This week’s collection of arts and culture happenings puts the spotlight on area artists and galleries. More options are in the calendar at inland360.com/events.
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Montana-based artist Gareth Curtiss, commissioned by the University of Idaho to create a bronze sculpture of the school’s Joe Vandal mascot, is sculpting a clay model of the piece this week on the Moscow campus.
Curtiss’ work continues from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday in the Idaho Student Union Building Rotunda, 875 Perimeter Drive, and he’ll give a lecture, “The Art of Creating Bronze Sculpture,” from 6-7 p.m. today in the Teaching and Learning Center, in the same building.
Students, staff, alumni and community members can offer input while Curtiss works “to help ensure the scale model reflects the image and spirit of Joe Vandal, U of I’s mascot since 1956,” according to a UI news release.
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A free artist talk by Lewis-Clark State College faculty member and filmmaker Jennifer Anderson is from 5:30-7 p.m. Friday at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, 415 Main St., Lewiston.
Anderson will speak about the pop-up film exhibit “#monalisa,” on display at the center through Feb. 15, which she directed with fellow filmmaker Vernon Lott.
The exhibit encourages viewers to contemplate how people consume art, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Mona Lisa” painting, and the film, shot with a GoPro camera, “is an interrogation of the relationship between art and technology,” Anderson said.
The center’s gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.
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Art lovers can choose from pieces by more than 30 regional artists while supporting Clarkston’s Valley Art Center during the gallery’s annual Heart for Art fundraiser show, which opens with a reception from 4-7 p.m. Friday at 842 Sixth St.
More than 300 original 5-by-7-inch unframed paintings will be for sale for $40 each during the show, which continues through the end of the month. Julie Hartwig from Artisans at the Dahmen Barn will be at the reception with frames for purchase, and chocolates and beverages will be served.
Valley Art Center hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
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Lewiston photographer Ken Bonner, joined by his wife and assistant Teresa, will be on hand for a reception from 5-8 p.m. Friday at Lucidity Photography Gallery & Gift in Newberry Square, 800 Main St., Lewiston.
“The Photography of Ken Bonner” continues at Lucidity Photography through March 6.
Bonner, originally from Orofino, worked for 30 years as a logger around the Pacific Northwest and Alaska and for eight years at the Idaho Correctional Institution in Orofino, where he took inmate work crews out on various jobs and wildland fires, according to a Lucidity Photography news release. He retired in 2011 and later took up landscape and wildlife photography, starting with a cellphone attached to a spotting scope and eventually adding a camera.
His work has been featured at area shows and in the Lewiston Tribune (bit.ly/kenbonnertrib).
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University of Idaho researcher Sydney Freeman Jr. will discuss the past, present and future of Black people in Latah County at 6 p.m. Tuesday during a free Zoom presentation titled “Black to the Future: Remembering That the Moral Arc of History is On Our Side.”
Freeman’s talk will be followed by a moderated discussion with Latah County Historical Society Executive Director Hayley Noble.
Registration is at latahcountyhistoricalsociety.org/events.
— Inland 360
