REEDSPORT – You don’t always know where life is going to take you. That adage held true for sisters Tamara and Tara Szalewski, co-owners of Mindpower Gallery, whose family sailed up the coast from California, stopped in Reedsport, Oregon and never left. It held true for Bob Keefer too, who late in life was taken by the idea of becoming an artist, and who is exhibiting his work at Mindpower from August 22 to September 26.

Keefer earned a BA from Harvard University in History of Religion after which he began a career as a reporter covering the crime beat in Los Angeles, the town where he was raised. His exhibit, Colors of the West, is a collection of 16 hand-colored black and white photographs of western landscapes. It will open on August 22nd with a reception and demonstration from the artist.

Keefer’s interest in the arts was sparked when interviewing an artist for The Register – Guard in Eugene, where he worked as a journalist for nearly 30 years. Impressed by the passion she had for her work, he began to seek out more stories about artists. After retiring from The Register – Guard, he took a job as arts editor at Eugene Weekly where he worked for seven years and where he is still “Arts Editor Emeritus” and a freelance writer.

He took art and art history classes at Lane Community College too, which  were “life changing” and the idea that he could become an artist worked on him. Then slowly but surely, he changed the path of his career and now, about a year and a half after retiring from Eugene Weekly, he works full-time on his art. He has now exhibited in the Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene, the Arts Center in Corvallis, the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, and at Oregon State University in Corvallis. 

Sisters Tamara and Tara Szalewski have had lives that revolve around art, yet neither studied it or make it. Unless you count Mindpower Gallery, which has been a work in progress for the past 36 years. The three-storefront gallery is on Fir Street in Reedsport, a town that sits between Coos Bay and Florence that is perhaps better known for its dune-buggy-riding than an art scene. 

The sisters began their gallery as a place for their mother Rose to show her work. She had long aspired to be an artist. As infants, Tara and Tamara had ripped up their mother’s art. The charming origin story for the gallery is simply “We owed her.” They started in 1989 in a rented space inside one of the three stores Mindpower now owns. The stores are connected inside which makes for a large and busy commercial space that not only represents 50 artists, but includes a massage therapy business, a wine bar and a forthcoming custom frame shop. 

Though neither sister was trained as an artist, each was quick to praise the other’s creative abilities. Tara is a massage therapist with “a good nose for wine” who oversees the wine bar, a substantial room with tables that have art books on them, as well as a bar that represents 30 local wineries from Umpqua Valley. Tara’s therapy practice is in another room. The two are entirely separate from the gallery though located within what can now be called a compound. 

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Tamara runs the art portion of the gallery. She put up a “maze of walls,” as she calls them, that allows for all the artists to have display space. She put the floors in too, which are made of repurposed paper bags. When you go, check out her “blue-jean wall” which is constructed out of old pairs of jeans from her two sons. 

She is familiar with construction, she explained, because her family built a schooner which they lived in for five years. Sailing up the coast from Bodega Bay, where they were while building the boat, they stopped at Reedsport and fell in love with all it had to offer as far as water was concerned: a river (the Umpqua), lakes, and of course, the ocean.   

Tamara was introduced to Keefer’s work last year when he submitted it to be included in the gallery’s 35^th anniversary show. She liked that his art was unique, which is the one criterion she looks for in an artist. She appreciated the mystery in his images, as well. 

“You just know there’s a story behind each one,” she said. 

It’s easy to see what she means. Keefer has been a storyteller his whole career. Though as a reporter he took photographs to accompany stories. Now they are the main attraction. 

Keefer’s flair for drama in art relates to his use of foreshortened perspective, contrast between digital and hand-colored medium, and a lot of dynamic composition. After the Ice Storm is an artwork that depicts an intriguing swatch of forest from the nearly 19 acres of land where Keefer has been living on with his wife and son for about the last 40 years. It offers a view from the ground, so right away we’re drawn in. It was taken after the last ice storm, as the title indicates, when Eugene and surrounding areas were left strewn with felled trees for a long time after, so those of us who lived here couldn’t help but be reminded of the damage done.   

After the Ice Storm is a still shot reflecting a violent occurrence. Somehow calm even with an intensely dynamic design. Fallen logs direct the eye diagonally through the page and the trees that still stand. Beyond lies a layer of mist, unknowable but part of the story.  

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You get the feeling, looking at Keefer’s art, and his Substack account—Bob Keefer’s Paint and Photography—that he doesn’t take where he lives for granted, not even after nearly four decades there. On July 15, 2025, he posted a black and white photograph of a doe, not painted, with the caption “The doe listens to noise from the woods.” The photograph accompanies an anecdote titled “A forest mystery, solved” where he relates spending 20 minutes with a frightened doe on his property, listening to “something go bump in the trees” (it turned out to be a bobcat).

Keefer was first drawn to art after he interviewed an artist but experimenting with coloring a black-and-white photograph was another start. He “messed around” by blending colored pencils with salad oil, which resulted in “something like paint.” Over the years, he’s messed around with other mediums for color, too. He switched to digital photography after his son Noah Strycker convinced him to give it a try. For the past few years, he has used “open” acrylic paints that stay wet and workable longer, like oils. 

Some of his artworks elicit a nostalgic feeling, reminding us of a time when the only color in pictures was added in. Other of his pieces delve further into painting, obstructing and abstracting background so the subject exists in an ambiguous space. 

Ambiguity is one of those things artists often strive for in their work. It’s a contemporary idea that a work of art can be seen in more than one way, but the idea that people can be more than one thing has always been true. The Szalewski sisters have kept an art gallery up and running since the eighties, and any gallerist will tell you that’s not an easy thing to do. In the meanwhile they’ve raised children, become professionals in other fields and continue to grow. Keefer is an artist now but is still a journalist as well. Last month he wrote a story about a student artist at the University of Oregon that caused quite a stir, and he’s become a novelist, too. We never know what lies ahead – where we’re going to stop or who we’re going to meet – it’s all possibilities.

Mindpower Gallery is located at 417 Fir Ave (Highway 38) in Reedsport, Oregon. The opening reception and artist demonstration for Keefer’s show Colors of the West will be on August 22nd from 4-7 PM. The gallery’s regular hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 AM – 5 PM.