Festival showcases Index’s arts scene

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 10, 2006

INDEX – Art in Index?

It makes perfect sense really.

People here are individualists who make their own way through life. The town was home to one of the Northwest’s most famous pioneer photographers, Lee Pickett.

Today it’s home to wildlife artist Karen Hultberg, who carves life-size carousel horses. To singer Loni Rose, whose love song, “I Never Thought You Would Come” was a hit on the film soundtrack of “American Pie.” And home to popular regional painter Pat Woods.

Woods paints in his plaid pajamas. He uses two hands, both at the same time, while listening to the Ramones.

Individual? Mmmm. Just a bit.

“When you have a potluck in Index, you certainly have one of everything,” said Mary Ritzman, president of the Index Arts Group.

Ritzman was one of the founders of the Arts Index Festival, happening for the third year on Saturday. The festival has grown in popularity each year, despite the fact that outsiders have yet to realize how accomplished the art community in Index has become. The town is still fighting, to a certain degree, an image that art in Index translates only to chain saw carvings.

“Index is still fighting that joke,” Ritzman said. “We don’t have a flashy gallery but our artists are very serious artists. A while back there was art made of twigs and things like that, and that shows up every once in a while and there’s a place for that and it’s not here and it’s not what we’re trying to do.”

The Arts Index Festival will draw about 30 artists this year who will show and sometimes demonstrate their work in and among the historic buildings and streets of this rural community nestled near the Cascades.

Whether it’s bronze sculpting, poetry or painting, the art visitors will be exposed to is not just the same old, but a little different experience, Ritzman said.

Signature pajamas

Enter Pat Woods.

Woods might be one of the first “exhibits” visitors see at the festival. His distinctive red wood gallery, once a bootlegger’s cabin built in the 1890s, is at the first intersection into town, and more than likely Woods will be out there, painting furiously with both hands while dancing.

Will he have on a pair of his signature pajamas? Quite possibly.

“You know when you have those days when you don’t feel like getting dressed. Well artists have a lot of those days,” Woods said, invoking his dry wit.

Seriously, Woods buys his pajamas at Value Village for $4 a pair, gets paint all over them, chucks them and gets another pair. They really are just a comfy smock suit.

As for the two-fisted grip with the paintbrushes, Woods said he broke his right hand about 10 years ago. Instead of painting nothing, he tried the left and liked the effect.

The effect is startling. Woods uses his acrylics to do landscapes of Index that are bold and dramatic. Some of his realistic paintings looked as if they were done with a camera.

Today, Woods doesn’t dwell on the “hook” in his paintings. He said he comes up with something on the way to the end. Sometimes, there’s no clear something and that’s OK too.

Woods said he can spend a couple of hundred hours on a painting. That may not include the “staring time.”

“I have a technique based in trial and error, lots of layering of colors until an image emerges,” Woods said. “I’m getting to watch that happen just like everybody else would.”

In his studio, Woods has displayed his early and later efforts. One painting is a dreamy landscape full of pastelly greens and blues. But in the middle of the lake is a giant black aquatic rhinoceros.

Woods said this came from a dream. He was in a little boat on a lake but he was warned by a man that doom was ahead.

“And out of the water comes this 300-foot black aquatic rhino and I’m like, Whooooa, but the guy says no, that’s not the doom I meant. So the title of this is ‘A 300 Foot Black Aquatic Rhino is Not Your Problem.’”

Another painting is almost Gore Vidal-esque: Two hairy orbs are floating and attached to these orbs are flowers that look like roses.

“That’s a portrait of my parents,” Woods said dryly. “You’d have to meet them to see the resemblance.”

Woods said he moved from Edmonds to Index six years ago. He has a house with a view of Mount Index and the other day counted 27 waterfalls.

“I am so captured by the views so I’m doing a lot of Index stuff,” Woods said.

Off the beaten path

The beauty of the area is what draws most people to Index.

Some wind up staying. Others are drawn just temporarily during festival times.

And it’s certainly a commitment to get there. Index is literally off the beaten path, off U.S. 2. Visitors must drive past the Index Cafe toward Mount Index, cross the Skykomish River over a granite-colored bridge to the town.

It’s worth the drive. It’s a majestic setting with a fine mix of artists, said festival organizer Leah Wolf.

“People want to come here,” Wolf said. “They want to come and see what people in Index are doing.”

Besides the general festival activities, the Pickett Museum and other historic buildings will be open.

David Cameron, president of the Index Historical Society, will be signing his book “Snohomish County: An Illustrated History.”

Cameron said Index has a certain mystique to it, adding: “We don’t have kitsch here.”

Arts writer Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.

Michael O’Leary / The Herald

ABOVE: Pat Woods works on an acrylic painting with both hands recently in Index. Another example of his work is at right.

Deborah Greenwood’s art includes a series about the lives of nine women.

Stephen K. Malshuk’s photography includes this view of Experience Music Project in Seattle.

RIGHT: Artwork by Manfred Lindenburger