N-O-P

Artist Statement

I grew up a farm girl in rural Idaho: ducks, chickens, cows, dirt bikes, the whole bit. I got dirty.

My mom was a talented artist, and she taught me to paint oil landscapes when I was a kid. In high school I started sketching, and in college I began experimenting with abstract art. That was when I discovered the palette knife, and I loved the way it let me build and scrape and rearrange. I got messy.

Then came marriage, kids, career. Art took a back seat for a long time. I don’t regret that season, but I do recognize how much of myself I set aside while I did what needed to be done.

Fast forward 30 years. The kids are grown and gone, and I’ve come back to art, this time with an urgency and passion I lacked when I was younger. I am rediscovering a part of myself I didn’t realize I had lost.

I’ve had many identities over the years, from farm girl to mother to software developer and college instructor. Like many women, I have felt the pressure of expectations, both internal and external, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be everything at once while still feeling like I was falling short. Art became a way to put myself back together. I sometimes quip, only half-jokingly, that all of my paintings are self-portraits.

My current mixed-media work explores the complexity of identity through layers and texture. I love to repurpose scraps and found materials, because that is how life feels to me… We revise. We improvise. We adapt. 

I’m fascinated by how all of our many selves, and our hurts and joys, and our bits and bobs and scraps somehow come together to form a cohesive whole. Not a perfect whole, but a beautiful one.

My hope is that my work invites you to slow down and reflect on your own layered complexity, your stories, your resilience, and the beautiful mess that makes you YOU.

Tina (TJ) Ostrander

Artist Statement 

I think I'm supposed to dazzle the viewer with my wordsmithing in this space, so... Juxtaposition, Transcendent, Organic. There ya go. I glue things to things, mostly rhinestones to salvaged objects. I have a VISCERAL reaction to unwanted, discarded stuff. Secondhand stores and antique malls REVERBERATE the same upsetting chord as an animal shelter. I want to save them all. I feel a deep calling to revive them and show them a beautiful life. Here a few of my sweet little misfit orphans all dressed up and ready for their forever homes. I began this particular style of art around the beginning of Covid. I wanted to make use of the abundance of time I was afforded by creating some kind of memento to mark the strange moment we all shared as a community on this planet. I found a child mannequin at a garage sale in Roslyn, got a bag of rhinestones from the craft store... and Covid Kid was born. When that project was complete, I didn't want to stop, so I haven't...

At this point I NEED to work on these projects. It has become my therapy and meditation, my mission, my life's work. I feel lucky to have found this kind of love and I can only hope that the viewer will experience even a fraction of the joy it brings me to create it. 

Artist Statement 

 Can You Hear Me Now?

Creating art isn't a choice for Warren, it is simply what he does. Whether painting, wood carving, or sculpting contemporary wire phenomenon - this is an artist who immerses himself in the story he is telling.... the materials he uses are secondary to the concept.

His works are varied, some evocative of his feelings about human folly, others expressive of his thoughts about human struggle. Each piece he creates is deeply personal.

Warren’s art chronicles the struggle of racial bias from both sides of his heritage and seeks to connect with the struggle within all of us to connect, belong, and feel safe.

"I am compelled to create and keep creating, my need to tell you what is happening right here, right now has never been stronger, whether it is racial discrimination, the dying of the planet or raging against ageism, my body of work of over 50 years is my story."

“It’s been making me very happy that people actually enjoy much of the beauty that’s infused with a subject that seems very difficult to deal with.”

 Warren Pope creates abstract mixed media and contemporary sculpture from such materials as canvas, wire, steel, banana leaves and wood. 

Artist Statement

I am a photographer, and specifically, a street photographer. I have wondered the streets of Seattle and other cities since I was in my 20’s and still do today, photographing anything that catches my interest. Over the years my focus, excuse the pun, has changed and evolved but one area of interest has remained constant for me: urban decay and finding the beauty in that decay. The images presented here consist of decaying billboards, posters, advertising, flyers, graffiti and street art. These can be found all around the urban environment trying to catch your attention. After they are posted, they rapidly decay with the help of mother nature through wind, rain and sunlight. Within this decay I look for people looking out from it. I capture these decaying people, repurpose them into Photoshop, then layer, manipulate and create something new and, I hope, pleasant to look at! I call these images Urban Portraits. 

BIO:

I am a self - taught street photographer who lives and works in Seattle. I have travelled extensively throughout the world and always with a camera in hand.

I shoot both film and digital with various cameras as well as my phone 

SHOWS:

08/1991 - King County Arts Commission solo show: Large format (4x5) abstract photographs of the Seattle building boom of the late 1980’s. The only photographer selected that year for a show.

04/1993 - Romper Room Gallery group show: Street photography

07/1993 - Torrefazione Coffee Shop: Street photographs from cities in Italy

09/2017 - Macrina Bakery, SODO and Belltown: Urban Portraits

05/2018. - Macrina Bakery, SODO and Belltown: Urban Portraits

07/2018 - Art / Not Terminal, Seattle Center: Two Photographers show with Mark Gordon

08/2021 - Macrina Bakery SODO and Belltown: Stop Hate. Street photography from cities I have visited. A commentary of eliminating HATE in our world

May 2024: Gary Manuel Salon / COCA - Urban Portraits

11/2022 - Macrina Bakery SODO and Belltown: Seattle in the 80's. Architectural photographs

May 2024: Gary Manuel Salon / COCA - Urban Portraits

May - August - Safety / Luck COCA Group show at COCA Gallery