BREMERTON — Alan Newberg was practicing social distancing well before the state's "stay home" edict.
Isolation is not a foreign concept to artists like Newberg, who spend much of their time alone, in studios, creating. In Newberg's case, he's recently been finding art in hunks of wood and gnarled root systems that he can shape and varnish into things of beauty.
"I've been hunkered down in my studio for the better part of a year," he said of his preparations for a two-person show (with painter Jane Friedman) which was to be on display during April at Port Townsend's Northwind Arts Center.
The key phrase there? Was to. As efforts to slow the advance of the COVID-19 coronovirus by shutting down public gatherings intensified, the show was put on indefinite hold.
"The posters and show announcement were printed and ready to send out when Northwind cancelled," Newberg said. "It looks like it will not take place until April or May of 2021, maybe later than that."
Newberg said the decision — made before Gov. Jay Inslee closed down all non-essential businesses for at least two weeks in an effort to keep people at home and prevent the spread of the virus — was understandable. But disappointing nonetheless.
"This was to be the biggest deal for me, art-wise, since the show at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art," he said of a three-month exhibit, "Abstractions in Wood," in 2017.
Newberg's not a stranger to anyone on the Kitsap art scene. He's one of the founders of the Collective Visions Art Gallery, a Pacific Avenue fixture, and one of the driving forces behind the CVG Show, a statewide juried show that has become one of the state's most anticipated and prestigious in its 13-year history. Also an accomplished painter of large-scale pieces, his murals have greeted downtown Bremerton habitues and tourists alike for decades.
Newberg managed to find a silver lining in having his show placed on hold by the anti-virus efforts.
"I've been impacted (by the pandemic)," he said. "Fortunately, I have not been ill, though."
He said he'll use the time until the show can actually open to continue working on its centerpiece, which he described as "a 6-foot-tall full-figurer portrait carving of Nina Simone, as if it was still due for unveiling April 1."
That'll keep him "hunkered" for part of the lockdown, anyway.
Find Newberg's artist's profile and examples of his work at the Collective Visions Art Gallery Web site.