This September, Hoffman Center for the Arts presents a gallery exhibition featuring work by Sherrie Wolf, Lisa Conway, and Rachael Bowles.
The show opens Thursday, September 3, 2026, and runs through Saturday, September 26, 2026.
Opening reception: Saturday, September 5, from 3 to 5 p.m.
Please join us for this free community gathering is a chance to meet the artists, hear more about their work, and spend time with neighbors, visitors, and art lovers at the Hoffman Gallery.
Rachael K Bowles
Rachael K Bowles is an abstract landscape artist based in Hillsboro, OR. She primarily works in oil painting and monotype printmaking. Born in Kailua, HI, on the island of Oahu in 1978, Rachael attended high school at the Academy of the Pacific, where she discovered darkroom photography, sparking a passion that provided a positive and creative outlet during her teenage years. In 1996, she earned the first annual Art Award for her photography. She graduated from Windward Community College in the University of Hawaii System in 2000 with an AA and studied fine arts. Her professors nominated her for the Artist Guild Award based on her outstanding work in photography, drawing, and painting. After relocating to Oregon in 2004, Rachael focused on family life but continued to prioritize her art practice. In 2019, she started taking art classes at the Oregon Society of Artists, which introduced her to monotype printmaking. This new technique, along with further studies in color theory and painting fundamentals, significantly influenced her artistic approach. Through these studies, Rachael arrived where she is today, leading her to create color-driven abstract landscapes that draw on the natural world to explore emotional depth. Rachael has exhibited her work at the Oregon Society of Artists, where she has won several honorable mention and people's choice awards, as a guest artist at Waterstone Gallery and Community PDX.
Instagram: @Blackrainbow1
On Wayfinding:
I am an interdisciplinary abstract landscape artist whose primary mediums are oil painting and monotype printmaking.
Photography and sketching are central to my creative process. I draw on my photography background to develop ideas, then use sketching, color studies, memory, and observation to move beyond direct photographic reference. My goal is to convey a sense of place and mood through color, rather than document specific locations.
My connection to the Pacific Ocean strongly shapes my work, which explores place, memory, and meaningful reference points, beginning with my birthplace in Hawaii. I see these elements as interconnected. Wayfinding, a navigation system based on observation and memory, is central to this exploration. Polynesian navigators crossed the Pacific by interpreting stars, the sun, ocean swells, birds, and other natural signs as clues to direction and location.
While building this body of work, I realized I often use similar navigational tools to find my focus and attention. I look for clues in the terrain that tell a story; I seek shapes with weight and presence; and I look at what the light is doing most of all. Whether diffused through rain, clouds, and trees or dazzling the sky and shores with a prismatic display, I want it all.
I aim to connect with the elements and experiences of the dynamic coastal environment. I am continually fascinated by rock formations and rugged terrain that reveal how time, erosion, and weather shape the landscape. The Pacific coasts, from the islands to the northern shorelines, are a constant source of inspiration for me. They encompass all the features that fuel my desire to create: big, moody weather, striking light, the interplay between the ocean's violence and calm, and the persistent struggle for life amid extremes.
Sherrie Wolf
Sherrie Wolf is an American photo-realistic painter and printmaker based in Portland, Oregon whohas won multiple awards for her work. She has been described as "one of Portland's most prominent artists. Her work is known for its postmodernism approach of appropriating elements from classical art alongside her own work. She often uses historical art as the background to boldly colored still lives.
Lisa Conway
Lisa Conway was born in Detroit, Michigan. She received a B.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1990 and an M.F.A. in ceramics from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge in 1993. In 1991 she was awarded a full fellowship to the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Lisa has taught art at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Portland Community College and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Since 2003, she has served as Professor of Art and Head of the Ceramics Area at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington.
My most recent work centers on a series of ceramic knots. Historically, knots have functioned as tools for storytelling, timekeeping, and calculation, and many knots carry narratives of love, promise, or faith. After years of exploring twisting plant forms and the interplay between interior and exterior spaces inherent in ceramic vessels, knots have now become a way for me to move from containment toward entanglement, tension, and connection. These layered meanings ground my work in both material history and human experience.
The knots I create are organic, bulging, and charged with tension. They suggest intimacy and restraint, vulnerability and strength. They speak to the promises we make to each other and the stories we tell about ourselves. At times, the knots read as two bodies - coupled strands of material bound together in connections that are tender, visceral, and essential.
Having lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest for over thirty years, I draw deep inspiration from its natural world. Quiet moments of observation and awe inform my practice, encouraging compassion, reflection, and joy. I hope my work offers viewers a similar sense of connection, gentleness, and embodied awareness.
The Hoffman Gallery is at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita, and admission is always free.