Mercer Island’s First Thursday art and wine to celebrate holidays, gift giving

SZ Gallery and Clarke and Clarke will celebrate the holidays and the “art of gift giving” at this month’s First Thursday Art and Wine walk, to be held from 5-8 p.m. on Dec. 1.

Wear festive attire to SZ Gallery’s first annual holiday party, “to thank our wonderful community of clients, creatives and collaborators for a fun and fruitful year.” The featured artist is Anna Skibska. The gallery will have bubbles and bites, provided by The Islander.

Clarke and Clarke will also have bubbly, bonbons and sweet treats from the New Seasons bakery. It will show Nancy Fischer’s “Ethnographic Esoteric Eclectic Adornment Collection” and hand-painted contemporary art shawls and table runners by Hollyce Phillips.

Fischer was a pioneer in the creation of one of the first galleries in Bellevue Square. In 1961, a handful of community volunteers opened the Pacific Northwest Arts and Crafts Association (PANACA), an offshoot of the Bellevue Arts Fair that began in 1947. Fischer was its director until 1996, and has remained active in the arts. She curates a collection of Northwest native crafts and creates jewelry.

The Phillips collection will be offered throughout the month of December, along with a new collection of Japanese Rag Obi or Sake Ori sashes and a “Beaded Turtle” collection by New Mexico/Oregon collector and dealer Sarah Gray.

“Sarah specializes in amulets and rare tribal objects of adornment. You will find that a one-of-a-kind pendant piece is a perfect gift for the person who has everything — or likes to be unique,” according to a Clarke and Clarke press release. “They are unisex and powerful pieces.”