The Green Antelope Gallery in Bellevue has been hard at work making plans for a new October exhibition and Oktoberfest celebration. Events begin on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 6 p.m. with a slide show and presentation with artist and longtime Wood River Valley visitor Dinah Cross-James.
The gallery will host an Oktoberfest celebration Thursday, Oct. 16, through Saturday, Oct. 18. The festivities will celebrate the grand opening of the Bella Cosa art studio on Friday, Oct.17, from 5-9 p.m. Also included is LaRece Construction trunk show at Riverbend Coffee House.
Cross-James will present works from a trip she took to India that inspired her most recent body of abstract oil paintings. For over 30 years, Cross-James' work has been admired throughout the country in public and private collections, national magazine covers and books. She is represented in galleries around the West and has pieces in museums, including the Seattle Art Museum.
"Dinah is really well known, and people love India," said Green Antelope Gallery owner Brooke Bonner. "I have known her since I was a baby. She is an old friend of the family, and I felt very blessed she was willing to do a show with us."
Cross-James' paintings have not always derived from pleasant experiences. Some of her paintings depict a time of intense sadness. In 1990, Dinah lost her only child, Natalia in a Berkeley fire. Cross-James has expressed her grief in much of her work, which reveal a change from dark earth tones she had been using the nine years previous to the loss of her daughter. Today, Cross-James' palette includes pinks, bright yellows, greens and turquoise hues, as well as a series of birds which symbolize Natalia.
"People who like art and want to feel something are drawn to Dinah's work," Bonner said. "It is abstract work, and the images link to emotion."