Arts on the Plateau: Marti Wallace and Bruce Benson show work at Arts Alive! Center for the Arts

Marti Wallace moved from Seattle to Enumclaw on August 29th and immediately joined Arts Alive Center for the Arts where she now teaches classes and shows her art.  Bruce Benson is an award-winning nature photographer, a Tacoma resident who shows his work at Arts Alive! as well as The Old West Gallery in Wyoming and the Old Hotel Gallery in Othello, Washington. Both artists were the featured artists at the May 6 reception at the Art Alive! It is a social gathering, open to the public, on the first Friday of every month drawing a lively crowd of members and visitors. 

Fiber Artist Marti Wallace
Marti’s many years working in the medium of fiber arts has added a new dimension of creativity to Enumclaw’s art scene. She is responsible for the tree art now visible on Cole Street and the city’s municipal parking lot, a creative expression known worldwide as “yarn bombing”.  At this writing there are nine trees decorated with a patchwork yarn coats hugging their trunks. Marti first saw yarn bombing last year at the Occidental Park in Seattle and researching it on YouTube, she discovered it is a worldwide phenomena. To fit a coat of yarn snugly around the trunk of one tree takes a lot of squares already woven and then stitched together like a quilt.  Marti got the word out that Arts Alive! needs yarn, lots of it, and the response has been gratifying. People have had many stories to tell about the yarn they have contributed – in some cases  it  was their mother’s or grandmother’s collection they did not know what to do with after their passing, or they no longer knit and did not want the work they did to be wasted. Now they can walk pass the streets and see their part in the making of the art. “We are enhancing the city and getting people involved,” says Marti.

Marti has loved fiber arts since her grandmother taught her cross stitching at the age of six. She has been weaving, stitching, quilting as well as working with acrylic and water colors most of her life.Marti has just concluded her first class teaching students to make Treasure Bags at Green River Community College and she has ongoing fiber arts classes at Arts Alive! She passes on all her knowledge and experience gained through a lifetime of attending art classes and workshops and becoming an exceptional artisan herself. Workshops include attending the week long Art & Soul in Portland, Oregon for eight years, and another is attending Art Fest in Port Townsend. “I have studied with many, many different teachers,” says Marti.

Marti says fabric is to a fiber artist like oil is to a painter. Marti loves the feel and look of colorful fabric and she loves sewing with different colored threads. It is a psychologically and emotionally soothing and calming to her spirit to touch fabric, yarn and thread. “If I am upset I can walk through a fabric store and just touching the materials calms me,” she says. She admits her drawers and shelves and cabinets of her home are filled to the brim with yarn and fabric. She never stops weaving and sewing. “I can do this all day. I do not watch TV, I just listen. I listen better when my hands are busy.” Her inspiration catches on and new students are lining up to take her classes.

Wildlife Photographer Bruce Benson
Bruce Benson’s stunning photographic work of animals in the wilds, are shots that take infinite patience and time on location in the wilderness. He grew up near Yellowstone National Park and loving nature he was an outdoorsman his whole life. During his early professional life he was a soccer coach and taught physical education near his home at Brown’s Point. After he retired he began a private business with his wife which involved a great deal of travel organizing soccer tours to Europe. In 2002, he launched a new career as a photographer. He took a couple of photography classes but he says he is mostly self-taught. He says he belongs to a study group and talks to a lot of photographers, some sharing where wildlife can be best be seen.With lots of frequent flyer points accumulated from the soccer tours, Bruce started taking trips to exotic locations in Africa and Alaska just to photograph large animals in the wild. “I am lucky to be able to travel a lot,” says Bruce. Shooting that perfect shot as a wildlife photographer is “a never-ending battle,” says Bruce. “You have to be willing to get up early and then stay late just before sunset. It takes lots and lots of patience. It took 360 hours to just get my bear pictures.”

It is remarkable that Bruce has achieved so much success for his work in such a short period of time. He has numerous images that have been sold to the Smith Western Calendar Company, sold at Wal Mart among other retail stores. Many of his images have been used in Smith Western postcards. Just four years after he started his second career in life, he won Best of Show twice at the Northwest International Exhibition in 2006 and again in 2012. In 2011, Bruce won honorable mention from the Photographic Society of America which claims 20,000 members. Bruce has been selling his work at Arts Alive! several years and Enumclaw is lucky to have his art to view. You feel like you are right there, in the wild, experiencing the glory of nature.