Category: Art

Metal Man

This piece of metal artwork by Sequim artist Per Berg was unveiled not long ago at a local business, High Energy Metal, in Carlsborg. It’s really gorgeous.

Metal Man was commissioned by the co-owner of High Energy Metal, Dave Brasher, a longtime friend of the artist’s family. It is over 8 feet tall and 300 lbs. Berg took about six months to complete the piece. An art graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Berg created the skeleton with steel rods and then used a plasma cutter to cut the steel pieces of the shape. A hammer refined the figure’s contours. The local Peninsula Daily News quoted Berg, 25, “Metal art is cool but a lot of artists are intimidated by it. I got a sunburn from it once and I caught myself on fire.”

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Actually, Peter is not a cottontail. The bunny shown here is from felted Suffolk sheeps wool and the photo barely does his cuteness justice. I discovered recently that in addition to her many other talents my friend Miriam also does felting, in this case needle felting.

Needle felting uses finely barbed needles to fuse a layer of fiber onto a base. In this case, Miriam used a base form of wool and felted it together with more wool to create and keep its form. These little bunnies are about five inches long and light as a feather. Although they look and feel delicate, they have seen plenty of action with Miriam’s grandchildren, including service as a football. Aren’t they cute?

The Suffolk wool used to make these bunnies is from a “down” breed typically raised for food rather than fiber. The wool is spongey, with less lanolin than from breeds raised for fiber. The character of Suffolk wool lends itself well to needle felting.

On the left, here, Miriam was making a bunny from the wool of llamas she used to own. She steadily punches the top layer of wool with the barbed needle and the fibers catch and mat together.

On the right, below, are some of the tools she uses in her needle felting. The yellow and green fiber is silk. The orange fiber is wool.

Happy Easter!

Treebeard's cousins

These faces make me smile every time I see them. They remind me of my father-in-law, a carver who often coaxed beauty from simple pieces of wood. Last week I decided to slow down and get closer to these pieces of road art. There were faces on both sides of the two stumps. They’ve been there a while and seem to have only improved with age. Aren’t they wonderful faces?


Totem update – Jamestown Family Health Center

Early last month I posted pictures of this totem pole that is located at the Jamestown Family Health Center in Sequim. I didn’t know the stories associated with the pole. I heard from a local, Betty, who informed me that the waiting room at the Health Center has informational brochures about the totem and I picked one up. Thank you, Betty! Here is more information about the “Healing Arts Totem Pole” taken from the brochure provided by the Tribe.

At the bottom of this 38-foot pole is a shaman or medicine man whose traditional role is to assure the health and prosperity of the community. He is seen as an intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds and his most important role is to cure the sick. A shaman derives his healing powers from “spirit helpers,” animal spirits who possess the secrets of life and death and who share these gifts with the shaman. The shaman’s paraphernalia, a rattle and a baton, a crown of mountain goat horns, and a “soul catcher” around his neck, aid him in moving into a trance state to do his healing work. Below the shaman is Frog who lives on both land and in the water and also has the transformational power to morph from a fishlike tadpole into a four-legged frog.

Above the shaman is Sculpin, a guide to aid the shaman in returning to the physical plane. Sculpin is a fish that can also grant certain powers. Above Sculpin is Land Otter. At home on land or in the water, Land Otter is considered a powerful supernatural assistant.


Above Land Otter is Octopus. Octopus is capable of transforming his color, shape, and texture and is considered a great ally when opposing evil spirits. Second from the top is Wolf, who helps to guide the shaman back to the secular world after his spirit world travels. And at the top is Mountain Goat. Mountain Goat lives between the terrestrial world and the sky world and travels ahead of the shaman to guard him against danger.

The S’Klallam brochure does not identify the carving style used for this totem except to note that their totems “represent some aspect of Northwest Native and/or Jamestown S’Klallam life.” The Tribe’s totems at their 7 Cedars Casino are done in a variety of Northwest cultural styles. This one at the Health Center looks Tlingit to me.

Happy place

This is an aisle from one of my favorite places in Sequim, Doodlebugs on West Washington. To say they sell paper arts and scrapbooking supplies doesn’t begin to cover it. They open up a universe of creativity to anyone who never completely left scissors, paper, and library paste behind in grammar school. They offer demonstrations and “make and take” projects to get you started. My holiday cards began here this year, but that just capped an array of fun and crafty playdates with a great staff full of good ideas.

Surprise sculpture

This sculpture is nothing new to people who walk in the area around Carrie Blake Park and the Water Reuse Demonstration Park. It surprised me when I explored the park recently as I’d never noticed it from the road passing by. The Water Reuse Park where this is located is designed to educate the public on the reuse of water. I believe that the hoops in the distant background are part of a volunteer effort to reforest the area with native oaks.