Bend-Area Student Art Exhibited at Thump Coffee in March

During March, Thump Coffee in downtown Bend celebrates student artists from all walks of life, as local art educator Marcy Monte brings a mix of student art works to exhibit. Home school, Bend High School, Marshall High School and Cascade Middle School students’ works of art will be displayed throughout the month.

“Have you always dreamed of writing your own book? Students at Cascade Middle School have written, illustrated and bound children’s books with a positive message for their readers,” says art teacher Marcy Monte. “Cascade students books will be mounted on the wall, and some to be looked at in the cafe. These books are the ones chosen by their peers as the ones most like the Caledcott or Newberry awards.”

“Marshall High School student Erika Arback has created portraits that will help you look deeply into life, while home school students Molly, Clair and Zoe Kern incorporate art into their every day studies.”

These and other creations will be on display at Thump Coffee throughout March.

Fall Art Hop: Lisa Copenhagen Wachs at Thump Coffee

Thump Coffee will stay open late for the Fall Art Hop tonight, featuring the work of local artist Lisa Copenhagen Wachs, and delicious fall themed desserts from The Bittersweet Kitchen.

Tumalo artist Lisa Copenhagen Wachs returns to Thump Coffee this month with an exhibit of new oil paintings. The area’s surrounding abundance of wildlife and nature continue to inspire her artwork, which has been described as “Northwest Mystic” in style.

“‘Moment, Place, and Interaction’ is the heart of my visceral and studied glimpses of surrounding landscape, whether it’s still for the moment, moving, or I am moving or still enough to capture it,” says Copenhagen Wachs. “The inherent mystery and essential abstractness of nature will always fascinate me as a human and artist.”

Copenhagen Wachs has been a fixture on the local art scene for more than a decade. She works as a self-employed graphic designer and fine artist and has worked and lived in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and Taos, New Mexico before settling in the Bend area in 1992. She paints primarily in oils and also works in mixed media collage/assemblage. She works in her Tumalo studio, which overlooks the high desert landscape.

see more at thump coffee's thumpology blog

9/9 noon: Ride Your Bike to Downtown Bend Bike Parking Dedication

Tomorrow, Thursday, September 9, noon to 3pm, 25 NW Minnesota (in front of thump coffee). Get on your bikes and ride!

Congrats Source "Best of" Clients & Friends

Congrats to my clients and friends at Thump Coffee (Best Coffee-three years running, Honorable Mention-Best Tea), Kebaba (Best Vegetarian, Best Ethnic, Honorable Mention-Best Casual Dining, plus Best Twitter) and Pizza Mondo (Best Pizza-13 years straight!) on the "Best of Central Oregon" honors in The Source Weekly's annual reader's poll! -hoc

Mixed Media Beard & Mustache Competition at Thump Coffee

Already hanging entries at thump - come by and check them out! -Harold
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Thump Coffee Mixed Media Beard & Mustache Competition

* Use the provided face template to bring your bearded/mustachioed person
to life.
* Embellish with color, texture, whatever materials you see fit.
* Make sue to give your character and his/her exceptional hair feature a
name.
* All entries due on or before Sunday, May 30, 4pm. Bring it in and clip
it up!
* Entries will be judged by members of Bend's COMBS club.
* All entries will be on display at Thump through Sunday, June 6.

First place wins $25 in free drinks at Thump, plus a feature on Thump's
Facebook page (facebook.com/thumpcoffee).

Age Group Categories:
beard
mustache
freestyle

Winners will be contacted by phone or email, so make sure to fill out the
back. We won't use this info for any other purpose.

Please retrieve your art after the competition between Monday, June 7 and
Friday, June 11.

January Art @ Thump Coffee: “Push” Division Street Skatepark Project Skateboard Deck Art, Plus Lloyd McMullen’s 2D/3D Mixed Media

Throughout January, Thump Coffee in downtown Bend hosts an exclusive sneak preview of “Push” skateboard decks customized by dozens of local, regional and national artists, including Adam Haynes, Mark Rada, Aaron Draplin, and T-Fly. The skateboard artworks will be auctioned in mid-February to benefit the Division Street Skatepark Project. Complimenting the Push showing are mixed media works in two- and three-dimensions by Bend artist and educator, Lloyd McMullen.

McMullen works extensively with found and recycled materials. “Everyday settings and homely objects inspire my art,” she explains. “Snatches of conversation overheard and cast-off items discovered underfoot serve as raw material and metaphor.”

McMullen’s two- and three-dimensional acrylic paintings are layered with deep transparent glazes to embed objects and color within the work. “My work is about time, seeking glimpses of history revealed in simple objects,” she says. “Discarded and broken detritus; random words from fortunes cookies, the daily news, found scraps of paper, classic works of literature ‘paint’ and reveal from the inside out. Currently my work explores figurative/abstract themes as story and symbol.”

McMullen is a Print Associate at Atelier 6000, a fine art prints studio and artists’ workshop in Bend; one of the founding members of Artists Local 101, a Central Oregon-based contemporary art group; Visual Arts Program Director at Young Musicians & Artists, a Willamette University-based program.

McMullen’s work is currently on display in the “On the Cutting Edge” exhibit at the Coos Art Museum. In Bend, work is on display in the “Paper Rock Scissors” show at Atelier 6000, and includes an outdoor installation, “Enlightenment”, at Gossamer, the Knitting Place. Recent invitational/juried exhibits include Atelier 6000, the 135 UP! gallery, and Central Oregon Community College in Bend, OR; the Art House Gallery, Atlanta, GA.; Maude Kerns Art Center, Eugene, OR; the Firehouse Gallery, Del Rio Council for the Arts, TX; and includes outdoor installations in Central Oregon.

For more about McMullen and her work, visit her website.

According to organizers, Push is modeled after a similar community skatepark project in Montana and inspired by Portland’s famed Burnside skatepark and similar DIY parks. “Though we have lots of sun here in Central Oregon, a covered skatepark designed, built, and maintained by skaters without the help of the parks dept, or the city is the goal,” say organizers.

Situated on Division Street under the Bend Parkway, the land is currently vacant and strewn with large boulders. The project crew, comprised of volunteers who have dreamt of such an opportunity for years, has already formed a 501(c)3 nonprofit in order to secure grants and funds for building the park, which has already won the support of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

For more information on the skatepark project, go to divisionstreetskatepark.org.

Thump Coffee is located in downtown Bend at 25 NW Minnesota Ave. For details, visit www.ThumpCoffee.com or call 541-388-0226.

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Kristin Klus Photography at Thump Coffee | November 2009

Looking forward to more hand-tinted darkroom prints @thumpcoffee from Klus. -hoc
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Kristin Klus Photography at Thump Coffee, throughout the month of November 2009.

(BEND, OR) Scenes from Central Oregon by local photographer Kristin Klus are showcased at Thump Coffee in downtown Bend throughout November. Klus’s works bridge the gap between classic darkroom photography and newer digital techniques in the artist’s self-described quest to create photographs as “powerful as nature itself.”

“Photography is my way to share my adventures with the world,” says Klus. “My goal has always been to create photographs as powerful as nature itself by capturing the perfect lighting, angle, and exposure while in the field. The focus of my current collection is on capturing the beautiful landscapes and wildlife that I am so lucky to be exposed to here in Central Oregon.”

A native Oregonian who grew up with a strong love for the outdoors, Klus discovered a passion for photography in a high school photography class, and she pursued both academic training — earning a degree in photography — and hands-on experience working at a camera shop while attending Central Oregon Community College.

Klus’s work has been published in Photographers Forum magazine, and her photography can be found in businesses and private collections throughout Central Oregon. Visit her website at kristinklusphotography.com.

Thump Coffee is located in downtown Bend at 25 NW Minnesota Ave. For details about art exhibits, coffee cuppings and other events, visit www.ThumpCoffee.com or call 541-388-0226.

Photo Caption: “Historic Old Mill” by Kristin Klus (hand-tinted black-and-white darkroom print, 12”x18”). “This photo was taken nine years ago. The pond has been bulldozed, and new buildings have blocked this angle entirely,” says Klus.

Lori LaBissoniere’s “Transitions” Paintings at Thump Coffee

Thump Coffee will be open until 8pm on Friday, October 2 for the Fall Art Hop. Featuring: Lori LaBissoniere’s “Transitions” Paintings. -hoc
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Local painter Lori LaBissonier’s “Transitions” show of recent works is on exhibit at Thump Coffee in downtown Bend throughout October. LaBissonier explains that this collection of paintings “deals with the inevitable and ever-changing transition of seasons that have a significant effect on our psyche here in the Northwest.”

“As the bright notes of yellow summer fade into the fall and on to the icy blues of winter,” she says, “our mood tends to shift along with the progression of the seasons. We begin to reminisce upon life as it was and anticipate the seasons to come.”

LaBissonier says these paintings were created in hopes of “transporting the viewer to various times of the year, reminding them of the importance of the transformations of nature and the often significant effects of the changing seasons.”

LaBissonier received her B.A. in Fine Art from Gonzaga University in 2002. Her inspirations include travels in France, Italy and Australia, studying the works of artists and masters of the past, and a love of the. “My creativity is most alive when I’ve just visited a snow-capped mountain, a sun-kissed oceanside, or felt God’s inspiration shining down from the crack in a stormy sky.”

Since relocating to the Bend area from her hometown of Yakima, Washington, LaBissonier has been involved with Poethouse Art, where she has been a resident artist and art class coordinator. Visit her studio at Poethouse Art, or go to www.lorilynnart.com.

Thump Coffee is located in downtown Bend at 25 NW Minnesota Ave. For details about art exhibits, coffee cuppings and other events, visit www.ThumpCoffee.com or call 541-388-0226.

Dirk Spece Woodcut Prints & Alex Reisfar Paintings On Glass @thumpcoffee throughout September

Local tattoo artist Dirk Spece tag teams with local radio show host and crypto-zoologist Alex Reisfar in an artistic journey to lesser explored corners of the human psyche this month at Thump Coffee in downtown Bend. Throughout September, Spece displays his woodcut prints, and he invited Reisfar to exhibit his paintings on glass, as well.

Life-long Central Oregon resident Spece describes himself as “a tattooer by trade” working at Black Rabbit Tattoo in Bend. He began making woodcuts in 2004, shortly after he began tattooing, and his work has been shown in New York and Los Angeles, as well as locally. “My printmaking experience is self-taught,” says Spece. “I am influenced by traditional American tattoo imagery, skateboard graphics, early 20th Century illustration, and early American folk art. All of my work is printed by hand without the use of a press.”

Reisfar was born in Romania, and orphaned when his mother, an oil painter, was killed in a logging accident. Adopted by a Bend couple at age 2, he grew up here with a working woodcarver, Tristan Reisfar, for an adoptive father. “I think a fear of death, brought on by the loss of my mother at such a young age, was for me the main drive in wanting to become a great painter,” says Alex Reisfar.

“My father used to say that the sculpture was always there in the wood, waiting for him to carve away the surrounding stump that had entombed it. That image stuck with me, and still today I think of my paintings in the same way. The painting is there behind the glass somewhere. When I prepare to start a new piece, I’m like a child looking into a mirror in the dark, letting his mind and eyes dictate reality.”

For more about Alex Reisfar, his art and his radio show on KPOV 106.7 FM, “The League of Anarchist Crypto-Zoologists,” visit Alex Reisfar’s website.

To see more of Dirk Spece’s tattoo art and woodcut prints, visit the Dirk Spece “Artists & Staff” page in the Portfolio section of blackrabbittattoo.com