Artists displaying in First Street retail spaces

When Chenoa Urness heard that channel-side space in the Pier 7 building was available, she jumped on it.

“It was now or never,” said the Stanwood resident and former social worker for Indian Child Welfare in Snohomish County.

Then she spread the word that she was opening a store showcasing the work of indigenous creatives. “Sign me up!” was the unanimous response.

Her ocean scenes, created from resins, acrylic paints and pigment, hang on the walls of Sacred Cedar Company, which opened in July.

Besides Urness’s own art, Sacred Cedar offers soap, crystals, plants, jewelry and Tlingit blankets. Urness herself is Tlingit and Norwegian, and her aim is to support other indigenous North American artisans and entrepreneurs.

Sacred Cedar honors the tree that dominates our region. “You can’t go anywhere without seeing a cedar tree,” she said. “They are used in totem poles, long houses, ceremonies, and cleansings. It’s kind of the sage of the Pacific Northwest.”

So it’s appropriate that her new store looks directly onto the cedar Swinomish hats.

“For everything to just come together was a green light telling me to keep rolling forward,” she said. “I feel so fortunate.”

There’s plenty of color on display at Local Color, a new gallery/studio at 512 S. First Street.

After owning galleries in southern Oregon and Seattle, owner-artist Michael Eberhardt decided to move closer to his family on Lopez Island. He paints, shows and sells his own work in the two-level space he opened in March.

These are not your usual muted-palette Northwest paintings. Eberhardt is inspired by Wolf Kahn, the German-American painter whose barns and landscapes pulse with color and energy.

Previously a photorealist, Eberhardt now focuses on shapes and colors. His paintings draw on his own intuition and spontaneity, and are a form of meditation. “Da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” he said. “That is the direction I am headed in now.”

Like Eberhardt, Denise Marts opened Marts Modern in April to show her own art. The contemporary fine art gallery at 719 S. First will include other artists starting in 2022.

A painter for 30 years, she added digital technology to her tool kit in 2007. “The interface between tech and art has allowed me to extend my painting and create prints that cost much less,” she said. “I can turn a photo of my painting into a whole new piece.”

She also designs jewelry and textiles and, with her grandson, is prototyping a clothing collection using her textiles.

All of her artistic experiments can be traced back to her first medium. “My other media wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been a painter,” she said

Two of these new galleries share a connection to Cassera Galleries at 106 S. First, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in La Conner this year.

Cassera’s first storefront in town is the one that Marts now occupies. Urness’s first job in La Conner was with David Cassera.

The Cassera Gallery represents the estate of Guy Anderson and sells work by the three other “Mystic” Northwest painters, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey. Mystic Art Supply, also new to town, commemorates this quartet.

Owners Danielle Bies, who works in acrylic and ink, and Spencer Dunlap, who prefers charcoal and pencil, launched their store on Commercial Street in April. In September they moved and reopened in bigger quarters on Gilkey Square.

In the middle of everything, their son Oliver arrived in May. “It’s a whole new thing, juggling a new business and a new baby,” said Bies.

The only full-line art store in the county, Mystic stocks pro-grade and student-grade supplies in each art medium, along with coloring books and art projects for kids. As they get to know local artists, the couple hopes to invite them to offer lessons in their space.

Meanwhile, three-and-a-half-month-old Oliver is just fascinated by the colored paint rack, even though to babies his age, the world is still mostly black and white.

“He loves the sheer number of paints and the pattern they make,” said Bies.