Whether it was teaching about the convergence of color, texture, and scale in the art studio, or mentoring a new artist as they take the next step in their creative pathway, Eve Deisher was a beloved instructor who taught studio art, design, and art history at Skagit Valley College.

Sadly, Eve passed away in January 2017, after a two-year journey battling cancer, but her passion for the visual arts continues to inspire. Eve’s work is now on view in the SVC Art Gallery at the Mount Vernon Campus. The show, “Eve Deisher: SVC Years 1995 – 2015” runs through March 15^th.

In addition to teaching at SVC, Eve maintained her studio practice. Among the many highlights of
her own work, her most noteworthy exhibitions during that time featured three two-person exhibitions with retired SVC Art faculty member, Ann Chadwick Reid. In 2014, Eve exhibited for the first time with her husband, Lanny Bergner, at Gallery Cygnus in La Conner. Their two-person exhibition lead to a magazine article in “Fiber Art Now” titled, “Lanny Bergner & Eve Deisher: Artists & Indicators.”

Eve Deisher was a uniquely gifted and talented artist who made art for the sake of personal expression and as a probing witness to the world she inhabited. Most of all she was a sweet, kind, and compassionate human being who expressed her world view with the sharp mind’s eye and caring heart of an artist.

Pablo Picasso once said “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”

When I started in photography fifteen years ago little did I know that my work would be a representation of emotions gained through many life influences. This exhibit takes the viewer through the last fifteen years of my life as I’ve seen it photographically.

From my military service I created the project “Wounded Walls” depicting abandoned military structures. My business background drove me to create a “Corporate Color” series showing the colors that we often associate with corporation. Television has been a part of my life since childhood so seeing it with a photographic eye led to the series “Extrusive Time.” Of course, the Pacific Northwest has had a profound influence on my photography as well, and that is depicted in the various images from the Puget Sound area as seen from a different point of view. 

My intent has always been to create photographs that are meant to be shared with others. They are not merely individual efforts to satisfy me. When audiences look at them my life is changed again in ways I never expected. I now view the world in ways that to me didn’t exist fifteen years ago. My interactions with people are more powerful, as they get to know me and start looking at my photographs. Color, light, shadows, shapes, and lines are now meaningful to my eye and to my life, and are represented in my work as it continues to mature.The last fifteen years of my life have been a true “Photographic Journey.”

The paintings in the exhibition, “Plunge” demonstrate a range of meditations on land, both physical and social. Some of the ideas that carry themselves throughout the body of work include; the impact of climate change, structures of control, and tactics. The implications suggested by color and form is directly related to the concepts in the work. In the piece “Sea Swept”, bands of color reflect both linear perspective and warning codes, similar to the fire danger signs found along western roadsides. Notions of control and tactics are fused in paintings depicting floating horseshoes and buoys. The buoy’s grid formation references the children’s board game of battleship and the horseshoes signify another similar game of tactics and competition. Aluminum paint is used to suggest tactical measures, as well as a landscape that has been stripped bare of its’ resources. The exhibition title, “Plunge” refers to coastal terminology, more specific a type of breaking wave. These paintings suggest the moment of or after the waves have broke.

Martin was raised in Montana where he received his BFA from the University of Montana and completed his MFA from The University of South Florida, Tampa. Martin is a dual-citizen of the United States and Canada and is also a recognized member of the Métis Federation in Manitoba, Canada. He currently lives with his family in Bellingham, Washington; where he teaches Art at Whatcom Community College.

Go to Justin’s Website