Recommended: Steffon Moody paints ‘Iconic Vashon’

Last weekend marked the opening of “Iconic Vashon,” an exhibition by painter Steffon Moody that captures the warmth and joy of a summer season on Vashon, even as it masterfully depicts a long list of island locations and landmarks.

The show, which will be on view throughout October at Vashon Center for the Arts, is a must-see for anyone who has ever claimed to love Vashon. To gaze at the 34 oil paintings on view — all remarkably created “en plein air” by Moody throughout last summer — is to fall in love all over again.

The show includes Moody’s swirling renditions of Tramp Harbor, Raab’s Lagoon, Crow Beach, and Tahlequah Beach — places of almost mythical beauty where Moody stood before his easel, bathed in light and with his sleeves rolled up to paint the long days away.

His passion for painting Vashon-Maury Island in the open air also took him to street corners and curves in the road, where, under blue skies, he lovingly depicted such treasured island businesses including the Vashon Theatre, Engels Repair & Towing, the Harbor Mercantile store, and the Masonic Temple now housing Spiceberry Home gift shop.

To see these old buildings, through Moody’s eyes, is to see them anew.

For instance, his painting of the historic Vashon Landing Building in the center of town is in part a celebration of the building’s current occupant — The Ruby Brink restaurant. But more specifically, Moody focused on painting the lush and unstoppable green ivy that has covered the building’s south wall for decades, as numerous other eateries and shops have come and gone from the space.

In a painting of the Vashon Highway’s winding path into Burton, Moody’s eye is trained not on the magnificent marina, out of sight in the painting, but rather, on one impossibly proud poplar tree that stands at the curve of the road, reaching up to the sky. It seems to have been there forever.

Placards accompanying each painting share local lore Moody gleaned from showing the paintings to island historians Bruce Haulman and Brian Brenno before the show. There is plenty to learn, or just remember, from reading those placards.

Moody’s own memories and deeper sense of himself as a longtime islander are embedded in these descriptions, too.

Of the Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie building, he writes, “… I will always know it as Stewart Brothers Coffee. The patina of decades of aromatic blends has seasoned the interior. And there is often a choice group of geezers gathered by the windows near the entry. I think I now qualify for inclusion.”

Moody’s show accepts and even applauds the passage of time, and how the purpose of old buildings has been re-imagined over time — allowing us to reflect, perhaps, on how our own lives have also been re-invented through the years.

But one entire wall of VCA’s gallery, where a canvas mural hangs, reminds us of something that is now gone: McFeeds Pet Store, which long occupied a building dating back to the 1920s that stood on the northwest corner of Vashon Highway and Cemetery Road.

Months before the building was torn down to make room for the construction of Vashon Center for the Arts’ new building, Moody painted a mural on the side of McFeeds, showing two massive crows facing off like Roman centurions to do battle over the remnants of a Baby Ruth candy bar on the ground.

For the exhibit, Moody remarkably re-created that mural in a stunning 10-hour feat of painting, placing it back — temporarily at least — in almost the same location it once stood.

Time changes everything, and nothing, Moody seems to tell us in this show.

Go to the exhibit, and you’ll find a favorite, I promise.

For me, it was Moody’s painting of a short line of cars, lined up on Vashon Highway just south of the North End ferry dock, with a vista of mountains, sky and water before them.

It stunned me, as I realized how many times I have sat in my car and glanced at that precise view but missed its beauty as I fumed about a late ferry, fiddled with my phone, or fretted about whatever task I had to accomplish that day in Seattle.

If I had just looked up, and forgotten myself for even a minute, I would have seen it.

The painting reminded me of a scene in Thornton Wilder’s beloved play “Our Town” — which like Moody’s exhibition is also a deeply moving examination of small-town life — that always makes me burst into tears.

It’s when Emily, a character who has died, returns to earth to relive one ordinary day of her childhood and marvels at what she never fully appreciated before.

Overcome with emotion, she asks to go back to her grave, saying to the play’s Stage Manager: “Goodbye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?”

The Stage Manager replies to her: “No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.”

Thornton Wilder said something there, right? And Steffon Moody just painted something, right here. Don’t miss the show and the chance to see the entire remarkable body of work.

Find out more at gallery.vashoncenterforthearts.org.

Artist’s Talk

Since moving to Vashon in 1988, Steffon Moody has cut a wide and colorful swath through the community’s cultural scene.

He co-founded UMO Ensemble, directed the Islewilde Festival, participated in the island’s pottery tour, and performed with giant puppets with the Vashon-based Zambini Brothers.

He’s emceed galas, hosted and performed in comedy shows, directed a play for Drama Dock, and twice produced a memorable festival-like event called Swampbottom Jamboree.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Moody contributed almost 50 editorial cartoons to The Beachcomber — and wound up being awarded first and second place awards for two of them in a statewide journalism contest.

But now, Moody is circling back to his beginnings as a visual artist, at the age of 16, working as a theatrical set painter at the Muny Opera in St. Louis. He’ll discuss his memories of that time, and how his earliest mentors at the Muny Opera imparted a lifetime’s worth of lessons to him, during a free artist’s talk at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, at Vashon Center for the Arts.