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Wednesday, February 4, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Local artists to light a fire in Winterfest competition Simpkins to
By Jim Cornelius
News Editor
Some fine functional metal
sculpture will be featured in
the annual fire pit competi-
tion at Winterfest in Bend
over Valentine’s Day week-
end. Ken Scott’s Imagination
Gallery and Ponderosa Forge
& Ironworks will both have
entries in the contest, which
will be judged on Saturday,
February 14.
Scott is hard at work on his
creation, bringing his usual
intensity to the task.
“Creativity is all about
showing up,” he said.
“Inspiration is easy, but sweat
comes hard. True art is an
intensely personal endeavor;
It’s about the love of the work
and the love of life.”
Scott’s work, like his
persona, is larger-than-life.
He describes his work
thus: “Exciting projections,
swirling in Victorian, stolid
Gothic, delectable Deco and
injected with one frighten-
ingly wild imagination. It’s
Captain Nemo meets Luke
Skywalker, where the past
meets the future!”
Scott’s got his eyes on the
prize at Winterfest.
“That’s my goal,” he said,
“to take first prize — and yet
in the company of some seri-
ously respectable sculptors.”
One of those is Jeff Wester
and his crew at Ponderosa
Forge & Ironworks.
Wester and company built
a cauldron that hangs from
a weathered tree. The tree
was “hammered around and
welded together in several
pieces,” Wester explained.
be featured
on oPB show
photo provided
Ken Scott’s wild imagination will be at play with an entry in Winterfest’s
fire pit competition.
“We put a rusty patina on it.”
The cauldron “incorporates a
lot of traditional metalwork.
The cauldron is all built using
traditional methods.”
Wester is a storyteller,
and he always has some
sort of tale in mind with his
creations. Scott is highly
intuitive.
“I don’t even know when I
start what I’m gonna get,” he
said. “The work bench does
a lot of talkin’. I just want to
see it unfold.”
Scott will have two booths
featuring his wide-ranging
metal work — and his legend-
ary Cinderella carriage will
photo by Jim Cornelius
Let me show you
how much you can
save this year!
Ponderosa Forge produced a fire pit cauldron hanging from a metal tree.
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be there, too.
Wester will be conducting
demonstrations at a black-
smith’s tent.
For Wester, participating
in the competition is about
being part of a community
and “for the public to see the
different types of craftsman-
ship that goes into these metal
sculptures.”
For more information on
Winterfest visit www.oregon
winterfest.com. For more on
Ken Scott’s Imagination visit
www.kenscottsimagination.
com and visit www.ponderosa
forge.com for more informa-
tion on Wester’s work.
Many people in Sisters
know John Simpkins’
extraordinary art work from
his years of living and work-
ing in Sisters and Camp
Sherman.
The artist will be featured
on OPB’s Oregon Art Beat
this Thursday, February 5, at
8 p.m.
“As a very young boy, I
used crayons to draw pic-
tures on my bedroom wall,”
Simpkins recalls.
This is how John Simpkins
began to express himself
through art. Simpkins, a self-
taught painter, seeks to “let
my inner voice speak,” he
explained. Simpkins’ strong,
bold graphic style is decep-
tively simple. His paintings
often reveal layers of mean-
ing and symbol. The artist
explains, “My work evolves
slowly and intuitively.”
Simpkins painting style
is equally “layered.” His use
of paint and color is subtly
complex. His art is sought by
private collectors, galleries,
museums and publishers. His
creations have been exhib-
ited from America to Europe
and published in a variety of
books and magazines.
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