Join us at First Thursday, May 3rd to meet our featured artists Barbie Kaempf-Matkowski and Michael Metz.
During the May 3, First Thursday from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm, enjoy the music by Trish Ballard and Mark Dykstra, light snacks, and help us celebrate this artist’s fine works.
Barbie Kaempf-Matkowski-Mixed Media Painting
Barbie Kaempf-Matkowski
Each day I cannot wait to get into my studio to start putting paint on a surface, building up, sanding down, layering, revealing, covering over. Throughout this push-pull of adding and subtracting, I’m constantly unsatisfied with a piece, covering up areas I don’t like, windowing out areas I do, layering, adding glazes, scribbling with a pencil or oil stick, often not knowing what I’m doing or wanting. I just keep affecting the surface each day, and then something always begins to work and it starts to be fun. Shadows or textures of earlier marks show through, or a glaze over scratches is interesting, and I’m suddenly happy. As always, it’s the unsatisfied covering up, layering and random ’fixing’ that ends up to be the very aspect that makes me most happy with a piece.
Michael Metz- Pottery
Michael Metz
“I am currently teaching a class at Oregon College of Arts and Craft called “Crystalline Glazes” This exhibition is an example of the ceramic technique of growing crystals in the molten glaze. “Extremely unpredictable” seems to be the theme when firing a crystal load in the kiln. I can control the colors, but the crystal growth is completely out of my hands. It’s the random patterns of nature growing beautiful crystals on the surface of each piece. Completely one of a kind.”
Michael Metz is a Northwest native whose work has been showing in galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest for more than 40 years. Mike received his Bachelor’s degree in Art at Lewis and Clark College and has been living in Vancouver, Washington for the past 20 years.
This recent work of Michael Metz celebrates the organic expression of crystalline and metallic glazes on elegant ceramic forms. The result is a beautiful blend of classic and contemporary in a sculpture that illuminates its surroundings. Each piece is one-of-a-kind due to the unpredictable nature of the glazes as they explode on the surface at different stages of the firing atmosphere.
