Josephy Center Hosts: En Plein Air Painting Competition

The Josephy Center for Arts and Culture will host a Plein Air painting  competition and exhibit September 14-18 as part of the Wallowa Valley Festival of Arts. A reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibit will be held on September 15 from 6-8 pm.

“We’re really excited to host this event as part of the Arts Festival,” said the Center’s Director, Cheryl Coughlan, “It gives us the opportunity to celebrate a unique method of painting. En Plein Air is a French term for painting outdoors in the open air and Wallowa County is a great place for that, especially this time of year.”  Approximately twelve En Plein Air artists (Michael Koloski, Kirk Skovlin, Malcolm Phinney, Sam Collett, Leslie LeViner, Teresa Malec, Kathy Bowman, and other out of town artists) will bring their paintings that they’ve created over the last two days to the Josephy Center (403 N. Main St.) at 3 p.m. for the “Quick Finish”, framing and hanging of their pieces. The “Quick Finish” kicks off the Joseph Art Walk. Visitors can peruse all the Joseph galleries and enter the drawing for five raffle tickets for Tom Clevenger’s beautiful wood-segmented vase at each gallery. “The Gallery Walk is something we’ve been working towards for awhile,” Coughlan said, “I think this event will be the perfect opener for those seeking artistic interpretation of our landscape that includes all of Joseph’s art galleries.”

This year marks the 34th year of the Wallowa Valley Festival for the Arts. The festival will feature wood artist Tom Clevenger and raffle drawing for his piece and give attendees the opportunity to see plenty of fine art and interaction with artists in the area. More information can be found at www.wallowavalleyarts.org/arts-festival.