Icicle Arts Gallery opened in May 2009 and is located in the River Haus at Barn Beach Reserve at 347 Division Street in downtown Leavenworth. The gallery presents six shows per year by application and two special exhibits by invitation. The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday, 11AM-4PM in partnership with the Upper Valley Museum, and by appointment (call Icicle Arts at (509) 548-2278 to schedule). Gallery Application PDF

Currently on Display

Inflorescence
Original paintings by Wenatchee resident Martha Flores. On Display from January 7 to February 19, 2012 with a free “meet the artist” reception on Friday, February 10, 2012 from 5 PM to 7 PM.

About the Artist
Martha Flores was born in Guatemala and raised in El Salvador. She earned her Master of Fine Art degree at California State University in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to Wenatchee in 1992 Martha had many art exhibits and commendations including one from the former Mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley. Martha has taught art in California and Washington for over thirty years and has exhibited in several galleries, museums, and other venues in the Northwest for the past nineteen years.

Artist’s Statement
With this show I have put together a collection of my works that are not just a retrospective of my work, but that tell the story in some way of my own inflorescence. Inflorescence is a botanical term that is central to the form and function of a flower – more on that later. When I was trained formally as an artist I was encouraged to move away from the personal and toward the abstract and impersonal. So I stopped drawing and painting faces and the forms I was so familiar with growing up in Central America and instead concentrated on abstract imagery.

From this came the long and fruitful series of large and colorful pieces that I called “organic forms.” These pieces had all the shapes and colors of truly organic mostly fruitlike forms, but yet were not of any specific or recognizable organic object, be it fruit, vegetable, or other. Though, certainly one can see many familiar organic shapes within the forms. Some of this is intentional and others not so much.

Still, I was not content with this indefinitely and as I matured and progressed, both artistically and personally – having gone through a number of important phases, periods, and life events, I came to reconnect with the personal and emotional in my work. Perhaps it was never completely absent – even from my most abstract work. Then, as I came into my own personal flowering and independence in my life, I came to embrace the personal and emotional in my work in a way that was in step with the changes I was going through in my life. I infused my own flowering and growth as a person finding to myself in the larger world and gave expression to this as the “emerging women” theme in my work that is present in so many of my pieces over the past two decades.

Eventually, as I became more personally satisfied with my own life and could re-embrace my love and appreciation for who I am, where I am from, and the love I have for all things innocent and full of life and promise, I began to give voice to the child within me, rediscovering my joy, skill, and pleasure at drawing and painting children and families. Eventually I came full circle to revisiting the faces and forms that were so familiar to me in my childhood. As a product of this, I have over the past several years done many paintings of Central American women – some from memory and some inspired by the travels my husband and I have done over the past decade throughout Central America and the Caribbean.

As for that botanical term, inflorescence: a cluster of flowers that together form a rather showy blossom. In some kinds of inflorescence the youngest flowers are at the bottom, somewhat smothered or hidden. And there are those in which the youngest flowers are at the top or in the center of the flower and are the first thing that one sees. Like these different kinds of inflorescences, there have been those times in my life, as in the lives of many, where I was more like one kind than the other. There have been times when the youngest or most youthful parts were clearly present for all to see and other times when this youthful life and vigor have been more hidden and less visible at first glance. But this youthfulness is nonetheless always present. Even if a little uncovering is necessary to find the newness that is the flowering child full of promise that was so evident when we were young and not yet fully formed and mature. And so inflorescence is not just a play on words including my name of Flores. It is a genuine expression of the flowering of the soul or essence of, not just in myself, but in of all of us, which should be present throughout our lives.