STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRIESEN+LANTZ
Yanna Lantz picks up an intricate glass latticework and holds it up to the afternoon light streaming through the windows of Friesen=Lantz Gallery.
“All of this is glass,” she says, examining small threads of glass that weave together like a spider web to show off a colored piece of glass. “Anna Skibska’s body of work is called the ‘Labyrinth of Light’ and it’s just fascinating. I have a piece in my personal collection and it’s interesting to watch how the light and color changes over the course of a day.”
Lantz curated Skibska’s exhibition and another fresh new body of work by Seattle artist David Hytone for the Grand Opening of the newly renamed Friesen+Lantz Gallery at Sun Valley Road and 1st Avenue North in Ketchum.
Lantz, who assumed ownership of the gallery following the retirement of its founder Andria Friesen, will hold a Grand Opening from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12. David Hytone will talk about his work in an Artist Talk at 3 p.m. and Skibska will discuss her work at 3:30 p.m. The Grand Opening Celebration will follow from 4 to 6 p.m.
Both artists are very much about storytelling, which is near and dear to Lantz’s heart, as someone who came to Sun Valley to tell stories as a core member with The Spot theatre.
In this particular exhibition, Skibska uses her signature techniques to manipulate glass rods into intertwining threads to explores the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Labyrinth.
The Cretan princess Ariadne was assigned to the Labyrinth that her father King Minos had built to house young men and maidens waiting to be sacrificed. But she fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus and helped him escape with a ball of thread that he could use to retrace his way out of the labyrinth, slaying the half-bull, half-man minotaur in the process.
Skibska has created several pieces with her acetylene torch to tell the story, including that of the Minotaur complete with horns.
She grew up in Poland where an epiphany over a broken pane of glass lying by a trash bin shifted her passion from painting to glass sculptor. She now lives in Seattle where the flameworking studio in Pratt Fine Arts Center was named the Anna Skibska Flameworking Studio.
“I love her work—she’s so thoughtful about everything,” said Lantz. “And her work is just as beautiful as night as it is by day. Daylight brings a shimmering feel to the glass. At night the glass pieces become stars because there are fewer distractions.”
Skibska’s artwork bridges the worlds of architecture, line drawing and sculpture.
“I believe that architecture is a crown for art, sound and silence, light and dark, not mere brick and steel,” she says. “Architecture and art are strongly connected: Fine art does not decorate architecture; architecture is not a shell for fine art. They are an integral part of each other, and this relationship greatly interests me.”
David Hytone, a finalist for the 2018 Neddy Award in Painting, paints with acrylic on glass. When it dries, he cuts it, peels it off and creates a collage with the pieces on canvas.
“That’s why there’s such dimension to his work,” says Lantz.
Hytone, a Seattle artist has a theatrical background and uses themes of theatre and still-life to explore the space between the veneers of projection, façade and the actuality of things.
“We are nearly always ‘pretending’, nearly always onstage, projecting a version of ourselves to the world, askew with the inner self,” says Hytone.
His colorful portraits bear such intriguing names as “And Yet Another Better Mousetrap.” And they are a feast for those who like to scan them to see what elements they can pick out of the jumble.
Lantz stops for a moment to take in a bluish portrait of a slide emerging from an unfathomable black hole, steam punk-like pipes coming out of the platform that holds it up.
“His works are so rich and full I see something new every day,” she says.
Hytone explores the relationship between identity and memory by repeating themes in paintings. For instance, he depicts how he remembers a mountain one day in one painting, then shows how he might remember it on another day in another painting
Lantz points to one still-life painting. “This painting asks: Was it day or night? Was the table set or not?”
Launching this new chapter in the life of the gallery feels like a Cinderella story to Lantz.
“My whole life has led to this. I dedicated myself to the arts long ago and have worked since as a writer, with Photoshop, with acting at The Spot,” she says.
Lantz says her goal is to make art accessible, to make her gallery a place that brings together artists and collectors in meaningful and profound ways through works that ask questions and inspire. She wants to show the work of both established and emerging artists that are challenging the norm, going beyond the boundary of tradition and exploring what it means to be human in the 21st century.
She also wants to make art accessible both to established clientele while cultivating a new generation of collectors.
“I feel some people may be intimidated by galleries, and I want them to feel this is a place they can come to be inspired,” she says. “Even if you can’t buy afford a piece of art, it’s my hope you can be inspired.”