Colorful artwork titled Turte Island with faces and people in the turtle.

First Friday Artwalk
Friday, January 5 from 5pm - 7pm
562 A Street between 4th & 5th

A group exhibit of works by Bruce Bayard, Ron Hodgdon, Peter Van Fleet, Daniel Verner, Doug Wallace and Betty LaDuke. The six artists meet weekly to discuss art issues and their creative process. This show reflects the creative diversity that can be achieved through personal and group exploration of the arts using various mediums. This small sampling of artists exhibits a wide range of styles, subject matter, and individual backgrounds.

Bruce Bayard

Bruce Bayard is an artist living and creating in southern Oregon since 1988. In addition to his visual art career, he helped establish the Ashland Public Arts Commission, produced numerous dance festivals at the Craterian Theater, performed in the Sonoluminescence multimedia group, created audio ensembles accompanying his video projections, was an in-kind sponsor of the Ashland Independent Film Festival for over 15 years in addition to creating art for 5 of their posters, and a member of the Ashland Gallery Association for 25 years. He currently works with altered photography, audio-video performances, and tagging and weatherizing N-scale model trains.

Ronald W. Hodgdon

Ron is a local Oregon artist who has continued to work in a wide variety of styles and mediums over the past 50+ years. Much of his work celebrates a sympathetic, nostalgic interpretation of the beauty found in everyday moments and personal remembrances from life. A lifetime in the wild and closely associated with nature through fishing, camping, wilderness trips, mountain hiking, canoeing, kayaking, and working in the forests, all add to the depth of his background interests and subject matter. Other parts of his work are based purely on whimsical fantasy. He has exhibited through midwest, northeast, and northwest galleries and has sold limited edition lithographs through the Harry & David - Northwest Passages catalog in past years. Ron owns and operates Creative Arts, LLC from his farm/office/home in the back hills of Talent since relocating from the mid-west in 1989.

Peter Van Fleet

Peter Van Fleet has worked as an artist in the Rogue Valley since 1994. His recent work utilizes styrene as a ground that unlike canvas can be molded, manipulated, and melted creating a three dimensional instead of a two dimensional surface. “I am inspired by the interaction between color and sculptural arrangements”… A recipient of the Rogue Gallery Biennial in 2011 and has shown at Hanson Howard Gallery for over two decades.

Daniel Verner

Daniel Verner is a self taught artist and musician with a great love for all types of artistic expression. He started painting at an early age with little resources. He enjoys a wide range of creative painting styles, and his personal style of painting can be called representational narrative, defined as an artistic image or likeness that has a story. Every aspect of Verner’s painting is a response to relationships. Not just the physical relationship of line, color, and shapes on canvas. The relationship of the interaction of what the artist saw, felt, and was able to express about his subject is also created. Another level is the relationship of the viewer to the work. It is a statement of the life energy of the person represented in the painting to the viewer. It is this sustained moment of sharing insight and response that you, the viewer, are invited to join upon entering into his paintings.

Doug Wallace

As a child, Doug Wallace always drew. Art was his favorite subject in school. After high school, he studied art at the Atlanta School of Arts before going on to study Psychology and Philosophy at Georgia State University. After leaving Georgia State, he worked briefly as Psychotherapist before the call of art drew him into the theater where he studied acting for several years and eventually ended up in Hollywood, not as an actor but as a screenwriter. After two decades of writing for the Studios, he returned to his love of art and painting. Since moving to Ashland Oregon ten years ago, Wallace’s paintings have been exhibited at the Rogue Gallery in Medford, Art du Jour in Medford, The Grants Pass Museum, Gypsy Road Gallery, and the Love Connection in Ashland. Future shows for 2024 are scheduled for the Bellhouse Gallery in Talent, and Bloomsbury Blends in Ashland.

Betty LaDuke

For more than 60 years, Betty LaDuke has traversed the globe as an artist and activist. Most recently her work features over 20 turtles that capture the personal, political, and playful messages LaDuke brings to Turtle Wisdom.