BACKSTREET GALLERY

Little Dickens Winners

Featured at Backstreet Gallery

 

With their marvelous miniature works of art, painter Julie Strecker and silversmith Patti Williams won the Best of Show awards at the Little Dickens Miniature Show last December at Backstreet Gallery. This win allows both artists to exhibit more of their work at the Gallery throughout the month of April. A reception will be held for them on April 8 from 3-5 p.m. during the Second Saturday Gallery Tour.

 

Award-winning painter Julie Strecker is the owner of Old Town Coffee and Gallery––a local “art hub.”  enjoy a cup of coffee and view her beautifully executed paintings and pastels along with other artwork displayed there. Julie loves interacting with her customers, many of whom are local artists. They congregate

there to create, critique and find out what’s happening in Florence’s art world.

 

Her subject matter includes the Oregon shore, local architecture and people just doing what they love.

Creating with attention to detail, she interplays light with strong color in her paintings.

 

 

About 20 years ago when she owned a bakery in Colorado, Julie took a watercolor class and was hooked. A few years later, she took up pastels. Julie settled in Florence 11 years ago because she had always wanted to live by the ocean. And she has continued to expand as an artist. After taking classes in clay at LCC, she invested in equipment and now creates pottery out of her home.

 

 

An award-winning artist with a fine arts degree, Patti Williams has shown her work in museums and galleries throughout California. Sacramento’s Fox 40 television aired a lesson she taught on jewelry making. A recent Florence resident, she found Julie’s “art hub” has helped her assimilate.  Patti’s silver jewelry may include scrolling filigree silver and lampwork beads. Because she is also an accomplished painter, she now captures Oregon by melting small bits of glass, into tiny painterly scenes on her lampwork beads.

 

 

 

After watching a baby whale “spy hop” in and out of the water, she designed the piece entered in the Dickens show. A “painted” lampwork pendant shows a whale spouting delicate silver swirls of water. Patti loves plants, nature and light. Light glowing through a translucent leaf or petal as well as outlining the

Siuslaw River Bridge inspires her to paint in either watercolor or oil. At Florence Regional Art Alliance (FRAA), she teaches a class in oil painting with a palette knife. Mystic Bridge is an example, and it was chosen to be one of the 47 out of 100 pieces of artwork accepted into FRAA’s Florence Fest at the Florence

Events Center.

 

 

Come to the Second Saturday Gallery Tour at Backstreet Gallery, 1421 Bay Street, on April 8, 3–5 p.m., for

art, great refreshments, music by Southern Comfort as well as to meet Julie and Patti and see their artwork.