fine art that's free
But you have to find it first
Words by Linda Kramer Jenning
Images by Olya Blase (photos)
& Karen Sawyer (prints)
She hides them here, she hides them there. Bremerton artist Karen Sawyer hides her fine art posters everywhere, and if you find one, it's yours.
If that sounds too good to be true, it isn't. Anyone who spots one of Sawyer's limited edition posters during a Bremerton First Friday Art Walk can walk away with it. "I think art and beauty aren't just for the wealthy," says Sawyer. "Art and beauty are for everybody no matter their place or status or background."
Sawyer is passionate about her Bremerton hometown and named her art giveaway Heavy Jeens after posters from the Works Progress Administration that advised women shipyard workers on appropriate attire, using the double "e" spelling.
"As a woman artist, everything I do should empower women to some extent, so the name is a tip of the hat to ladies doing things that are different and hard and getting the job done," says Sawyer, 39.
Each month she prints anywhere from 60 to 120 posters, the majority designed by herself with occasional contributions by other artists. She drops them off at a shifting mix of local businesses for the First Friday Art Walks in Downtown Bremerton, Charleston, Lebo and Manette. She posts hints on Instagram to give poster seekers ideas of where to search. To make the monthly art quest more challenging, shop owners don't just display the posters in their windows. They secret them in spots that draw people inside their shops.
"Heavy Jeens encourages people to explore their town," says Sawyer. "They're in specific places. You can't just grab one. If you go to a shop that you know has one, you have to look. They might be hidden behind books or among T-shirts, and they usually have a sticky note saying it's a Heavy Jeens and it's for taking. The point is you have to interact with the business to get one, and the feedback from businesses has been fabulous."
"The best part is everybody coming into a store and looking for posters," agrees Cynthia Engelgau, a member of the Bremerton Arts Commission. "The businesses get more people that wouldn't normally come into their shops in search of the posters.
"Karen is giving the community the opportunity to have free real art," adds Engelgau. "A lot of people don't have the opportunity to purchase art or maybe they are not even familiar with art. This is something that exposes them, and the fact that it's a scavenger hunt makes it fun."
Engelgau has collected a few posters herself and says some also hang on the walls at the Parks Department where she worked for 32 years. Congresswoman Emily Randall displays a few Heavy Jeens in her DC apartment as a connection to her home. Sawyer's husband, Robert Meehan, a former Navy submariner, told his wife he saw a Heavy Jeens poster in a secure area at the shipyard. Ashley Martinez, owner of Ashley's Pub in Bremerton, has one of the most complete collections and appreciates how Heavy Jeens "brings people out into their community more and into spaces they wouldn't have necessarily gone into in the first place on the hunt for some of these posters."
Sawyer started drawing when she was a girl and went to Portland to study illustration. Once there, she discovered the school's printing department. "It was just one of those moments. I was like this is what I'm meant to do. I love that printmaking is communal by nature. It's a multiple art form, and I love that it is something to share."
After earning her BFA, Sawyer traveled and worked in retail
at Nordstrom. When pregnant with their daughter, she and Meehan decided to take the leap and run a printing business out of their home. They found a century-old letterpress in Indiana and had it shipped to Bremerton. Naming the new venture Pier Six Press after Bremerton's iconic landmark, Sawyer launched the business in 2016 with greeting cards and stationery she designed and printed herself (often with baby Lily strapped to her). She marketed her goods online and wholesale, with a number of area shops starting to carry them (see sidebar).
Letterpress, once the standard for printing, involves making an impression in the paper with each color applied separately and is very labor intensive. Sawyer later added a risograph to her business, which she calls "speed screen printing." It looks like a photo copier but acts like screen printing and still requires one color to be processed at a time. She also hired staff to help with the printing. With the business growing, she and her husband added a studio behind their house where the two large printers occupy the lower level and Sawyer's creative lair is upstairs.
"It's fun creating new things that people like," says Sawyer. "Everything that I create is made in America. All our cards are printed in-house, and all of our notepads are made in-house."
Sawyer's greeting cards and stationery reflect her love of bold colors and simple but fun and engaging designs, often inspired by a Pacific Northwest vibe. Last year, the Greeting Card Association awarded Pier Six its "Best Use of Color" award.
While creating the greeting cards, Sawyer never lost her dream of making posters. She remembered the examples she'd seen of WPA posters, like the one promoting "heavy jeens," and knew she wanted to create similar works. "That was kind of the seed," she says. "I loved how graphic and bold they are and the beautiful, precise design."
With a small start-up grant from the West Sound Arts Council and the encouragement of her artist network, Sawyer printed and distributed the first Heavy Jeens posters in June of 2018. They featured garden blooms mostly with shades of purple and a quote from Audrey Hepburn: "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."
Each month, Heavy Jeens reflects a different theme and the posters often have an inspirational or informative phrase like the old WPA posters Sawyer admires. One month she pictured artist Frida Kahlo with a bird and flowers in her hair and the quote: "I paint flowers so they will not die." A red poster with bold black lettering quoted Benjamin Franklin: "What good shall I do this day?" Another poster shows a pod of orcas, and one with birds says: "People prosper where birds thrive."
"I think art reflects what we know," says Sawyer, "and so Heavy Jeens will often have Northwest themes or Northwest foliage."
The posters on heavy 11" x 17" paper have additional cachet because each design is only used once. "We don't reprint them so they are limited editions. And because they are printed by hand, one color at a time, technically they are fine art prints," says Sawyer. "Heavy Jeens is accessible fine art."
Heavy Jeens is supported by Pier Six Press, local grants and donations. Sawyer now has volunteers that help her distribute the posters and planned a November celebration of the art giveaway's seventh anniversary.
"I'm passionate about Bremerton," says Sawyer, a past president of the Bremerton Rotary. "I feel very much that I want to leave Bremerton better. I put the posters out in the world and don't care where they go. The point is to give them away. People are still passionate about it. That's why I keep going."
A pub where art rules
It started with just one wall, says Ashley Martinez, owner of Ashley's Pub in Bremerton. Now she has one of the most complete collections of Heavy Jeens posters. "They've definitely taken over about half of my 4,400 square foot pub," says Martinez.
She first discovered Heavy Jeens like most fans by going out on the First Friday Art Walk and exploring. When she learned more about Karen Sawyer's monthly art giveaway, Martinez backed Heavy Jeens on Patreon. To thank her, Sawyer now regularly makes sure Ashley's Pub receives several posters each month. "It's very rare that people give away art," says Martinez, 38.
Martinez uses metal clips to stick the posters to coolers or the metal on doors and even on the ceiling. Then she watches customers come in on First Fridays and start snooping around. Some are her regulars and some are people who recognized a snap of the pub on Sawyer's Instagram. "It's fun to see people come in and hunt for them," says Martinez. "I may give them a hint or tell them, sorry, they're all found already."
Since opening her pub eight years ago, Martinez has made art central to its vibe. Each month she invites a local artist to the pub on First Friday to give a talk and dedicates a wall to that artist's work. Ashley's Pub also offers customers over 800 board games, 10 pinball machines and video game consoles in its mostly underground space.
"I wanted somewhere where I felt comfortable drinking as a single lady, and so I just kind of built it," says Martinez. "It's a very chill vibe." / Linda Kramer Jenning
Ashley's Pub, 409 Pacific Avenue, Bremerton
Where to find cards and goods
Ballast Book Company / Bremerton
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art / Bainbridge Island
CITRINE design shop / Issaquah
Cone & Steiner General / Seattle
Crow / Edmonds
elSage Designs / Mount Vernon
LUCCA great finds / Seattle
Pacific Northwest Shop / Seattle and Tacoma
Paper Luxe / Gig Harbor and Fircrest
Retail Therapy / Seattle
Salmonberry Books / Port Orchard
Stocklist Goods & Gifts / Tacoma