First Friday gallery cruise to brighten a January night

Take a winter’s night stroll to see new art during the First Friday gallery cruise on January 3.

Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union

Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union’s fourth annual Heart Art Show will have an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 3, at the credit union, located at 9928 SW Bank Rd.

The evening’s musical guest will be Catbird, the old-time music duo of Mary Shackleford and Jim Burke. With Shackleford playing the leads on the mandolin and Burke holding down the rhythm on guitar or adding banjo accents, the duo has created foot-tapping music together for decades.

The show, filled with work in a variety of mediums by talented PSCCU members, will run through February, during the credit union’s hours of business from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.

Vashon Made

Vashon Made, located at 9922 SW Bank Rd, features work by dozens of local artists and artisans in a wide variety of genres. Check out what’s new on First Friday and follow the shop’s Facebook page by searching for Vashon Made.

Swiftwater Gallery

See new work by more than 50 local members of Swiftwater Gallery, an artists’ cooperative gallery located at 17600 Vashon Hwy SW.

The gallery showcases a wide variety of original paintings, prints, etchings, jewelry, ceramics, textiles, mosaics, and photography, among other diverse media. Classes and workshops are also offered at the gallery. Find out more at swiftwatergallery.com.

The Hardware Store Gallery

The Hardware Store Gallery will show the work of Terri Fletcher, with guest artist Jeff Berand. January is a continuation of Terri Fletcher’s work that opened in December, exhibiting her combination of dyed fabric and paper with stitching and beads, and her wall of madrone sticks connected by magnets. Jeff Berand is showing assemblages of twigs, lichen and fir cones.

VALISE Gallery

VALISE Gallery collective members invite all to their next show, “Comfy Chair Show,” opening from 1-9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 3.

Sit by a fake roaring fire and sip a cup of tea as you view the art by Sharon Shaver, Pascale Judet, Dot Cherch, Rachel LordKenaga. Robert Passig, Stephen Schildbach, Hita von Mende, Bill Jarcho, Jiji Saunders, Len Yen, and Gregory Burnham.

The gallery will also be open from 12-5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 20, said gallery members — a place for islanders seeking refuge from the presidential inauguration to talk, laugh, eat cookies and commune.

Regular gallery hours are 1-6 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Vashon Center for the Arts

“Birds Take Flight,” running in January at Vashon Center for the Arts, features 56 artists and 109 pieces of art, with an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 3 — a chance to meet the artists and flit from place to place throughout the gallery, delighting in avian-inspired creation.

The exhibition includes photography, mixed media, glass art, sculpture, fiber arts, and drawings, all examples of the diverse ways birds continue to capture the human imagination and inspire creativity.

A highlight of the show is a collection of works dedicated to crows. Known for their adaptability and complex social behaviors, crows are often regarded as symbols of transformation, intelligence, and mystery.

Some of the paintings in the “Birds Take Flight” evoke other mythic birds and magnificent winged creatures of the Pacific Northwest — the great blue heron, the common loon, and the tiny hummingbirds that migrate to the region year after year.

The exhibition is also meant to highlight the ecological roles birds play in maintaining biodiversity and supporting the resilience of ecosystems — and how their migration patterns, population shifts, and behaviors can reflect changes in climate and habitat conditions.

Augmenting the exhibition will be a talk by art historian Rebecca Albiani, “Owls in Art,” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12. Albiani will cover how in antiquity, owls symbolized wisdom, while Goya’s owls represented darkness and nightmare, and Hieronymus Bosch’s owl defied categorization. Tickets to the talk are on sale at vashoncenterforthearts.org.

And at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26, naturalist and Vashon Bird Alliance executive board member, Adria Magrath, will guide visitors through the exhibit, highlighting a selection of birds depicted in the artwork and sharing fascinating insights into their unique behaviors, habitats, and environmental roles. This event is free.

Windermere Vashon

Piro Kramar is probably most well-known on the island as the co-founder of Vashon Island Pet Protectors (VIPP) along with her partner, Barbara Drinkwater.

She is also known as among the first women to almost summit Annapurna, among the most difficult mountains in the Himalayas. She didn’t join the final leg to the summit because she discovered the beginnings of frostbite on her hand, a career killer for an eye surgeon.

Kramar also was a back-country skier into her 70s, a passion developed in Hungary before her family had to escape in the mid-1940s. She developed a love for photography and never failed to take her camera with her camping in the mountains and back-country skiing.

The results of these treks are chronicled in a show of Kramar photography opening from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 3, at Windermere Vashon, at 17429 Vashon Hwy SW. The show will be on view through February. Windermere is open seven days a week, from 10-5 p.m.

All proceeds from the sale will go to VIPP.

This painting, by Lenard Yen, can be seen at VALISE Gallery in January. (Courtesy photo)

Works by (top row, left to right) Pat Herkel, Steven Jensen, Laurel Henn, (middle row) Pohlman Knowles Studio, Jenn Reidel, Joshua Lee, (bottom row) Virginia Ashby, Polly Purvis and Michael Elenko are included in VCA’s “Birds in Flight” exhibition. (Courtesy photos)