BCC’s Gallery Space features Seattle sculptors Julia Haack, Tom Gormally

Works by noted Seattle sculptors Julia Haack and Tom Gormally will be on exhibit Nov. 3 through Dec. 10 at Bellevue Community College’s Gallery Space.

A free, public reception for the artists will be held Thursday, Nov. 6, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the gallery.

Gallery Space is located in room 271 of BCC’s D Building, which is located on the south courtyard of the college’s main campus (3000 Landerholm Circle S.E. in Bellevue, at the intersection of S.E. 28th St. and 148th Ave. S.E.).

Entitled “Bent, Turned & Fabricated,” the exhibit will be open to the public free of charge daily from noon to 6 p.m. except on Fridays and Sundays, when the gallery is closed.

Both Haack and Gormally are known for their work in wood and recycled materials.

Haack works especially in waste material reclaimed from construction sites, illegal dump sites, commercial buildings, recycling businesses and other artists’ leftovers.

She derives much of her inspiration from architecture, especially, she says, “the practicalities that govern how a building is both constructed and deconstructed…. Each layer in the building process is like a skin, and I echo these procedures as I build my sculptures.”

Haack’s works have been exhibited widely in the Seattle area, as well as in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Georgia.

Gormally is known primarily for what he describes as “wonderfully illogical sculptural absurdities, such as personal nuclear cooling towers.”

His darkly humorous works, some diminutive and others massive, address issues of transportation, nuclear energy and the current generation’s legacy to future ones.

In representing technologically advanced forms in such basic material as wood, Gormally says, he “invokes an earlier time as well as the naiveté of childhood, imbuing the sculptures with lightness and whimsy while at the same time reminding us of who will inherit our legacy.”

Gormally’s work has been exhibited in New Mexico, New York City, several mid-western states and Belfast, Ireland, in addition to Seattle.

SAFECO Insurance Company, Chemical Bank of New York and Blanden Memorial Art Museum in Iowa all have purchased Gormally sculptures for their permanent collections.