The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WALLA WALLA—Cavu Cellars presents the work of five Eastern Oregon artists. Janni Kerns, Sarah Fry, Alicia Andrews, Sarah Greenman, and Mary Davies Kerns.

Janni Kerns creates graphite drawings and watercolor paintings

She portrays animals and people in a spare style that captures the essence of her subject matter.

“When I create, I am experimenting, making discoveries, and testing my understanding of the world around me. I often start with photographs of a subject and then explore it in depth via multiple sketches and drawings. These drawings free me to complete works that are pared to the essential.”

Sarah Fry creates landscape paintings to communicate her ideas of place, home, and familiarity. This Western land, as powerful and dominant as it is, is constantly changing.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Fry often mutters as she squints at the summer storm clouds backlit by the evening sun.

Alicia Andrews creates paintings that seem only to be a collection of divergent objects pleasingly arranged, but they tell a story. Each unique creation contains pieces of her everyday life connected by a narrative in her head. Her whimsical take on ordinary objects and her surroundings will be a great addition to the show’s body of work.

Sarah Greenman says that her work is deeply informed by place, nature, and the seasons, woven into her paintings, poems, plays, and multilayered creative offerings.

Her paintings in the show are from a series called “Startling Truth.” The title comes from Maya Angelou’s seminal poem “A Brave and Startling Truth.” This selection of work is a form of active prayer and also an expression of profound appreciation for the most foundational fact of human existence: that we are made of star-stuff.”

Mary Davies Kerns is a painter. Expansive vistas of the high desert in southeast Oregon, where she lives, dominates her subject matter. A full-time rancher, Kerns includes cattle, horses, working dogs, range sheep, and ranchers in her paintings. In preparation for this show at Cavu Cellars, Kerns traveled to the Walla Walla area and was mesmerized by the rolling cropland. Her works are trimmed down, simplified to essential expressions of farmed land and the geographic borders we must workaround.

Cavu Cellars is open 11-5 daily and located at 175 E. Aeronca Avenue, Walla Walla, Wash.

Please come and meet the artists Saturday, June 5, from 3 to 5 p.m., open to the public.