by Reneé Mizar
Art and local history seamlessly intersect at the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley in January with a one-woman exhibition by noted area artist Joy McCarter.
The featured art exhibit, “Joy McCarter: In Retrospect,” runs Jan. 3-28 at the MAC Exhibit Center, 175 W. Cedar St. in Sequim, and chronicles much of the five-decade artistic career of McCarter, a founding member of Sequim Arts. An artist’s reception is from 5-8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, as part of the First Friday Art Walk in Sequim.
Finding inspiration in that which surrounds her, the 97-year-old McCarter has recorded more than 50 years of area history through her art by painting farms, barns, homesteads, mills, landscapes and seascapes from Port Hadlock to Sekiu. These and other paintings done in acrylic, oil, watercolor and octopus ink, are highlighted in the exhibit, along with a selection of McCarter’s sculptures and photographs.
Her paintings created using solar technique, a method she developed that involves painting underwater using acrylic ink, also will be on display. Some of the exhibited pieces will be available for purchase, as well as prints of selected works.
“The show covers as much of her artistic career as we can,” said MAC art exhibit committee chairman Linda Stadtmiller. “It’s wonderful to find an artist who isn’t stagnant and she’s never been stagnant. She’s progressive, always experimenting, and has been a real inspiration to people.”
In addition to being a longtime resident of the North Olympic Peninsula, McCarter’s connections to and impact on area history and the local art scene are numerous.
McCarter said she became the first licensed female Realtor on the Olympic Peninsula when she moved to Sequim in the mid-1950s and ran her own local realty business, Joy Land Company, Inc., for 20 years.
A native Washingtonian who lives in Carlsborg, she also was instrumental in creating the artists’ group that grew to become Sequim Arts. She is a lifetime member and four-times past president of the nonprofit organization.
For more information, call the MAC Exhibit Center at 683-8110 or visit the MAC website at www.macsequim.org.
