The Jefferson Agrarian

Kim Presley and the folks at Liberty Arts in Yreka are continuing to offer artists and art lovers interesting shows in their gallery in Yreka with “Inside Out,” an exhibition of works by area artists Finley Fryer and William Wareham. “Inside Out” opens with a reception for the artists at Liberty Arts this Friday, September 12, from 5:30-8pm, and will run through October 4th.

Finley Fryer, who works in both painting and sculpture media, will be showing recent oil-painted canvases of landscapes and close-up views of intense brushworks. Fryer received his BFA from University of Davis in the mid-seventies. At the time, there were many voices that urged him to go on to graduate school. Instead, he took a job as an itinerant stained glass repairman, traveling the west coast restoring church windows. He started to put the broken fragments of glass back together, the first of the assemblage windows that would become a persistent theme in his work. Since 1998, Fryer has become internationally known for the monumental creations he has installed at Burning Man. His use of recycled materials has pushed these creations to the “edge of the wild side”, where visual surprise is the only absolute.

William Wareham, who has recently relocated to Jeffersonia, will be exhibiting his dynamic painted steel sculptures. Wareham has had a long and active professional art career, with a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in the sixties and both an MA and MFA from Cal Berkeley by the early seventies. He has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; in 1999 was awarded the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship as artist-in-residence at Djerassi; and exhibited nationally over his long career. Interestingly, Wareham has worked with sculptor Mark di Suvero and the late pioneer ceramicist/sculptor Peter Voulkos, and was museum preparator at SFMOMA in the early seventies, assisting Georgia O’Keefe with her retrospective there.

This exhibit promises to be a great one – mark the date and get to the opening!

Where: Liberty Arts, 108 W. Miner St., Yreka, CA. Gallery hours are Wed thru Sat, 10am-5pm.

When: September 10-October 4th, reception for the artists Friday, September 12, 5:30-8pm.