Newcomers boost county's art-gallery scene

Three noted galleries have opened in Snohomish County in the past year and a half, each reflecting traits prized by their owners, who have put their own art on hold to funnel their creativity into mounting monthly shows and doing the business of art.

Art & Soul Gallery

"It's a pleasure to represent people's passion," said Susan Yaranon, who runs a retail gallery with year-round representation of about 150 artists in Bothell's Country Village shopping center.

The emphasis is Northwest, with woodworkers, jewelers, glass blowers, painters, photographers, sculptors and artists in lesser-known crafts. You might come across kiri-e, the art of Japanese paper cutting, or encaustic, a style of painting with wax.

An artist for nearly 15 years, Yaranon no longer makes art because running a gallery takes so much of her time. When she opened the gallery in January 2005, she sought something from artists: a commitment to community.

The currently featured artists, Stella Canfield and Greg Prince, reflect this. Canfield, Bulgarian by birth, ran a gallery in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, for eight years and in 2000 started the Stellar Arts Foundation, taking American artists on tours to paint their way through Eastern Europe, with proceeds funding a Bulgarian orphanage for 80 youngsters ranging in age from 6 to 18.

"I do believe that we need to be connected, we need to know each other," Canfield said. "My greatest treasure in life is the people that I meet."

Prince, a firefighter for 23 years, helps run a station with a ladder truck and medic unit in Snohomish County Fire District 7. Prince also supports FareStart, a Seattle culinary-training institute for formerly homeless people. For this show, Prince painted a homeless series, expressionist watercolors quite different from his large floral paintings.

The public can watch Prince and Canfield do a "paint-off" of a still life placed between their easels from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday at the gallery.

Solovei Art Gallery

Solovei is a Russian word that means nightingale. That's the name Lyussy Hyder chose for this space, which opened three months ago in the historic Everett Public Market building. It's in an area undergoing gentrification, with a restaurant, a co-op grocery, antique stores and condominiums nearby.

Hyder had thought there was a need for someplace for small numbers of artists to express their personal visions, visions that sometimes get diluted in larger group shows. When an antique store moved out of the building, Hyder leapt at the chance to renovate the bright, high-ceilinged first-floor room.

She remembers listening to a nightingale's call on a warm summer night in her native Russia, and "I thought I would call my gallery by the name of the bird that made me happy once," she said.

After placing a call for artists, people from Olympia to Camano Island responded with their portfolios.

"Recognizable personality plus skills, that's probably, in three words, the vision," she said of her aims with the gallery. "I see the artist's personality through their art."

Hyder is a painter who has donated commissions from pet portraits to animal-rescue organizations.

Her three featured artists this month include Lori Vonderhorst, a painter and graphic designer whose works include nests and birds, landscapes and cloudscapes, and depictions of her sons' military tours.

Also featured are Elizabeth Preston and Victor von Beck.

Preston, a basket artist, offers sculptural weavings that incorporate kelp, sea grass, rocks, pine cones, branches and bird eggs. Von Beck, an Everett transplant from Camano, does allusive oil paintings and pastels in vibrant colors.

In August, look for "Return to the New World," works by Chaim Bezalel and Yonnah Ben Levy, the owners of Stanwood House Gallery, whose collaborative rice-paper scrollwork is mounted on Belgian linen. Ben Levy also will show porcelain vessels.

Semantics Gallery

Larry Jeffers is an old hand at galleries. He ran a successful gem, mineral and jewelry gallery in Pioneer Square for 19 years.

When a building opened on Fourth Avenue North in downtown Edmonds, he leased it. Jeffers has recruited artisans with high levels of technique, including some north-county and Camano Island artists who don't always have a chance to exhibit regularly in South Snohomish County.

An example is Marc Boutté, a Camano artist whose blown-glass vessels, obelisks and mermaids echo another era — art nouveau, perhaps, or even imperial Russia. They share space with John D. Luke's handcrafted wooden chests. Two-dimensional artists include pen-and-ink artist John Morgan, landform photographer Neil McWee and painters Suzanne deCillia, Linda Demetre and Nicholas Kirsten-Honshin.

Jeffers also found a ceramic artist who had never shown before: Kim Graham, whose studio is in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood and whose bas-reliefs range widely, from faces and torsos to full figures, some as high as 12 feet.

Jeffers also exhibits at Semantics Gallery. The metalsmith has incorporated gems, stones and fossils into steel boxes, some looking like treasures excavated from archaeological sites. He also has welded steel trees onto rocks, created creatures such as hunting dogs out of welded steel, plating them with 24-karat gold, and made wind-driven sculptures.

This is the gallery's fourth month. Several of the featured artists will be on hand this week for the Edmonds Third Thursday Art Walk.

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com