Now What!?! Opens July 8th at The Dalles Art Center

A sneak peak of the new Now What!?! art exhibit at The Dalles Art Center.

The Dalles Art Center will unveil a new art exhibit, Now What!?! on July 8th from 5 PM to 7 PM at The Dalles Art Center.

The focus of the show is on artwork that was made during the pandemic. The artists call asked artists to enter work that represents what they had been synthesizing this past year, what has shifted for them, and what they’ve learned as artists during the past year. 

Now What!?! features at least forty local artists' work, including photography from Joy Reyeneke, textile art from Silver Fox, ink art from Kris V, beadwork from Judy Larson, resin art from Gary Efferding, a metal art from Macrae Wylde and Bob Gibbs, oil paintings from Dennis Williams, acrylic paintings from Penny Wallace, Marcella Waggoner, Avery Waggoner, Lawrence Waggoner, Adina Call, and Alan Tomaszewski, and calligraphy from Lucas Waggoner.

“Now!?! is an extension of an exhibit we did last year called Made in Confusion. It was a call for artist to just explain work that was happening for them during the COVID pandemic,” said J. Scott Stephenson, Executive Director of The Dalles Art Center. “We’ve had this year and a half of confusion and this exhibit is just to feature a lot of these different experiences.”

“This is a really fun and loose exhibit because you start to find themes and different points of engagement. During the pandemic people were spending more time at home with their families. And we had a whole family submit pieces together.” said Stephenson.

“A lot of artists were using the pandemic shut-down time to try different techniques and subject matters as well and that shows up in the exhibit. Judy Larsen found a new medium of using beads as painting. Joy Reyenke submitted LGBT portraits she created during the pandemic. One artist did a sculpture that uses the Amanda Gorman poem which was delivered at the Presidential inauguration,“ said Stephenson.