Take a Chair

“The thing about chairs is they’re always inviting you to sit awhile, to rest, or meditate, or even curl up and sleep. I think I’ve always had something of a love affair with chairs.”— LeAnne Ries

Yakima artist LeAnne Ries has a point.

Just sitting in a room — even an empty room — chairs call to us. The straight-backed dining chair tells us, “Sit, dinner is ready.” The over-stuffed armchair suggests, “Go get your book. I’ll wait for you to get back.” Even the hard wooden pews of a church remind us through their upright backs and hard seats, “Sit, but don’t get too comfortable. Pay attention.”

The paintings of chairs in Ries’ collection, Interior Spaces, which was recently shown at Yakima’s Oak Hollow Gallery, beckon to passers-by in a similar manner. Not to sit, of course, but to lean in, observe the brush strokes, the subtle elements of collage and lighting, and to imagine how settling down in one of those chairs might feel.
Interior Spaces tells the story of Ries’ self-described “love affair” with chairs. The name of each painting gives the viewer a glimpse of her personal side: Dream, Meditation, and Chair of Success to name a few.

“Each one speaks to me, with its own invitation,” says the Yakima native.
Ries has also recently published a book, The Calling, which is a collection of poems that she says, “Are my 40s in a nutshell.”

Now 48, Ries has been married for 25 years to husband Gerry; they have two boys, who are 12 and 14. Ries says her life has provided her with ordinary experiences that she has transformed into extraordinary art.

Like many young people, she left the Yakima Valley in her 20s, thinking she’d get a great job and change the world. In 1985, she and Gerry moved near San Francisco, where she earned a degree in English from UC Berkeley in 1991 and began working at a private liberal arts university. She had her boys and began the business of raising a family. Surrounded by creative people, Ries’ own artistic side was nurtured — a side she’s had since she was a kid.

“I played lead guitar in a high school rock band,” she said. “I had this well inside and it needed an outlet. It was music then, then visual arts and poetry.”

In 2001 she earned a master’s degree in transpersonal psychology (a field based on Carl Jung that focuses on human potential) from John F. Kennedy University. During this time she also became interested in transformative art. Finding freedom and reassurance in acrylics, she had her first show of abstract florals in a popular Bay-area coffee shop in 1998.

As much as she loved living by the bay, Ries knew she would return to Yakima some day, which she did in 2004. Return Ticket, a poem in The Calling, describes the pull she felt so strongly for so many years:

I was pulled back to it.
In fact, it had its fingers
on the collar of my shirt
For the entire twenty years I was gone.

Ries’ ability to conjure such a vivid image — one to which many of us can relate — is one of the reasons she is such a compelling artist. Her artwork, which has earned regional honors and awards, adorns many Yakima and California homes and offices. She’s received requests to teach as well.

The Calling is the third and latest in the Labyrinth Chapbook Series, published this year through Allied Arts. The book delves into issues of parenting, friendship and the struggle of losing a parent. Goodbye Julia is about the death of her son’s goldfish, and that moment when a child realizes nothing is perfect. Scooters smacks poignantly of best-friendship, when being called home from playing just meant counting the minutes until you could be together again. Afloat tells of the euphoric feelings of holding hands with that first love for the first time.

Whether through words, music or paint, Ries expresses that well of creativity inside of her. The final poem in The Calling is reassurance, for those who appreciate her work, that there is still more to come.

Ars Poetica
Because the dandelion
will not evolve a brain
and write a poem itself.

No matter how many eons
no matter if universes
rise and fall
until every possible history
has played out
and monkeys
have actually typed
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
because there’s no end to time
that ends and starts again.

Even with the advantage of eternity
still, the wheat fields,
the eyelid-thin peonies
and the cherry blossoms
will not rise up
to realize themselves.
I write for them.

Ries did not know her art show and poetry book would converge in a show together. But both events came to fruition at the same time, resulting in a chapbook cover decorated with couches and chairs in a gallery blooming with the same art. Ries beams, “It has been a creative year.”