Choochokam: The Langley Festival of the Arts is a celebration of arts and crafts, with a big helping of music and dance, set for this weekend on Whidbey Island.
On Saturday and Sunday, the streets of Langley will be filled with arts, crafts, music, poetry, dance and festivities as Choochokam returns for it’s 29th year.
Langley and the surrounding south Whidbey Island community is home to a growing artist community, which is reflected in the number of artists on the island and the art galleries located in downtown Langley.
Choochokam is an opportunity to sample some of the arts, plus a full schedule of entertainment. Information: www.choochokam.org, 360-221-7494.
Running concurrently with Choochokam is the South Whidbey Youth Center Art Show and Sale.
Paintings, art glass, sculpture, fabric art and photography will be on sale as a fund-raiser for the youth center, which offers after-school and tutoring and mentoring programs.
This year’s show features more than 200 art works by about 60 local artists, among them sculptor Georgia Gerber, painter Anne Belov, wildlife artist Bart Rulon and glass artist David Levi.
The show is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday in Fellowship Hall of Methodist Church, Langley. Information, www.stadlerstudio.com/page15.html, cq360-221-6030.
American landscapes: The art of photography in its earliest days meets the newly discovered American West in an exhibit opening Saturday at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum.
“Eloquent Vistas: The Art of 19th Century American Landscape Photography from the George Eastman House Collection” is an exhibit of 78 photographs of the American landscape that date from the 1850s to 1900.
The exhibit includes works of such pioneering photographers as Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Eadweard Muybridge, William Henry Jackson, John Moran and Alexander Gardner.
“The artists represented include some of the greatest figures of early American landscape photography,” said museum curator Debra Bryne.
Many of the photographs were taken as the West opened up, and there are scenes of the Yosemite Valley in California and the Columbia River Gorge. But the subjects range across the American landscape, from Niagara Falls in New York to the Muddy Creek in Kansas.
Early landscape photographers faced both physical and technical challenges. The terrain they photographed was often rugged and the photograph equipment primitive. Until the 1880s, photographers had to prepare the negative just before exposure, and then immediately develop and fix it while the chemicals on a heavy glass plate were still damp, necessitating the presence of some sort of traveling darkroom.
And because enlarging was expensive, most photographers made contact prints by placing the negative directly on paper, making the finished print the same size as the negative.
The photographs in “Eloquent Vistas” are all contact prints made in this way, and as the scenery of the period seemed to require large photographs, the cameras used to take the pictures had to be even larger. A camera from the period will also be on display.
The installation includes text panels that discuss topics related to early landscape photography, including the development of the albumen print and the role of in opening up the West and encouraging the government to protect it as a natural resource.
In an adjacent gallery, American landscape paintings from the same period, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, will be on view, giving an opportunity to compare media and methods.
The Frye is located at 704 Terry Ave., Seattle, and is open Tuesday through Sunday. Admission and parking are free; 206-622-9250, www.fryeart.org.
Modernist, Northwest art: Two new exhibits at the Seattle Art Museum, drawn from local collections and the museum’s permanent collection, focus on art from the Pacific Northwest and the modernist art movement in the 20th century.
“The View from Here: The Pacific Northwest 1870-1940” presents an updated selection of approximately 40 paintings, photographs, prints and examples of American Indian art.
The exhibit spans the years 1870 to 1940, a period of significant artistic growth in both public and private art institutions in the Puget Sound region. The Seattle Fine Arts Society, the Seattle Camera Club, the School of Fine Art at the University of Washington, the Henry Art Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum were established and private art galleries began to flourish.
Paintings and photographs by Emily Carr, Albert Bierstadt, Kenneth Callahan, Frank Kunishige, Edward Curtis and Mark Tobey are included in the exhibition, plus works by American Indian artists.
“Modern in America” is an installation of more than 90 works that surveys the American modernist movements from 1905 to today.
Featured in the exhibit are works by such artists as Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as photographs by Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.
Seattle Art Museum is located at 100 University St, Seattle; 206-654-3100, www.seattleartmuseum.org.
Art walk: The Arts of Snohomish Gallery at 103 Maple St., Snohomish, is hosting the second-Saturday art and antique walk from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday.
New works by 35 local and regional artists will be on view throughout the downtown area.
Visitors will see demonstrations by local watercolor, oil, gauche, pastel, wood and digital artists and can try creating their own art at the “Experience Art” center at the Gallery .
Arts of Snohomish at the Carnegie is an artists’ cooperative located in the city’s historic Carnegie Library.
Open house: Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood will hold its annual open house from noon to 5 p.m. July 18. Advance reservations are required for the event, which offers the public the opportunity to visit the world-famous glass school.
Visitors can take docent-led tours, observe demonstrations by international glass masters, attend an artist slide talk, meet and speak with artists about their works in progress, view artwork in the school’s gallery and take in the beauty of Pilchuck’s 54-acre campus.
The cost is $20 for adults, with children 12 and under admitted free. Reservations can be made by calling 206-621-8422, ext. 44, and by e-mailing reservations@pilchuck.com.
Eadweard James Muybridge (American, b. England, 1830-1904), The Domes from Merced River, Yosemite Valley, ca. 1874, albumen print, 26 x 30 inches.
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