J. Frank Munns
Logan Theis
Fi Black
Frank Munns
Trance and Transformation
April 4 – 26, 2025
This April we feature works by J. Frank Munns (1943-2013) a visionary Walla Walla based mixed media artist whose compositions exude energy and motion and are both broadly mythological and abstractly autobiographical. In addition to Munns work, the gallery will be filled by a collection of artists from the Walla Walla region who studied under Munns or were indelibly influenced by his work.
Munns began his career in art focused largely on sculpture, installation and performance. After 2001, however, he largely withdrew from exhibiting his work publicly, focusing instead upon making art unhindered by commercial concerns. Shifting primarily to drawing and painting, the last decade of his studio practice was particularly generative, his creative pace almost frantic. At the time of his death in January 2013, after three decades of art-making, he left behind a legacy of works on paper and canvas, as well as numerous sketchbooks and sculptural elements.
Fascinated by world religions, Munns traveled extensively. His keen eye and brilliant mind absorbed the art, history, and culture of every place he touched down. Drawing on art history, linguistics, mythology, anthropology, and his own life, Munns’ art is an uneasy collaboration of contradictions: playful/poignant, naive/naughty, sacred/profane, comedic/tortured. Munns’ unabashed exploration of these tensions draws viewers to his work.
Trance and Transformation is a title Munns used for multiple exhibitions. It speaks to his belief of the artist as a conduit and images pulled into meaning from an origin of chaotic scribbling. Selected from Munns’ archive, Trance and Transformation Redux offers brief excerpts of this remarkable body of work and a glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary artist.
Additional artists on view:
Fi Black
Fi Black relocated to Walla Walla from Delaware. They received a BA in studio art from Whitman College in 2022. Well before graduation, however, in 2020, Black founded Dykemint, a sustainable anime-inspired fashion brand. Queer-owned and queer-oriented, Dykemint produces clothing and accessories for niche cultures and all body types. Black’s unique wearable artworks are an exercise in maximalist collage aesthetics, combining thrifted new and vintage textiles, hand processed forms, embroidery, patching, screen-printed imagery and more.
In addition to their participation in Gallery One’s Trance and Transformation Redux exhibit, this year Black also debuted collections this past February: Debuting a Fall/Winter 25’ collection HAND-ME-DOWNLOADED: RECOVERED AUTO-SAVES FROM A DIGITAL LANDFILL during NYC’s Fashion Week for the Pop Couture Show at Detour Gallery. As well as the “Ready to (Street)Wear collection at Katsucon 2025 in DC.
Kyle Allon Bond
Kyle Allon Bond moved to Walla Walla from West Texas in 2012. An interdisciplinary artist now working primarily in sculpture, painting, and graphic design, Bond came to the visual arts after a number of successful years in the music industry. Informed by his studies of religion and philosophy, and grounded in autobiography, his work explores the human condition through an aesthetic that blends hard-edged, graffiti-style graphics with visceral organic shapes.
In addition to his personal creative practice, Bond works at the Walla Walla Foundry. He is also the founder and owner of Chrysalis Studios, an artist collective in Walla Walla created for emerging rural creatives whose work doesn’t easily fit into conventional art paces.
Daniel Forbes
Daniel Forbes has lived in the Walla Walla Valley for 35 years. He received his BA in studio art from Whitman College and his MFA from Vermont College and Union Institute and University.
Forbes’ work is largely sculptural. He has worked in ceramics, steel, bronze, fiber art, wood, and found object assemblage. He also occasionally dabbles in video and collage. His subjects vary from whimsical wildlife to nightmarish creatures. His figurative humanoid forms frequently explore themes of the “extraordinary body,” disability, and queerness.
In addition to his studio work, since 1998 Forbes has had professional practice in fine art exhibition design and curation. Since 2001 he’s facilitated studio courses at a college level at Walla Walla Community College, Whitman College, and most recently, Columbia Basin College.
Lisa Rasmussen
Born and raised in Walla Walla, Lisa Rasmussen received her BA in Studio Art from Whitman and a MA in Arts Education from Eastern Washington University. Working primarily in painting, drawing, and collage, Rasmussen’s work pieces are characterized by bold colors, lively lines, and complex textures created through layers of mixed media. Her most recent series, “Family Ties” uses personal symbolism to reflect on relationships, generational trauma, and identity.
In addition to her visual art work, Rasmussen’s creative practice includes play-writing and poetry. She has been an arts educator since 1980, leading classes at Walla Walla Community College in Theater, Design, Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, and Art Appreciation.
Logan Thies
Raised in a military family, Logan Thies arrived in Walla Walla a citizen of the world. He attended Whitman College, receiving a BA in Studio Art in 2013. In addition to his visual arts practice, Thies is a musician. His muti-faceted professional history includes fine art foundry work, restauranteering, and software engineering.
Shifting between painting and sculpture, the aesthetic of Thies’s compositions is simultaneously earthy and atmospheric. Layering these and other dualities, he articulates his pieces “as dynamic, evolving forms that embrace the dialogue between materiality and meaning.”
Heidi Veldhuis
Currently based in NE Oregon, Heidi Veldhuis came to the Northwest from Illinois where she was established as painter and illustrator. She has also worked in photography, wood, stone, and jewelry-making. Most recently, Veldhuis shifted her focus to textile art – spinning, dyeing, and weaving the materials used in her work. Her background in painting has been particularly influential in her textile dyeing processes, enabling her to “push colors into fiber in new ways.”
In addition to her studio practice, Veldhuis is also a program coordinator for eastern Oregon’s Pendleton Center for the Arts.