Every month Crossroads Carnegie Art Center opens a new art exhibit in the main gallery area upstairs in the 110 year old Carnegie Library. This month, February, we are very excited and pleased to announce a two-man show featuring award winning photographer, Jerry Kencke and local woodworking artist, David Mespelt. Mespelt, has been woodworking since age 11 and began exhibiting only one year ago. Currently he has collectors in Texas, Sun River, Oregon, Boise, and a handful in Baker City.

Mespelts woodworking pieces are unique and beautiful. With careful thought, consideration, and insight given to the type of wood, David creates sculptures from found drift wood and felled trees, to small trays and plates made from the straight grain fir bleachers which were once used in the Baker High School gymnasium. Mespelt work is both practical and functional, like wood platters for everyday use or three dimension or two dimensional abstract art ready to display on a special shelf or wall.

Jerry Kencke is a lifelong resident of Idaho and for the past 40 plus years he has used his camera to record the beauty, excitement and rugged scenes of the western life he has come to cherish. Jerry was named a "Western Masters Artist in 2013. He is the first and only photographer ever accepted in this fine art organization's 40-year history and partnership with the Charles M. Russell museum in Great Falls, Montana. Kencke has always been fascinated by the unusual when he is traveling. "The purest forms of abstract are all around us. The challenge is to see the pattern and formless shapes within our surrounds, to see more than just what we recognize and name as rock, trees, sky water." -Jerry Kencke.