Think Globally Create Locally

Coming up the first weekend in October is San Juan Island's own arts festival, Artstock. This comes along at the very time that my friend Ian asked me if I'd be interested in contributing to his blog, the popular San Juan Update. I volunteered to post about the local art scene and happily Ian agreed to let me give it a shot. My posts here on Blackfish Art will be different but often complimentary to my posts on the Update.

 Dave Moorhouse Loans His Vacant Storefront to Artstock

Downtown Friday Harbor, Washington

This year is the Island's 4th annual Artstock festival but the tradition of turning to art when the days get shorter, darker and wetter has been Pacific Northwest tradition for eons. Here is Northwest author Tom Robbins on the subject, "Unlike the plains Indians, who enjoyed mobility and open spaces and sunny skies, the Northwest coastal tribes were caught between the dark waters to the west, the heavily forested foothills and towering Cascade peaks to the east; forced by the lavish rains to spend weeks on end confined to their longhouses. Consequently, they turned inward, evolving religious and mythological patterns that are startling in their complexity and intensity, developing an artistic idiom that for aesthetic weight and psychological depth was unequaled among all primitive races." I would only amend Robbins to say it was unequaled among any races anywhere. 

 Eagle and Raven Rattles, Erich Glendale, Carved wood

Arctic Raven Gallery, Friday Harbor, Washington

Beautifully representing the contemporary renaissance in Pacific Northwest native art is Friday Harbor's Arctic Raven Gallery. Like other participating galleries in town the Arctic Raven will be open late and serving hors devours the weekend of the Artstock.