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Visual Arts
 LaConner’s Skagit Valley setting was a magnet for artists starting around the 1930’s. Skagit-born Richard Gilkey, who lived most of his creative life on nearby Fir Island, described it eloquently for a 1982 exhibition of Northwest artists at Osaka’s National Museum of Art.
“The landscape in which I work is a rural agricultural river delta, rich with sloughs, marshes, and farmland. Immediately to the East rise the Cascade Mountains, deeply forested and laced with waterfalls, which flow from snow-covered peaks to rivers running seaward. The nearby rocky, islanded coastline sustains ancient firs, wind-torn, gnarled, and dwarfed, bonsai in nature. Mosses and lichens soften the weathered stones while mists and rain shroud the grayed landscape a large part of the year. It is a landscape much like Japan” (Ament).
In 1937, Painter Morris Graves came to town, found a burned out house on the hill, moved in, and invited another young artist, Guy Anderson (1906-1998), to share it. They carted in beach sand to cover the floor and crafted furniture from driftwood.
Graves’ long life was lived all over the world—in LaConner only briefly—but he built a house and Japanese garden nearby on a nearly inaccessible, precipitous hilltop on Fidalgo Island that he called “The Rock.” Over time this is where he did some of his most important painting. After Graves had broken the ice, other artists such as painters Anderson, Mark Tobey (1890-1976), Ken Callahan (l906-1986); sculptor/painters Clayton James, wife Barbara, and others came to LaConner and environs. Anderson moved to town permanently in 1959 and painted there until his death. Graves inspired locals like Richard Gilkey (1925-1997) and Anacortes sculptor Phillip McCracken to return to the Skagit (Ament).
In 1953, Life magazine, a hugely popular magazine not known for chronicling art, much less the godforsaken Pacific Northwest, featured Graves, Tobey, Callahan, and Anderson in a four-color spread dubbing them the “Mystic Painters of the Northwest” and their work, the “Northwest School.” It was the first flicker of recognition of artists from the West by the East Coast art establishment and suddenly they were acclaimed internationally.
It was more than the physical beauty that pulled a new generation of artists and bohemians to LaConner. Novelist Tom Robbins, and painters like Charlie Krafft, Bill Slater, Paul Hansen, and others arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. Locals, by then, had a name for such folk: hippies. LaConnerites had grown accustomed to perplexing eccentrics in their tiny town and had, in the meantime, been producing a few homegrown ones. (By Michael Hood historylink.org)
Explore this rich heritage of art with a walk along scenic First Street in La Conner and view sculptures by nationally and internationally known artists. Experience the “Spirit Wheel” by Kevin Paul, a master carver of contemporary and traditional Native American carvings. Using red and yellow cedar, alder and pine, he carves in these styles: Coast Salish, Gitksan, Nis’gaa, Tlingit, Haida, and Kwakiutl. Stroll to the Museum of Northwest Art. Northwest Art began with our region’s master artists. The Museum of Northwest Art continues this rich legacy, while embracing newer influences in contemporary art.
Walk the upbeat Anacortes Gallery Walk every first friday in Anacortes and visit the Depot Arts Center. Experience Skagit Valley’s original art venues such as The Muse in Conway and Just Another Roadside Attaction Gallery in Mount Vernon.
Featured Sites:
Museum of Northwest Art
Related Sites:
Anacortes First Friday Gallery Walk
Art Guide/Anacortes & La Conner
Depot Arts Center Anacortes
La Conner Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit
Pilchuk Glass School
Skagit Artists Together
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