WENATCHEE FIRST FRIDAYS GETS A MAKEOVER

improve accessibility for art venues, artists, and businesses. With that in place, we set to work.

I am so pleased to now be able to announce that along with insane amounts of support from our other amazing partners The Comet Magazine, P2X Design and Jill Carter Design, we have an official Wenatchee First Fridays website (for easy communication and participation), a brand new logo, and if you turn to pages 4 and 5, you can check out the newly designed map, complete with QR code for accessing an online version.

FOOD FOR (ARTISTIC) THOUGHT

The Grunewald Guild, the Plain retreat center that’s been home away from home for scores of visiting artists since 1980, is seeking a cook to fuel all that intense creativity. The one-year position of Kitchen Lead starts in mid-July. Work from April through October averages 35-40 hours per week and from November through March, 20-30 hours per week (with additional paid tasks available).

The Guild website says: “The ideal applicant will have experience in food service,

Artists Get A Boost

BY MEG KAPPLER NCW ARTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

One of my favorite things in the world is collaborative creation. I loved any group project in school (yes, I was THAT kid), and it was for two main reasons. First, the process of launching an idea to pinball around through different minds and perspectives is just really fun, and second, there was always an element of surprise because there was no way of knowing where the thing was going to end up or whether there would be a fistfight somewhere along the way. (So exciting!)

To my delight, for the past several months, NCW Arts has been working on a group project to re-brand and improve the Wenatchee First Fridays experience, and we have had incredible partners with us at the table. Alongside the Wenatchee Downtown Association and Visit Wenatchee, we set some guiding principles: 1) to streamline and simplify communication, and 2) to

ON THE COVER:

“Venn Dissolve” — 34”x34” oil on canvas, by Wenatchee oil painter Lindsay Breidenthal. The artist will exhibit several recent works at the Pybus Art Alley,

On the new website, we also now have a Presenter’s Toolkit, which will give businesses and artists helpful tips for planning and marketing a successful First Friday Arts Walk event.

This is just the beginning, folks! The hope is that with these tools, we can pump up the volume on our Wenatchee First Fridays, showcasing even more local creative talent in all its forms and celebrating our local businesses. I am very happy to conclude by saying that fistfights did not occur, and they were not at all necessary for me to be super excited about what’s to come.

Check it out! wenatcheefirstfridays.com particularly in a retreat context. Applicants with demonstrable knowledge and experience with food preparation, presentation, safety, sanitation and management are preferred.”

The Artist Trust is extending its COVID-19 relief program into a new grant opportunity, Endurance Grants (END), to help artists with continued emergency support for their financial needs.

The Artist Trust is a nonprofit organization recognized as a national model for direct funding and professional development and has invested over $15 million in individual working artists since 1986.

Basic pay is augmented by a variety of benefits: paid time off and vacation hours, housing, meals and a free Gruenwald Guild course per year.

Find out more at director@grunewaldguild.com

The goal of END is to provide 40 unrestricted need-based grants of $2,500 to artists working in literary arts, media arts, performing arts and visual arts across Washington State. This grant will fund artists who identify with one or more of the following communities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and/or Native, LGBTQIA+.

For Endurance Grant details go to artisttrust.org. Applications due July 17.

Scholarship Opportunity For Local Teens

A $2,000 scholarship is available to any 12- to 18-year-old filmmaker or songwriter from Chelan, Grant, Douglas and Okanogan counties. This scholarship will help one teen from our region attend the 2023 Prodigy Camp, held currently at Icicle Creek Center for the Arts (July 30-August 6).

music. The program offers a one-week intensive workshop with year-round mentoring designed for 20 promising young storytellers from around the world.

Campers will study the fundamentals of their art, with professional instruction to help them develop new scripts and songs.

To see examples of films and find out more about this extraordinary opportunity, visit prodigycamp.org/yodel all showing her sensibility, sensuous style and strong perspectives. Meet Lindsay at Pybus Public Market, 3 North Worthen Street, Wenatchee, on First Friday Arts Walk, July 7, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. (see related story on next page).

Prodigy Camp was established in 2006 with the intention of identifying and developing the gifts and character of tomorrow’s cultural influencers in film and

Applications are due July 10th via prodigycamp.org/apply.

QUIZ: R.U. ART SMART?

Who are these local artists? Initials are given, see answers on page 6.

1. (M.P.) An illustrator and muralist, his and his WVC students’ colorful and bigger-than-life creations are enjoyed on many Wenatchee walls.

2. (K.K.) She founded the regional Write On The River organization in 2005 and is a much-published author of, in singles and series, speculative fiction novels.

3. (J.T.) He’s a painter himself, and his strong vision of a cooperative community of artists flourishes in the recently remodeled Two Rivers Gallery.

4. (M.F.) Her bold paintings, done in strong, sweeping primary colors, are full of movement and often give a face and voice to Latina women.

5. (R.A.) A nonagenarian college art teacher and working potter, she exhibits her dramatic ceramic pieces both locally and internationally.

6. (R.W.) Formerly a New York painter, he jumped into the local art scene and, in his last years living here, wowed Wenatchee with his big expressionistic canvases.

“The Spoils”

Wenatchee art watchers familiar with the paintings of Lindsay Breidenthal may know her poses, her signature golds, greens and corals and mélange of symbolic images. They also know she’s fearless about changing artistic direction. These days, she says, “I’ve been designing and using patterns more often and incorporating those into the paintings. Also, creating a series around a particular theme is interesting to me.”

A serendipitous thrift store find has resulted in works with a related focus, the Blue Dress series, started in 2019. She said, “I found this stiff, polyester uniform... and liked it for the structure and color... This dress is representative of what is generally seen as women’s work and the idea of a second shift — invisible, unpaid labor.”

Another major theme in Lindsay’s works stems from her study of natural sciences.

Her twin majors at Central Washington University were in biology and art, and her years in the field with the U.S. Forest Service helped her to see the inseparable link between humans and nature. “I’m fascinated by the systems and intelligence in the natural world. It’s observable, tactile... We humans are the natural world; we can see ourselves in things like group behavior and life cycles.”

Lindsay Breidenthal’s studio (her fourth in ten years) is in the big vintage home downtown she shares with her husband and young son. It’s a light and airy glassedin porch, but it’s small — and right in the middle of life at the house. In a perfect art world, she said, “Top of the list would be a big studio with lots of natural light — close to home but not IN the house.”

Despite space limitations, she’s a full-time artist (her last day job was four years ago).

“The Vessel”

She shows paintings throughout the region and takes time out from creating her big canvases doing murals, design work, windows and portraits and occasionally teaching art and nature journaling.

Lindsay mulled over the terms she’s seen on grant applications, and at 47 calls herself a “mid-career” artist, as opposed to “emerging” or “established.” She cites her very satisfying one-woman show at Wenatchee Valley College’s MAC Gallery in 2017 as a major turn in the right direction. She’d like to continue making murals but will also write proposals for gallery shows beyond the region.

Here’s a dare-to-dream scenario Lindsay shared: “I love painting the body, so I would hire a whole team for a collaborative extravaganza: photographers to take reference photos, theatrical models to don costumes and become characters, and me- ticulous woodworkers to build my surfaces and frames!”

As a board member of NCW Arts Alliance, Lindsay is a true believer in the common goals of artists. “I think the creative community here is supportive of each other. The Arts Alliance is responding to a strong, collective need to connect and share knowledge and skills,” she said. “The biggest challenge for artists is the same timeless demon that’s always been there — self-doubt. And art finds a way around everything else … but affordable studio spaces would certainly help!”

You can meet Lindsay and see her latest artwork (including that in our cover photo) at Pybus Public Market Art Alley, 3 North Worthen Street, Wenatchee, during the First Fridays Arts Walk, 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, July 7.