Clark County Open Studios tour features 50 artists

HOCKINSON — Not long after Kathleene Kavanagh first got sloppy with the fine art known as finger painting, a niece seized her wet, wild canvas and dragged it through the grass. “I’m making it better,” the little girl told the adult artist.

No problem for Kavanagh, whose journey from Texas kid to globe-trotting missionary to self-taught artist in the east Clark County hills has been unpredictable and humbling.

“I do what speaks to me. I’m not perfect,” said Kavanagh. She calls this splattery style of fast-moving, tube-squishing, canvas-rotating painting Tov, a Hebrew word with expansive, overlapping definitions. Tov means “good,” and/or “improving,” and/or “working the way it’s supposed to.”

All of those definitions fit Kavanagh and her artworks, which you can see under construction during this weekend’s Clark County Open Studios tour. Her fast-flowing finger painting is fascinating to watch, but you might prefer a finer, fragrant, bookish aesthetic from the same hands: leather journals, filled with top-quality paper and stitched with waxed linen. “It’s truly an artisanal labor of love from one journaler to another,” is Kavanagh’s motto. Every one of her creations is different, she said.

Artists in residence

This is the sixth year that umbrella organization Arts of Clark County has enlisted independent jurors (two Portland artist/educators and one Astoria, Ore., gallery owner, this time) to pare down applications from local artists to the top 50, and designed a weekend outing that aims to welcome everyone to their studios and see their techniques in action.

You can spend as little or as long as you like taking the self-guided tour, which Arts of Clark County has mapped in detail and divided into north, west and east county areas. Use the map with this story, or pick up an Open Studios booklet at a participating business, or go to www.ccopenstudios.org to preview the locations and peruse different artists’ creations and styles — so you can make educated decisions about which ones interest you. (Or, visit downtown Vancouver’s CAVE gallery Nov. 2 to meet the artists and sample their works, all in one place, with some Trusty Brewing libations to boot.)

This year’s tour features the usual amazing variety of artistic media: sculpture, ceramics, painting, print-making, photography, drawing, metalwork and glasswork, fiber art and mosaics, woodwork and leatherwork. And, you’ll find, while some work in professional studios, most have carved creative spaces out of garages, outbuildings, attics or other humble home settings.

Kavanagh’s home is humble indeed. She left Colorado for Clark County not long ago, she said, and eventually accepted an invitation to erect a Sibley tent on the rural acreage of her friend Lindsay Holt. She’ll spend the winter here as Holt’s artist in residence, she said. (It’s not much of a challenge for someone who’s wintered in Nepal, she added.)

Her artworks get done a few yards away in Holt’s converted barn, which has been transformed into a fledgling community studio and gathering space called, appropriately enough, Gather At The Studio (www.gatheratthestudio.com). Holt said she looks forward to showing off the “baby space” during this weekend’s tour.

Faster and faster

Miles south of Kavanagh’s rural retreat, Camas painter and illustrator Paul Solevad creates explosively colorful commentaries on the quickening pace of modern life. A poster on the wall of his suburban garage studio barely contains cheerful urban chaos in cyan, magenta, yellow and black: people, buildings, cars, gadgets, all topped by a smiley face and titled as the America we all like to think we live in now: “Sooperdooperville.”

“It’s all expanding faster and faster, the products, the waste, the constant entertainment,” Solevad said. To evoke all that, he said, he layers image over image — adding and then covering up, “destroying and then pulling out again.” He calls the resulting blasts of color and dizzying detail “cartoon expression,” and acknowledges his debt to earlier surreal or expressionist painters and poster artists like Philip Guston, Keith Haring and Shepard Fairey, creator of the Obama “Hope” poster, among other viral images.

Solevad wouldn’t mind seeing his images go viral too, he said, he’s just as at home with the internet and Photoshop as he is with paintbrushes and pencils. “I keep with the times,” he said. “We have the ability to connect with people all around the world now. Imagine what Picasso would have done in these times.”

Solevad, who grew up in California, works a day job doing color matching for a painting company. Kavanagh works overnight as a baker. Both come home from work and get to work on creative projects, every day without fail, they said. “You just keep doing it because it’s what you love to do,” Solevad said. “It’s what comes out of you as a person.”

Both artists, and 48 more, are looking forward to meeting you during the Open Studios tour.

“It really helps me connect” with art lovers and other artists too,” said Solevad. “You never know who you’re going to meet.”