Art and agriculture will collide in Arlington this weekend.
Collide may be too strong a word. It’s more like fuse, as hay will make way for oils; pitchforks will take a back seat to pastels; hay carts will be parked as clay pottery is moved in.
It’s the second year for Arlington’s art event called Art in the Barn, a time when work halts at a working hay barn, the barn is cleaned out and the town’s artists fill it back up with oil and pastel paintings, pottery, photography, pencil drawings, watercolors and collage.
It’s the time when Arlington’s artists come out to sell the deliciously unique fruits of their labor.
Monica Yantis, who owns the barn where the hay is temporarily displaced, said the relatively newly formed Arlington Arts Guild was looking for a way to “expand the recognition of the artists in the Arlington area.”
“And I’ve got this big barn and we said ‘Why don’t we give it a shot?’ And we agree and we gave it a shot,” said Yantis, also a member of the arts guild.
And so Art in the Barn was born.
Besides opening up her barn, Yantis, a painter, also will be exhibiting selections from her collection of oils and pencil drawings.
Admittedly, Art in the Barn is not the Bellevue Arts Festival with thousands in attendance. Still, last year’s event was popular. If this year’s builds on that, “we can consider we’ve been successful,” Yantis said.
Sarah Arney, president of the Arlington Arts Guild, said the motivation for starting Art in the Barn was to “bring art to Arlington.”
“There are a lot of artists tucked away in the woods here and they are busy making art and not terribly inclined to be out there promoting themselves,” Arney said.
“We’re trying to develop a local market for the local artists,” she said. “Typically our artists go to Seattle to show their work because you know there’s not an art gallery in Arlington.”
The beauty of having Art in the Barn is that the barn doesn’t need to try to be a gallery. It’s what it is: a hay barn.
Arney is familiar with the barn, having grown up on what Arlington natives refer to as the old Arney farm. The barn is a great place for displaying art and, just like the old barn dances of yesteryear, the barn environment is perfect for a social setting. Last year, the artists had fun bonding in the barn, Arney said.
“Art in the Barn – it’s going to be really wonderful,” said potter Marguerite Goff. “It’s Arlington and it’s rural. We’ll have a good time.”
Goff said she was too busy to make last year’s event. This year, she is eager to see what artists in her new community are doing; she had lived for 20 years in Skagit County.
Goff works with clay and will have at the barn functional pieces and display art. “I’ve done functional pots for years,” Goff said. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve been branching out more into tiles. But always for me it’s clay. I love the dimensional quality.”
Photographer Kent Baker said he attended last year’s art in the barn and was instrumental in getting the council to hold the event over two days instead of just one.
Baker, a former aerospace worker who helped with the Apollo flight and who also sold photography supplies for 20 years, shoots mostly nature and historic sites, landscapes and some wildlife photography.
“People will stop,” Baker said, “and it doesn’t cost anything.”
Arts writer Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.
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