt-Dotzauer. The mixed-media exhibition will take place throughout the gallery’s first floor. On display in the Mezzanine will be items for Gallery One’s annual Silent Auction, which concludes during the weekend of Jazz in the Valley, July 28 – 30. In the Eveleth Green Gallery, Kevin G. Malella and Douglas MacArthur, present “Ellensburg’s Historic,” a collaborative photography exhibit.
“Creature Comforts” brings together the works of five professional artists who have each chosen to make their home in the unincorporated hamlet of Thorp, WA (pop. 400). For this exhibition, each artist has created new work that represents some manifestation of creature comforts: what it is that makes one feel comfortable, at ease, at home. These works define a specific correlation to the region, reflect upon the artist’s own bodily comforts, or simply define the term in its most literal sense. The work in this exhibition will include freestanding sculpture, mixed-media wall-hung works, and architecturally integrated installation.
Renee Adams’ installation combines a scaled down holy edifice with that of a common garden greenhouse to mimic the comforting devices utilized in religious structures. Adams is interested in the way in which entering a mosque, cathedral, temple or shrine can immediately change one’s behavior and demeanor through humbling scale, complexly repetitive patterning, and ethereal lighting. She believes these devices are meant to numb the mind and relax the body. In this state of complete comfort one can be more easily controlled, impressed, or persuaded.
Howard Barlow’s sculptural work examines contemporary gear-laden hunting and general wilderness-nostalgia. Barlow believes that hunting is no longer a necessity for survival in the United States and to most it is a luxury, a romanticized endeavor, and a type of creature comfort. Utilizing bullet-riddled sculptural bases, discarded “game” parts, and other sporting-goods materials, this current body of work aims to analyze contemporary gear-laden hunting and general wilderness-nostalgia culture as a creature comfort.
The mixed media works of Lorraine Bergquist will explore the notion of food as a comfort, incentive and reward for kids. Bergquist believes that for the majority of people living in the United States, food is not a scarcity. “We not only have a surplus of food, but also a surplus of high-fat, deep-fried, sugar-encrusted, rainbow-colored, nutrient-meager and calorie-rich food marketed especially for kids,” states Bergquist. Her work will touch on her belief that comfort food is eaten to the point of discomfort: many kids are fat and overfull, some is never enough, and there is no impulse control.
Creatures are comfort for Justin Gibbens. In his recent series of drawings, Gibbens celebrates the fecundity and diversity of life forms that have appeared in his backyard. Feathered or furry, creepy or crawly; realizing his space is shared by all forms of other living and adapted creatures is to him a gift and reason enough for calling this home.
Natalie Schmidt-Dotzauer’s latest installation, Traffic, is about patterns that don’t make sense. It’s about trends that go nowhere and seem unclear, yet dig into the floors of our living situations. To Schmidt-Dotzauer it seems as though others who walk an unorganized traffic pattern notice this trend more than those who make them. For her there is comfort in this.
In the exhibition, “Ellensburg’s Historic,” Malella and MacArthur have captured, through photographs, various historic Ellensburg buildings or areas of buildings that have long been abandoned.
Malella is a recent CWU graduate of the Fine Arts in Photography. He has exhibited locally and in Seattle at venues such as the four-two-three Gallery, Cooper Gallery, Luna Arts and Black Box Gallery. He currently has work in Sacramento and various online galleries and publications. His body of “Ellensburg’s Historic” photographs includes storefront window mannequins that comment on the use of "the perfect feminine proportion" as a marketing device. Malella describes their particular use as part of a troubling social stigma.
For MacArthur, photography is life, and like life each scene is constantly changing. He was born in Ellensburg and grew up in the greater-Kittitas Valley region. In 1997, he made his way back to Ellensburg and pursued professional photography. MacArthur believes our county has an endless supply of photos, from mountains to historic buildings.