gallery
A Community of Artists
It seems we far too often see only the finished product. It’s something we don’t tend to consider frequently enough—the work that went into creating a finished painting, sculpture, photograph or story. How many hours does it take to complete a true work of art? How many times did a photographer return to the same place, battling the seemingly unending disappointments of poor weather, bad lighting or any other number of factors, and then one day it’s just there, right before them, waiting to be captured and shared? How many readers sit down to enjoy a magazine or a book and forget the number of drafts, revisions and rewrites that went into creating that story? The more I see of the process the more I appreciate the final product.
This month we released the Fall Issue of the magazine and it got me thinking along these lines. Our cover photograph was taken by Michael Peterson. He had to spend hours out at Stonehenge waiting for the right light, the preferred amount of cloud cover and the perfect angle. I am lucky enough to see the labor of so many talented Columbia Gorge photographers as they submit their best stuff for publication. I am even luckier to get to tell some of them that their effort has paid off, and that they’ll be featured in the magazine. Even after hundreds of photographs, I’m always anxious to click to the next shot and see what’s waiting for me.
Any visitor to the area gets to take in an impressive number of brilliant and inspiring artists. Many residents overlook the galleries, jewelers, museums and studios until one day they are walking around after lunch and something grabs their eyes and sends their minds spinning. When we’re surrounded by so much natural splendor and so many opportunities to interact with this virtual wonderland we call home, it gets harder and harder to slow down and see the awe inspiring works our local artists are putting forth every day.
It’s easy to look past those that toil in studios, in front of a blinking cursor on a white screen or behind the crowds of people clicking shot after shot and hoping to get one good one. They don’t do it for the recognition, though as Rip Caswell recently pointed out to me while I interviewed him for the Fall Issue, the recognition doesn’t hurt. They do it because they love it. They do it because they’re blessed with an ability that not many have. They do it because they know they’re meant to, and they wouldn’t know what to do without it. You would struggle to find a painter or an illustrator that does their art for the money. Even those blessed with the greatest talent seem hard pressed to find financial reward for their work. They’re not complaining—they get something much greater from it.
We at Columbia Gorge Magazine were recently shaken by the fire that claimed photographer Blue Ackerman’s studio in White Salmon. It took not only her work and her place of work, but also the art of several other talented people. I have been lucky enough to work with Blue on a few issues, those staff members who have been here longer than me have been blessed enough to collaborate with her even more. It’s at these difficult times that my heart grows warm to see the sympathy and desire the community exhibits as they reach out to help a local artist.
I am so impressed by the ability of artists to endure. Just a week after the fire, Blue picked up the camera and did a shoot for the magazine that captured everything we needed to properly highlight a well-written story. I know our readers will enjoy the piece and the photographs for what they are on the surface, but we who know the events that preceded that photo shoot get something even more enriching out of it. We get inspired to endure.
Perhaps it’s my bias for the written word, but I think we seem to most often forget the great skill and patience it takes to capture the essence of the Columbia Gorge in writing. It’s just a bunch of black words on a white page, but somehow the best writers make it resonate with a reader. They make the simplest words or ideas sing. I try to read the region’s newspapers on a daily basis, as well as a few of the blogs produced by local writers, and I almost always find myself captivated by something I didn’t know I found interesting before. In our Fall Issue, Lori Russell made canning food a fascinating experience. It’s a gift of persuasion, a talent for pointing out the right things at the right time and an ability to capture someone’s attention with nothing more than 26 letters, ten fingers and the imagination that makes a great writer. I count myself incredibly fortunate to get to read the rough drafts of our magazine’s featured writers, and then to see the profound transformation that takes place as they perfect each segment, each line, to create a great final product. I don’t know that I’d appreciate the finished work so much if I hadn’t seen the toil that goes into producing it. I have made it my personal challenge to find that in other works of art.
We are often lucky enough to meet and interact with those who do this great work, because they call the Columbia Gorge home. So many of the pieces that adorn the walls of galleries and museums in the area were inspired by the community or the natural beauty that surrounds us. I’m not sure which is a greater talent: the ability to capture the indefinable beauty that surrounds us, or the skill to make the seemingly mundane become interesting. I don’t really care to know the answer either. I’m content to relish in the fact that so much great art comes out of this community, and the fact that I get to see some small part of that often takes my breath away.
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