Lumiaries of Northwest Art in The Gallery

Two luminaries of the Northwest arts scene, Alfredo Arreguin and Yuji Hiratsuka, will be in Cannon Beach during the first weekend of October. Both artists are represented by Imprint Gallery in an exhibition running through October and November.  There will be an artist’s reception at the gallery on Saturday, October 7, 6 -7 pm, and an artists’ talk on Sunday, October 8 beginning at 11am.
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Painter, Alfredo Arreguin will be presenting his new painting "Salish Sea". He recently gifted the use of an earlier painting of Haystack Rock to illustrate a poster for Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP), a stewardship and environmental education program whose mission is to protect the intertidal and bird ecology of the Marine Garden and Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge at Haystack Rock.  At the Saturday evening reception representatives of the program and the nonprofit, Friends of Haystack Rock, will give a short description of the program and formally thank the artist for the use of his image. The poster is available from the gallery, with all funds going to HRAP.

Printmaker, Yuji Hiratsuka will be leading two, one-day workshops in the gallery’s studio on Friday, October 6 and Saturday, October 7. Hiratsuka is a venerated teacher at Oregon State University, and has had considerable influence on the development of many young Northwest artists, not least Imprint Gallery’s own studio manager, Alisa Vernon.  On this visit, the artist will be teaching a class in stencil cutting and silkscreen printmaking. The class can be booked through the gallery’s website at www.imprintgallery.com

On Sunday, October 8 the gallery will be serving coffee at 11am, and both Alfredo Arreguin and Yuji Hiratsuka will discuss their work and be available for questions.

Alfredo Arreguín was born in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, and has lived in Seattle since 1956.  Arreguín’s distinguished career spans four decades. In 1979, he was selected to represent the United States at the 11th International Festival of Painting at Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, where he won the Palm of the People Award. In 1980, he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1994 the Smithsonian Institution acquired his triptych "Sueño (Dream: Eve Before Adam)" for the permanent collection of the National Museum of American Art and a year later he received an Ohtli Award, from the Mexican government, recognizing distinguished individuals abroad. The Smithsonian has since added the painting "The Return to Aztlán", to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

 Other awards include: a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Washington’s Multicultural Alumni Partnership; the Tomás Rivera Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of California, and a Timeless Award from the University of Washington’s College of Arts and Sciences.  His work is held in many important collections including The Denver Art Museum, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, Portland Art Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, Tacoma Art Museum, and Tucson Museum of Art.

Yuji Hiratsuka was born in Osaka, Japan. He studied art at Tokyo Gakugei University. In 1985 he moved to the United States to pursue graduate degrees in printmaking at New Mexico State University and at Indiana University. Hiratsuka has been teaching printmaking and drawing at Oregon State University since 1992. His work is included in many public collections, including: The British Museum, UK; Tokyo Central Museum, Japan; Panstwowe Museum, Poland; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Jundt Art Museum, WA and The Portland Art Museum, OR.

Imprint Gallery is planning a monthly program of talks or demonstrations in the gallery by their exhibiting artists. This new program of talks is intended to offer an opportunity for artists to network, to contextualize the exhibited work, and for collectors to meet the artists. Imprint Gallery is a curated space with a strong focus on contemporary narrative art, ceramic sculpture and printmaking. The program is built on partnering with the exhibiting artists, offering a flexible approach to the creation and presentation of new work.