Festival fundraising event to go online

Sisters Folk Festival (SFF) supports the arts, and this year during the COVID-19 pandemic the nonprofit organization will celebrate by going virtual for the My Own Two Hands Community Art Auction and Fundraiser that supports youth programming.

A silent auction is happening May 8-16. It’s a way to offer up the art that was generously donated by local and regional artists. No purchase of tickets will be necessary to participate in the auction. Participants will simply be emailed a link to the online auction platform. Bids can easily be placed from the comfort and safety of home via cell phone or internet-connected device. SFF anticipates reaching a wider audience than ever before and encourages you to share the auction link when they send it out.

Each year a theme is chosen for My Own Two Hands (MOTH) celebration of the arts. This year’s theme, “A New Dawn,” inspired artists to create and donate a piece of art to be sold at the benefit auction in support of music and arts programming in the Sisters schools and community.

Artist Janice Druian’s oil painting, “Dawn’s Early Light,” was chosen as the image for the 2020 MOTH poster.

Crista Munro, SFF executive director, told The Nugget, “Janice Druian’s painting captures the MOTH theme perfectly.

I love the way the morning light reflects along the top of the rock formations.

But one of the most interesting things about this piece is that it shows us a different view of an iconic and much-celebrated landscape: Smith Rock.

It suggests the possibility of finding beauty by looking at something in a new way or from a different angle, and that ties right back into the theme of a new dawn.

Little did we know when we chose the theme and Janice’s painting just how different things would be this spring, not only for Sisters Folk Festival and My Own Two Hands, but for life as we know it.

The painting is a reminder to keep seeing things in a new light and to find beauty in the unfamiliar.”

Smith Rock State Park has always been a favorite painting subject for Druian, a Terrebonne resident, and was her inspiration for this year’s theme.

Druian noted, “From my house on a cliff above the Deschutes I see a vast panorama of Central Oregon — all the way from the Cascades and Smith Rock. I will go to Smith Rock and photograph it at dawn and in the evening. While I am sometimes a plein air painter, the golden hour — dawn and dusk — are fleeting so I work from photos for these subjects.”

The enthusiasm Druian has for painting began when she was in preschool.

“I remember getting in trouble because of painting on my bedroom wall at three or four,” she explained.

After high school she studied at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley and graduated with a degree in psych social welfare. But the pull of art was strong. After moving to Eugene, she enrolled in the University of Oregon and received a master’s in art education.

Later on, Druian joined Plein Air Painters of Oregon.

“I am primarily a landscape painter, although in graduate school I was a figurative painter,” said Druian. “And, for lack of a better term, a post-impressionist, or a studio artist who relies on plein air for preliminary sketches and knowledge of atmospheric influence.”

Druian traces her inspiration from a book of paintings by the master of Western landscape painting from the early 1900s, Maynard Dixon.

She added, “My local inspirations are Susan Lucky Higdon who runs Tumalo Art Co. in Bend and Harmony Thomas who has given my work a ‘permanent’ home in Good Day Café (adjacent to Bedouin), as she has taken on the complexities of sequestering to bring all local artists together as an online community.”

View more of her artwork at www.druianstudios.com.