Wesley Art Gallery - News & Updates

MARCH 2008

It will be five years since U.S. and Allied forces entered into Iraq with hopes to establish an appropriate government there. The price we have been paying for this endeavor is the most extreme of all, over 3,990 [03/17/08] brave young lives and counting. Join Don Wesley as he presents the entire series of his memorial canvases depicting a bird for each U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. There are now five canvases in all; the latest still in progress. For more information about this series visit the U.S. Iraq Soldier Memorial.

Saturday Mar 22, 1-5pm

1:00 - Gallery opens.
2:00 - Unveiling of Promised Counting and a silent reflection for our brave young soldiers lost, survived, and still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
2:30 - Don shares how this series of paintings and the interactions that have come with it have influenced the way he looks at his art and at contemporary war.
3:00 - Guest Speaker.
4:00 - Don will ceremoniously paint the first birds on next year's canvas titled Quiet Counting.
5:00 - Gallery closes.

We would like to sincerely thank our newest and continuing collectors for their support...

Karen & George Wiggins: Guineafowl by Don Wesley
Karen & George Wiggins: Starling Pact by Don Wesley
Martha & Ken Alexander: Chico by Don wesley
Joyce Merkel: Starling Glance by Don Wesley
Sandy Schaut: Kitties by Don Wesley

I would like to send out a special thank you to Elizabeth Theriault for her tireless help in preparing for the March show. Without her help this show would only be half of what it is. I love you.

I also want to thank Doug Kinney for the multi-media addition to the space. Maybe we should change our name to the iGallery ; )

And many continued thanks to Derek Nobbs, Jessica McCourt, Doug Kinney, Steve Preist, Dianne Gardner, Mary Doyle, Al Mulkey, Patrick Romnaigh-Cooper, Steven Reddy and Amy Weber for their continued interest in sharing their work with us all. Cheers to you all!

With deep regret we must announce that at the end or March, we will closing our doors for good in Bremerton. It's been a good run and we thank the community for keeping us aloft as long as they could. However, all flights must have a safe landing.

Elizabeth, Myself and the participating artists are proud of what we have accomplished at the Wesley Art Gallery and hope you are proud too. Collectively, we injected some much needed funk and soul into the Kitsap County art scene and we are very proud of that.

In our 18 months of service, we had over 3000 people come through our doors. Not bad for being off the beaten path. And, we had 20 artists sell over $25,000 in artwork to over 100 different collectors over the course of 18 shows!!!

Some one asked me the other day, "If you had it all to do over again what would you change?" I answered, "not a thing." I'm glad we did what we did, how we did it and for the amount of time we did it.

Elizabeth and I learned a ton of things about people. We will carry this experience with us for the rest of our lives. Via our constant interaction with the public we achieved the equivalent of a masters degree in public exposure and communication. Some of those interactions were even about art ; )

There were many times though, that the red sofa was mistaken for a counceling couch. We had one woman come in three different times, sit down on the sofa, and proceed to tell us about her problems. I don't even think she noticed what our business was about. We had a woman come in trying to sell us her body for "art modeling". We had numerous people offer to sell us drugs or stolen goods. We even had some putz shooting plastic pellets at our customers during an opening. All this in the town that birthed Quincy Jones. I luckily kept a journal about the experience and it's some of the craziest stuff I've ever written. You know what they say... the truth is always stranger than fiction.

Thank you Bremerton, and we'll see you around I'm sure.

Oh.. and in April we will be having the obligatory going out of business sale. The red leather sofa is up for sale. And I'll have many of my works available as well. Existing collectors will receive first dibs on select paintings. I'll be sending out a notice with more details as the time draws closer.

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