A marvelous exhibition is opening this week here in Portland, Oregon. Celebrated artist, Dana Lynn Louis, is having a solo show at the Laura Russo Gallery, entitled, Thread. Being in the thread business myself, I am naturally quite curious to discover how Louis interprets this theme.

Her highly personal work and her travels have taken her all over the world, from Mali to Iceland. She then uses photographs of those places as foundations for her drawings, capturing the energy and vibration of the space. The effect is quite stunning and asks the viewer to look at each landscape from a slightly different perspective.

It’s impossible not to be drawn into the inner workings of each photograph and to wonder what sort of invisible “threads” we may be missing as we rush through our own everyday landscape.

In addition to this show, Louis is also one of seven winners selected for The Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, an awards exhibition celebrating contemporary art created in the greater Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana).