Joyce George, paintings and Walt Rush, jewelry

Joyce George

This is Joyce George’s first two-person show at the Dolphin Gallery. She has had individual works on display there that have proven quite popular with locals and tourists alike. The nearby Mendocino coast provides inspiration for her oil landscape and seascape canvases created from photos she carefully composes. She also works in Venetian plaster.

Joyce will create larger paintings but enjoys making smaller pieces that can be as small as 3×3 inches. These miniatures make excellent accent pieces for book shelves or tables. They can also be arranged in wall groupings. Joyce feels that they provide a nice memento of a visitor’s trip to the Mendonoma community and they have proven to be a good seller at the Dolphin Gallery for several years.

Perhaps she draws on her experience in marketing and sales to reach a specific type of buyer, one who values an original painting at a reasonable price. Her retirement in 2003 provided the opportunity to fulfill her lifelong ambition to paint. Drawing on the resources of the talented local art community she started working with oils and has been refining her skills ever since.

Working from her cozy home studio, Joyce starts by photographing the ocean, forest, meadows and sunsets available on the scenic coast visible from her studio windows. Recently she began painting in plaster on wood after taking classes from Jane Head. Joyce enjoys the interesting effects.

For the last six years she has participated in Art in the Redwoods and in the 2014 Studio Discovery Tour sponsored by the North Coast Artists Guild, to which she also belongs. She is a member of both the Gualala Arts Center and the Mendocino Art Center. In addition, she manages to find time to serve as a volunteer at the Dolphin Gallery.

Walt Rush

Walt Rush will participate in a show at the Dolphin Gallery for the sixth time in the last decade. He can also be found there every Thursday from 10:00 to 1:30 to consult on a wide variety of jewelry-related questions, whether it is a repair or a custom creation. He can restore family heirlooms and antique silverware or fabricate new pieces. He can even repair glass frames.

In this show, Rush has selected an array of jewelry that has his distinctive hallmark. Every item is an original design that uses the best quality metal and stones. Even when reusing a mold, Rush uses different stones and tooling that individualize the final product. Each one reflects his belief that jewelry is wearable art whose purpose is to enhance the visual presentation of the human body.

For the past ten years he and his wife have lived on the Northern California coast, an environment that inspires many of his pieces. He prefers an item that flows with the graceful curves of the ocean’s waves to a rigid geometrical design. His water-cast and straw-cast jewelry are especially unique. Pouring the liquid metal in fresh water can produce some unexpected and delightful effects that cannot be duplicated.

Many local patrons know Rush as an annual participant in the Rogue Wave Open Studio and Studio Discovery Tours, the Festival of Trees, and Art in the Redwoods, where he is a frequent award winner. People from across the United States and beyond enjoy wearing the products of his fertile imagination.

He was born in San Francisco of parents who possessed an artistic bent. His father was an architect and his mother painted. For thirty years he and his wife lived in Ohio where he refined his skills in a retail jewelry business. But he always wanted to return to his California roots, and works from his home in Irish Beach on the Mendocino coast.

Rush is an associate member of the Gemological Institute of America, Past-president of the North Coast Artists’ Guild, a member of the Mendocino Art Center and the Arts Council of Mendocino County. His creations are also on display at the Elk Artists’ Collective Gallery and the Prentice Gallery in Mendocino. He has a web site with more information – www.rushstudio.com and sells on www.etsy.com/shop/etsy.