Washougal artists open doors for inaugural tour

WASHOUGAL — Mixed-media metal artist Angela Ridgway looks down from her high-altitude hillside and sees a real arts town. All it needs to highlight its creative charms is organization, she said.

“When I went looking, artists started popping up everywhere,” she said. “I felt like Washougal artists needed their own opportunity to showcase their talents.”

Ridgway took on the job. The former industrial engineer and project manager for Hewlett-Packard in Sacramento, Calif., likes plans and processes, she said. Pulling together a group of local artists willing to open their private studio doors and show off their working secrets May 12 and 13 was a rewarding challenge, she said; there’s been no shortage of enthusiasm from Washougal artists eager to get noticed and make some sales.

Ridgway is one of them. A decade after she started showing and selling her distinctive welded creations, Ridgway still sounds shocked by her own artistic success. When she started out welding, she said, she had no idea where it would lead; she simply felt drawn to molten metal. But as far as engaging her “artistic side,” she said, “I didn’t know I had one. I had no artistic background. I just wanted to learn to weld.

“Dad was a welder. I guess it’s in my genes,” she said.

Trees, metal, people

She signed up for what turned out to be an ideally open-ended welding course, she said, with lots of time for her first attempts at art: welded-metal oak trees. She made just three of them before being invited into an art exhibit about trees, where she made her first sale.

“I was amazed,” she said a decade later, still obviously amazed. “After that, everywhere I looked, I saw things to put into my art.” Unexpectedly, an artist was born.

When her husband accepted a Hewlett-Packard job transfer to Clark County, it was Ridgway’s opportunity to devote herself to art full time. Nowadays she rents  storage and welding space from Cobalt Designworks in downtown Vancouver; she adds finishing touches in her big garage on this east Washougal ridge.

Several of the artists have doubled up, making this a self-guided tour of 10 different studio sites. We’ve reproduced the Washougal Studio Artists Tour map on this page; you can also visit washougalstudioartists.org for complete information about each artist and views of their works.

“It’s no wonder this area attracts such talented artists, with so much natural beauty around us,” said Ridgway. “It will also be a great way for tour visitors to discover some of that beauty in Washougal.” You might want to save the date of Aug. 11, for the third annual downtown Washougal Art Festival, when many local artists converge on Reflection Plaza.

The Open Studios tour sponsored every autumn by Arts of Clark County strives to cover the whole county evenly, while limiting itself to 50 artists; Ridgway said the result is that Washougal artists can never get much of a foothold in that tour. It also means it’s just about impossible to visit them all. But visiting 10 Washougal art studios in a day or two shouldn’t be hard. If you follow the tour stops in order, you’ll start on the west side of town, move through downtown and up the Washougal River, then descend on the east side again. Nearly all the stops are wheelchair-accessible.

“Mother’s Day weekend is a great weekend for a studio tour,” said Ridgway, who saw it happen in Sacramento. “It’s a great way to spend time with your mother. And maybe she’ll find something she loves.”