On Saturday, April 15, artists, salmon advocates and community members will gather for a reception to celebrate the closing of “Honor: People & Salmon,” an art exhibition exploring the gift of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
The exhibit has been on view at the Kittredge Gallery, at the University of Puget Sound, since March 6; the closing reception will place at the gallery from 5 to 7 p.m. on April 15, at 1500 N. Warner St. Ste. 1072, in Tacoma.
The exhibit has notable several ties to Vashon.
It includes work by members of Northwest Artists Against Extinction, which is a project of Save Our wild Salmon Coalition. Islander Joseph Bogaard helms Save Our wild Salmon; local artist Britt Freda leads the artists’ group and is the curator of the exhibition.
Additionally, multiple island artists are part of Northwest Artists Against Extinction, including Israel Shotridge, Tom Gross, Gabrielle Abbott, Odin Lonning, and Annie Brule.
Since last year, Save Our wild Salmon Coalition and the group of artists have partnered with a set of Northwest artists to reach, educate and mobilize people on behalf of salmon, orca, justice and communities.
Work by Northwest Artists Against Extinction artists, for example, has been integrated into Save Our wild Salmon Coalition campaign materials — fact sheets, postcards, t-shirts, billboards in Portland and Spokane, posters and more.
“Honor: People and Salmon” is the first exhibition of the partnership, featuring the work of 30 artists. They include Shotridge, Tom Gross, Josh Udesen, Rachel Teannalach, Amy Gulick, Karen Hackenberg, Jen McLuen, Sue Coccia, Melissa Cole, and Austin Picinich, among others.
Visit the exhibition website, at tinyurl.com/35a28btw, for the full list of participating artists and more information.
The exhibit’s April 15 closing reception will be a grand finale, with many of the participating artists in attendance. The event’s honored guest will be Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest, who is a Lummi Tribe member.
Joined by other poets, she will host a reading from the newly released anthology, “I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State,” which she edited.
The anthology, published by Empty Bowl, a renowned independent press founded in 1976, includes works by Vashon poets Ann Spiers, Linera Lucas and Kathryn True. To find out more about the book, visit tinyurl.com/mts3jrep.
This reception is free and open to the public.
To find out more about Save Our wild Salmon and Northwest Artists Against Extinction, visit nwaae.org and wildsalmon.org.
Correction: In both the April 13 print edition of the Beachcomber and an earlier online edition, this article omitted the name of Linera Lucas, a Vashon poet whose work is also included in the anthology, “I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State. We strive for accuracy and regret the error.
