Snohomish County’s thriving arts scene is enriched by an exhibition with a history and a future.
It’s hard to know whether to be more impressed by the work displayed at the Everett Center for the Arts in downtown Everett or by the way the artists have been sharing their work with hundreds of school children and visitors.
The current exhibit, "Yesterday &Today: Transitions," covers both traditional and contemporary American Indian art, representing Haida, Klingit and Lummi Coast Salish cultures. The exhibit features the work of Ralph Bennett of Woodinville, who has received the Governor’s Heritage Award. The other exhibits include works from Jean Ferrier, Fred Fulmer, Felix Solomon and Gail Tremblay.
The show has a rich variety of carvings, paintings and other work. The exhibition has also been brought to life by Bennett and Fulmer’s visits with school groups as they work on a totem pole.
Bennett brings an almost irrepressible dynamism to his work and his discussions of art, which range from fish drying techniques to finely honed concepts of culture. As a news story by The Herald’s Kate Reardon noted, his willingness to share his cultural heritage, as a Haida who moved with his family from Alaska to Seattle during his youth, becomes an invitation to others to explore their own backgrounds.
The multi-talented Bennett is as gifted at communicating with an audience as he is in carving fresh art from wood. Even as he talks with visiting school groups about the great traditions of wisdom among native peoples, he lets the students see their place as part of a larger community.
"We are a society," he told students Wednesday as he concluded a story about thunderbirds and a whale. "We are a village. And we need to act that way, and remember that a thunderbird still flies around the sky."
Like dozens of other artists from the area, Woodinville’s Bennett creates art that, no matter how varied in form, has the power to draw the best from people. In his case, the art’s centuries-long Northwest roots and contemporary power serve to let viewers cast their vision in all directions, including forward.
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