Art at Dunham Days

WALLA WALLA-Dunham Cellars kicked off their tenth annual Dunham Days Celebration this past weekend including live music, new wine offerings and local artisans.

Among them, Waitsburg Cottages owner, and Waitsburg Planning Commission chair Karen Stanton-Gregutt debuted new works with familiar subjects.

"This work is all about the children and the secrets they tell their imaginary friends," says Stanton-Gregutt.

In her larger pieces, children are set amidst overgrown flowers and bees, or in wheat fields with bunnies. Each vignette combines detailed botanical drawings juxtaposed against the loosely sketched renderings of small children.

Because the works themselves are at such a large scale, the children depicted become even larger than life; dramatized.

Stanton-Gregutt worked as a filmmaker for over thirty years and that experience lends the notion that there is more to see.

"I tend to come from the world of storyboards," explains Stanton-Gregutt. In this way, this singular, still image is just one frame of a longer story.

"Capturing frame-by-frame the turning of light, gesture and sound reveals emotions that flicker and bloom from moment to moment. Now building further upon these underlying filmmaking skills, I am directing my vision into the work shown here," shares Stanton-Gregutt.

Also on display are some smaller encaustic works. Encaustic typically refers to art decorated by any process involving burning in colors, especially by inlaying colored clays then baking or by fusing wax colours to the surface.

In her Tattered series, Stanton-Gregutt works unconventionally with wax. Not necessarily using the encaustic process to lay in color, rather as a coating which distances the viewer from the subjects, obscuring and muting them slightly, sealing them away in their pictographic universe. The Tattered series also features recurring imagery of a moth sometimes as big as the horizon, sometimes even larger.

The collection is rounded out by the Day Lilies. Once again, the pairing of human figures alongside botanical drawings is very classic, but these differ in background. This time the background is implied by the figures' vintage swimwear and bathing caps. Sometimes standing, other times partially underwater with their reflections rippling indefinitely in graphite pools.

These works would be at home anywhere. They could be appreciated individually, or as a set. Stanton-Gregutt admirers and collectors populated the well-attended event throughout the weekend.