Carol Belval likes to give her functional garden art test drives before she puts them out for sale.
Take her birdhouses, for instance. After she made the first one, she put it outside her front window to see if could withstand strong winds and extreme weather.
This was not a typical birdhouse. It was ceramic, crafted in wild, bright colors and complete with clay-based shrubbery and tiny pieces of furniture.
Belval described it as weird; too weird for the birds to like it, she thought. Well, Belval was wrong about that.
“Lo and behold, the birds flocked to move in. It was really amazing to see,” Belval said. “It looked like the birds wanted to be at the best house on the block.”
Belval has been making her multi-colored birdhouses ever since and is bringing a collection of them to the “Art of the Garden” art show.
“Art of the Garden” is an annual show put on by the Arts Council of Snohomish County, with help this year from the city of Everett Cultural Commission. The show opens at 5 p.m. Thursday with a free artists reception at the historic Monte Cristo hotel in downtown Everett.
More than 50 artists will be showcasing their work for the outside garden but also offering selections of art that help home-owners bring the garden inside.
There will be birdbaths, ornamental art, paintings and works in a wide variety of mediums including cement, glass and photography. The displays in this year’s show will allow visitors to experience how to personalize even the smallest landscape with garden art as well as how to select a structural piece of art that can define a garden long after the flowers have faded.
Gallery director Carie Collver said these days, people are building garden rooms complete with art.
“Because, we know we like to have some focal pieces, especially out here in the Pacific Northwest where we lose a lot of our gardens in the winter time,” Collver said. “With art-scaping, we can look at a piece of art that warms up the place in our cold, dark winters, so everyone should have art in their garden; those whimsical and bright pieces add a touch of color and make us smile.”
“Art of the Garden” also will have art that allows us to put flowers on our walls or bring the sunshine inside, Collver said.
Mukilteo artist Pat Tolle is exhibiting several of her oil paintings that bring the summer inside, including a luscious scene with blooming plants on a deck overlooking the water.
Tolle also knows how important gardens are to people. She painted a picture for her 90-year-old mother of the garden her dad created many years ago. When her mother had to move to a new home, she was able to take the memory of that garden with her.
For ceramic artist Belval, creating garden art such as birdhouses and large ornamental ceramic flowers provides color for people year-round.
Belval’s whimsical ceramic flowers are about 12 to 14 inches in diameter and sit atop 3-foot high stems. These powerfully playful creations practically compete with real flowers as a dominate feature in a garden.
Belval, 53, stumbled onto working with clay 10 years ago when she volunteered to help her son work on a school art project.
“I think clay is an amazing medium to work with; it has so many possibilities and that’s what attracted me to it because I’ll never fully understand it,” Belval said.
Garden art is really what Belval does and she plans on expanding that repertoire in the future to include more architectural offerings, such as outdoor benches and garden stools, once her term ends as president of the Kirkland Arts Center.
“People are just gravitating more and more to living spaces outside, surrounding themselves with really interesting things to look at other than the plants that enhance their garden and living spaces,” Belval said.
Reporter Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.
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