During “Evening of the Arts” The City of Edmonds Arts Commission and The Edmonds Arts Festival Foundation will host a special display by featured Edmonds artists James Martin and Joyeanna Chaudiere on the third floor of City Hall, with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. in their honor.
A long time Edmonds resident, Martin has been exhibiting regularly in the Northwest for over 35 years. His paintings are distinctive for their “ambiguities of burlesque and the black humor of slapstick,” according to art critic Sheila Farr, author of “James Martin: Art Rustler at the Rivoli.”
Comments from the foreword of Farr’s book help to shed light on an artist who, “for the first 20 years of his career as a painter, was admired by critics and sought out by upper-crust collectors.” Martin continues to paint with an unorthodox style that plays the fool, but can also be deeply unsettling.
In his work, Farr said Martin “pays homage to artists he admires — van Gogh, Chagall, Picasso, Calder, Tobey, Graves — while subverting their images with all the other input he’s bombarded with everyday — baseball, a bag lady soaking her feet, the Lone Ranger, Barbara Walters, Donald Duck, his own face in the bathroom mirror. It’s hilarious — like Don Quixote and Ulysses — mostly because it’s so true. That’s the way life really is.”
Joyeanna Chaudiere works in many fiber techniques. Having been a professional papermaker since the early 1980s, she has sold her paper art all around the United States, including the Smithsonian Institute Gallery. She weaves rugs on a floor loom and works with felt making and stitchery, but making baskets has always been the most important fiber form to her.
Her baskets are woven with reed that she has hand-dyed individually, creating several values of each color. Chaudiere has found that exploring the possibilities of color in baskets and how to embellish them is very exciting, from the dyeing stage through the completion of the basket.
“I love the creative process; it is thrilling when you seem to find a solution to a problem you have been thinking about,” she said. “Of course other ones might pop up, but it all turns out in the end…sometimes.”
Chaudiere has won several awards for her work and was selected to create an ornament for The White House Christmas Tree in 2001.
For additional information on the Evening of the Arts and the artists’ reception at City Hall, contact the City of Edmonds Arts Office, 425-771-0228.
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