Come join us for Artists Talks and Opening Reception on Saturday, April 6 at 5:30 pm as part of First Saturday Lopez Art Walk. Visual artist Roy Tomlinson will have his work displayed on the walls, and one of Lopez Library’s Artist In Residence, Juniper Blomberg, will be displaying her textile arts in the display case. Beth Andrewes will also be doing a pop up of her very artful and colorful jewelry! Read on for more information about them all.
Roy Tomlinson, Biography
Roy Tomlinson is a multidisciplinary artist who lives in Portland, Oregon, and has had family property on Lopez Island since the 1960s. He now has a painting studio on the property. Raised in the Seattle area, he moved to California to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Tomlinson worked for numerous galleries and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before attending graduate school at UC Berkeley. He taught at the California College of the Arts for many years before moving to Portland and joining the Pacific Northwest College of Art faculty.
Tomlinson was awarded the Eisner Award from UC Berkeley and is a Gottlieb Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and McGeady Development Grant recipient. His work has been exhibited internationally, including shows in California at the Oakland Museum, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland Art Gallery, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. His solo exhibitions in San Francisco include shows at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery, Gallery 16, and the SFMOMA Artist Gallery. In Portland, his exhibitions include shows at Worksound International and a large interactive installation piece created for the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture at PNCA. International exhibitions include a recent show at the Stockmayer Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany.
Roy Tomlinson, Artist Statement
The drawings in this show speak to patterns found below the surface – pulses that infiltrate and interconnect. These patterns are born of impermanence, continuously in flux but always present. The drawings are of nature, relationship, and spirit. And they are of documentation, the record of a process of inquiry.
This work becomes a palimpsest, a visual memory that links an image with every layer, movement, idea, mark, and question that came before it and therefore made it. A palimpsest destabilizes simple ways of seeing, offering instead questions about interdependence and perception. A palimpsest reminds us that art is a process, not a product, as is every living thing. Here, the creation of palimpsests is a deliberate act made through repetitive layering and cycles of mark-making and erasure. These repetitions ultimately work to deconstruct photographic source imagery while leaving traces of each stage, offering a visible history of reaction and decision.
These layers of time, space, and memory create unforeseen situations that constantly challenge beliefs about who is doing the making, what is being made, and why.
Juniper Irén Blomberg(she/her) was born and raised in the San Juan Islands and believes in the necessity of story and the magic of tea and the nourishment that can be drawn from both. She believes in her ancestors, in the natural world, in honesty, and reciprocity. She works in the alchemy of creativity, which appears most frequently in the form of fine art, folk craft, historically influenced textiles, and the written word. Her alchemical and creative practice is in deep relationship with place, the link between past and future, the feminine, and the folk. Through her work, she endeavors to share the gold of these relationships in a way that supports a nourishing future— one that we can all thrive in.
Project: My goal with my time at the library is to work on ongoing personal textile projects that are ethics-driven artistic pieces and wearable, functional, and durable garments inspired by historical fashion, as well as ongoing visible mending projects for myself and others that will hopefully inspire my fellow island-dwellers to explore the possibility of extending the life of their own clothing items by altering and mending them instead of adding preventable textile waste to the landfill.
Beth Andrewes is the proprietress of Mootie Patootie, an Etsy shop. You will find her love for color and whimsy in every piece she makes. Working with lampwork beads sourced world wide, she frequently combines them with unique enamel pieces. You can find her at mootiepatootie@etsy.com. Be Adorable. Always.