CORE 2026
Exhibiting contemporary art created by local artists!
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Saturday 12 - 6
and by appointment
CORE Solo Exhibitions on view
through November 28th, 2026
Pioneer Square Art Walk & Artist
Reception:
November 4th from 6-8pm
With generous support from 4Culture, CORE gallery weathered the challenges of the pandemic. Our doors remain open and walls filled with innovative art created by local artists! Thank you 4Culture !
CORE Gallery Artists
QUIET COMMOTION
Darwin Nordin
I am drawn to the quiet restlessness I experience in nature.
It is the tangled dynamic of forms and interactions occurring on microscopic and macroscopic proportions that attracts my attention.
I balance periods of working without premeditation and working with a focused study and depiction of nature.
In my works I compose and decompose scenarios, mingling and layering the known and ‘comfortable’ with the unknown
and sometimes ‘uncomfortable’ in order to explore and discover something new.
My art making is a way to get closer to the fragile and ever present forces of nature.
Like nature I embody a quiet restlessness. My works are acts of reciprocity to the natural world.
The works make visible my gratitudes and questions and celebrates that we all are nature and beauty.
THE NATURE OF SURFACE
Rob Droessler
My work explores texture, surface, and form through an intuitive process of experimentation and discovery. Inspired by memories of landscapes I've experienced, particularly the farmland surrounding my grandparents' farm, I create abstract ceramic sculptures that exist somewhere between maps and landscapes.
Using everyday materials to impress textures into slabs of clay, I build forms that evolve as I work, allowing the clay to guide the process. These surfaces suggest cliffs, mountains, waterways, and other features of the natural world. Multiple layers of underglaze emphasize the textures, creating rich, weathered surfaces that bring together color, form, and pattern.
In a separate body of work, I explore the contrast between rigid geometric shapes and the illusion of softness, manipulating clay and 3D-printed forms to resemble tufted cushions and folded surfaces.
My work is driven by curiosity and the possibilities of materials. Rather than defining what viewers should see, I hope the sculptures invite exploration and evoke personal memories of landscapes and places they have experienced.