PTFF News
Newsletter Archives
April 14, 2008
ContentsThe Auction Continues...Two Fun Events to Support PTFF!
Several new items have been added to our online auction (<www.ptfilmfest.com>, click on “Click here for online auction”), but we’d like to bring your attention to two fundraisers that can bring you and friends together for a party in two of Port Townsend’s loveliest homes, one generously offered by Gary Kennedy and other by Marlies Egberding and Ritch Sorgen.
You can immediately make reservations for one or both of these special events by emailing sherry@ptfilmfest.com. Please indicate how many places at $45 each you wish to reserve for
Cocktails at Sunset
for 16 on May 10, 2008
You and 15 lucky PTFF supporters will enjoy cocktails and appetizers at the waterfront home of Gary Kennedy where you will enjoy piano selections by Nan Toby Tyrell, hors d’oeuvres by Dream City Catering, and weather gods permitting, a beautiful North Beach sunset overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
$45 per person. Must reserve by April 20th.
Wine Tasting
at the historic Siebenbaum Building
for 12 at 7 pm, Friday, May 30
$45 per person
Ritch Sorgen & Marlies Egberding (PTFF Board member) will host a wine tasting for twelve at the historic Siebenbaum building in downtown Port Townsend. Each wine will be paired with a selection of hors 'd'oeuvres. Known for their elegant dinners and receptions, your hosts will provide a convivial evening in one of Port Townsend's seldom seen historic downtown buildings.
Reservations can be made for both of these special events by emailing sherry@ptfilmfest.com.
Please indicate how many places at $45 each you wish to reserve for each party.
Cliff Finity Selected as 2008 PTFF Artist
Each year since its inception in 2000, the Port Townsend Film Festival has engaged local artists to develop an image on its various graphics, including brochures, postcards, and its commemorative poster. For 2008, the festival has chosen Cliff Finity, a Port Townsend resident for about ten years. His image, shown below, features a strip of 35mm film with one of its elements, a crab, breaking free from the frame.
Port Townsend resident Cliff Finity was born in 1954 a couple of miles from John Muir's grave, in the lap of Mount Diablo, roughly 20 miles from San Francisco. A self-taught painter using classical technique, his preferred medium is oil on Belgian linen canvas or museum-quality panels. His style is commonly described as "Surrealistic," although this kind of imaginary representational painting predates written history. His first one man show was in 1972 at the Vesuvio Bar, adjacent to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. His work is represented in collections around the world, from New York to Florence, Tucson to Seattle.
Port Townsend art critic Ann Katsenbach wrote of his work in www.artaccess.com in April, 2005:
What do the Italian Renaissance and Salvador Dali have in common? One answer is Cliff Finity
Finity taught himself the techniques of Renaissance painting during a three-month stay in Florence in 1996. The influence is evident, from his choice of oil on panel, to the fine brushwork and the varnished surfaces that make (his) small paintings . . . glow..
The images, however, are not sumptuous portraits or Tuscany landscapes, they are shards of dreams. They are visions that are personal, symbolic, and range from the humorous to the unsettling. This is surrealism conveyed through a keen mind and a meticulous brush.
Finity’s dreamscapes are almost all flat—their colors often somber and a bit off key. The images are clear and lustrous, but somehow distant. These are not paintings that invite you in. They are not sensual, but elegant and cerebral.
An inveterate reader of classical literature, a naturalist, and a computer wizard, Finity tends towards references that will puzzle most of us with more institutional educations. His visions are populated by hieroglyphs, birds, reptiles, Lepidoptera, strange burrs and bristles, vacuum tubes, barnacles, transistor parts, and yes, a watch or two.
You will find quotes from Hammurabi’s Code, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Farsi, and Chinese.
In some paintings these ancient scripts are the focus, in others they appear as tacked-on notes. And then there are images with no glyphs, but conundrums still abound.
Most of the time...being puzzled is part of the fun.
Finity’s image for the 2008 Port Townsend Film Festival will first be seen in advertisements in the forthcoming Port Townsend and Jefferson County (summer tourist) Guide and the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival official program (shown below). It will be incorporated into the festival’s pass and ticket brochure and will be the subject of the festival’s annual poster due for distribution in July.
