Return to Viewing Exhibit
Mark Brashem
Graduation of Color, March 12, 2024, Watercolor Wet-on-Wet, 12 x 17 inches
Artist Bio
Prior to retirement, Mark was a dedicated business owner by Day, a loving husband and father by night and a recreational fisherman on the weekends! Mark was raised in Tacoma and always loved the water. He graduated from the University of Washington. He’s a proud husky and avid supporter of UW football and basketball. Mark was a fisheries major in college, owned several boats and now enjoys spending weekends walking on the beach in Whidbey island. His art is influenced by his deep connection to the Puget Sound, and often reflects water and beach scenes.
__ex-sm.jpg)
Jean Chen
Poinsettia Bonnie Lake, 2024, Collage of natural material,18 x 24 inches
Birds and Blooms, 2024, Collage of natural material, watercolor, 18 x 22 inches
Watercolor and Petals, 2022, Collage of natural material, watercolor, 18 x 23.5 inches
Artist Bio
Jean Chen attended Cornell University program of Art, Architecture and City Planning and received her Master of Arts in Teaching (with a focus on Higher Education) from New York University. Jean also attended UC Berkeley and the University of Washington where she received her Master in Social Work.
Jean has worked for many cultural institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Arts, George Washington University, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes, a business unit of The Boeing Company.
Throughout her life, Jean has maintained an active interest in printmaking, pottery, painting, art history and architecture. She retired from management training at Boeing Commercial Airplanes to work as a social worker in the field of adoption.
___ex-sm.jpg)
Robert Knickerbocker
Train Station, 2023, Watercolor Wet-on-Wet, 12 X 17 inches
Artist Bio
Robert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. He attended the University of Connecticut where he majored in speech and drama. Robert enjoys music and sang in the Seattle Symphony Chorus for two years. Roberts' careers entailed working: as a deputy sheriff, for the LA times news distributorship and driving a Seattle metro bus. He is thrilled to have adopted a cat and enjoys watching the cat use the “catio. Robert has mastered the art of paint mixing and his works are often multidimensional with nuanced color schemes.
__ex-sm.jpg)
Kimberley Rettig
Memory Amiss, 2023, Acrylic, 18 x 22 inches
Coming to Butterfly, 2018, Ink wash, 18 x 22 inches
Looking Ahead, 2020, Graphic illustration, 18 x 22 inches
Artist Bio
Having grown up and living with my family in Bellevue, WA, I am a retired intern-architect and learned to hand draw renderings and graphics throughout my career. I live with my canine companion, that I love so dearly. So many people with memory loss and cognitive challenges, like myself, are often lost in the shadows of their families and community. Art has been a catalyst in my life!
Rosie Schwartz
Loren’s Monks, 1986, Watercolor, 9.5 x 6.5 inches
Tanzania, 1990, Watercolor, 10 x 6.5 inches
Africa, 1993, Watercolor, 6.5 x 4.5 inches
Artist Bio
Rosie was born in Detroit, Michigan, and recalls really enjoying oil pastels as a child. Later in life, she picked up watercolors – for the practical reason that they didn’t take up much space in her apartment! Her pieces tend to be figurative art inspired by the natural world, including scenes from her and her family members’ travels. She hopes that the pieces provide a sense of serenity, appreciation and inspiration. While these pieces were painted some time ago, Rosie notes her ongoing appreciation for the arts, including architecture, and the way that the arts can usher us into a more playful space. “It brings out the children in us,” she states. “We all need to draw more, and play more, especially in these times!”
__ex-sm.jpg)
Bill Wheeler
Wasp, 2024, Photography printed on canvas, 16 x 20
This image is of a wasp face at 5X when blown up, and is approximately 200X. The compound eyes are visible with a notch where the antenna fold over them so the bug doesn’t damage its eyes. Below the eyes are the mandibles that have serrated edging and hold prey while the hidden mouthparts grind up their meal.
Beetle Leg, 2024, Photograph printed on canvas, 16 x 20
This image is the middle leg of a beetle. Hooks are seen at the end of the leg and the multiple hair-like structures are likely sensory in nature to help the insect “feel” its prey. The large projections to the left hold the prey, while the hooks on the end of the leg grasp the prey. It has an initial magnification of 10X, so final magnification is approximately 400X.
Take Me to Your Leader, 2024, Photograph printed on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
The “Alien” is a green sapphire bee in an AI generated space helmet combined in Photoshop, a computer imaging program. The mandibles are visible between the compound eyes, and the yellow structure seen below them is the hypopharynx which are the mouthparts mentioned in the wasp face image that grind up the prey. In death the hypopharynx often protrudes.
Hamuli Size in Perspective, 2024, Photograph printed on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
Most flying insects have two wings on each side. Not all insects use all four wings to fly, and may modify them for protection like the hard covering of a beetle or into small counterweights that help in flight like the wings of a fly. Butterflies have four wings, and they use various methods, such as rods or just having the wings overlap each other, to functionally tether the wings on each side together for more efficient flight.
This image is a composite of three images at different magnifications to demonstrate the structures in the wing of insects in the Order Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, flying ants, and sawflies) that tether the two wings on each side together for more efficient flight.
The Hymenoptera tether the two wings on each side with a series of minute hooks called hamuli. The hamuli arise on the leading edge of the back wing, and reversibly hook on the curled back edge of the front wing.
The whole bee seen in the upper left shows the relative size in comparison to the intact bee. The magnified image of the wing shows the curled edge of the front wing where several of the hamuli are engaged with the front wing and difficult to see, while several are unengaged and easily seen. The large image of the hamuli at the bottom of the picture reveals the twisted, curled structure of the hamuli that allow them to reversibly attach to the curled edge of the front wing. This was shot at 50X with a final magnification of approximately 2000X. This is a Focus Stack of approximately 1500 images.
Artist Bio
Bill Wheeler and his wife Kathy have lived in the Seattle area for 19 years. Both of their children, Lacey and AJ, their grandkids, Wyatt and Emmett, also live in Seattle (within walking distance of their house!). Bill is a retired interventional cardiologist and has been a science nut since elementary school when he used to take in injured frogs, toads, and mice, and “doctor” them. He has had a series of hobbies starting with long distance cycling, Master Scuba Diver, Master Fly Casting Instructor, and FAA certified drone pilot before getting back into photography and subsequently specializing in high magnification macrophotography, especially of insects. He typically uses microscope objectives for his macrophotography. He hopes you enjoy seeing aspects of insects that most people never see or even know existed.
The images were obtained using microscope objectives at 10-50 power of magnification (X). Each was printed on a 20 by 30 inch canvas, which increases that original magnification by approximately a factor of 40. So a 10X image printed on a 20 by 30 inch canvas is approximately 400X.
At higher magnification, the area in focus (depth of field) for each image is very shallow. Many images are combined in a computer program that takes all in-focus parts of each image and puts them together to generate an image with a much greater depth of field. This process is called Focus Stacking. It is not uncommon to combine hundreds or even thousands of images to get adequate depth of field.
Be sure to look at the stereo (3D) images in the handheld viewer in the bookcase, too.