More Introductions

While I was part of Art On Broadway Gallery in Beaverton, artists were added to the original group. Wendy Givens, Vicki Green, and Virginia Parks were three of the artists we represented and with whom I became friends. They were wonderful to work with and brought terrific artwork to AOB to exhibit and sell. So it was only natural that I would invite them to be a part of my new endeavor.

Wendy Givens -

Wendy grew up in the Willamette Valley with a love of nature and animals. She began drawing at an early age and her interest in art continued through high school and college, where she pursued a degree in elementary education and later earned an Associate Degree in graphic design. She and her husband Rick own a giclee printing business for artists, and she found that working with other people's art inspired her to get back to her own love of drawing and painting. Today she works in acrylic and incorporates elements of collage and drawing into her paintings.

Wendy shares that she is, "an abstract, mixed media artist" and "works intuitively, beginning with time spent just playing with the paint, adding and subtracting, reacting to each new mark. As I work, turning the canvas frequently, there usually comes a point when I find my direction and my marks become more intentional."

Earlier this year, Wendy spent ten weeks in Scottsdale Arizona where her work was juried into the prestigious Celebration of Fine Art.



Vicki Green -

After a career in IT, Vicki Green discovered she had another path to pursue. Her interest in glass work had begun about 35 years ago when she took a class at a local studio near her home in Vancouver, Washington. However it wasn't until a trip to Italy in 2004 while watching the Italian glass masters at work and visiting numerous glass galleries, that she was convinced she wanted to become a glass artist. Her work includes whimsical garden art, functional pieces, and beautiful decorative art objects.

Her glass art continually evolves and is often inspired or influenced by elements of nature, personal life experiences, and textile designs.

Always challenging herself, Vicki says, "I find myself exploring gradient lines, shadows, and depth which are attained through multiple processes and constant experimentation."



Virginia Parks -

Virginia is an archaeologist by day, but still manages to find time to consistently create small encaustic (bees wax) paintings. She was first drawn to encaustic painting by its antiquity. Virginia told me that beeswax was originally used by shipbuilders to waterproof ships in ancient Greece. In the following centuries and millennia, the addition of dammar resin and pigment to melted beeswax became an important technique for painting death portraits, religious icons, and other expressions of artistic creativity. The art form has experienced a resurgence in recent years and Virginia embraced it both for its unpredictability and its adaptability.

Working in her Tigard studio, Virginia "focuses my energy on exploring how to portray the natural world through color, line, texture, and multimedia applications. Birds, landscapes, trees, and flowers (some might call them weeds) are among my favorite subjects to interpret. The learning process is ongoing, bringing me joy every time I put wax to wood!"

Virginia is one of 50+ artists on this year's Washington County Open Studio tour. Her studio is #36 on the tour map.