Photos tell story of boats' former sweaty, salty life

Susan Yaranon's dad is a boat builder and refinisher, and when she was a teenager, they moved onto a 55-foot Chris-Craft named the Salee Rose.

She remembers life at the marina, where she helped out with marine sales and even did some work sanding down another boat owned by Patrick Wayne, son of movie star John Wayne.

Yaranon is now an art-gallery owner, and when Mill Creek photographer Richard Duval brought in a photo he took of a sleek schooner, with the boat name prominently featured, she told him, "You should do a book on the names of boats. Call it 'Stern Words' or something like that."

"By the time I got to the parking lot, the whole idea was in my head," Duval said. "It was off to the races."

Duval shot dozens of boats for his book "SternWords and BowLines,"(Watermark Press; $34.50), out of which 15 photographs are on display through May 31 at Yaranon's Art & Soul Gallery in Bothell's Country Village.

Using nondigital Nikon cameras and shooting with Fuji slide film, Duval would go out in the early morning and late afternoon to Fishermen's Terminal, to The Center for Wooden Boats at the south end of Lake Union, to the spacious Port of Anacortes marina, Cap Sante Boat Haven, to wooden-boat and waterfront festivals from Seattle to Edmonds.

"SternWords and BowLines"


What, when: Richard Duval's photos of boats are featured in an exhibit through May 31.

Where: Art & Soul Gallery, Country Village, 817 238th St S.E., Suite A-B, Bothell

Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays

Information: 425-487-3777 or www.duvalimages.com

Nobody objected.

Mostly, nobody was there.

The emptiness lends an evocative quality, an expectancy, to the photos.

And Duval went for humor: "The Princess" is the most dilapidated boat. "The Duke," a homage to John Wayne, is "this itty-bitty boat," Yaranon said.

They'll make you smile, these tugboats, sailboats, dinghies, fishing boats, skiffs. The photos include better-known boats like the 19th-century tugboat Arthur Foss, seen in the 1933 film "Tugboat Annie," and the 1921 steamboat Virginia V.

Polished, gleaming white yachts didn't do much for Duval. He loved the ones "that looked weathered in a way you can tell the boat had experiences, and that meant the boat owner had experience."

In his book, printed this year, he explains what caught his eye:

"Boats with hulls bent, beat and burnished from a lifetime of near misses; simple rowboats and skiffs that reflect the water's light as a liquid mirror in a perfectly still hand; and polished wooden hulls that speak of a loving hand that lavished hours of salt and sweat. These boats — sturdy and shaky craft — tell a story."

Browse a marina and the names leap out at you: Viking. Carleta. Yvonne Marie. Ricky K. Kittewake. Names of a favorite moorage, a favorite adventure, a favorite lady.

About a year ago, Yaranon moved her gallery, which represents Duval and dozens of other artists, to a location near Stella Mia at the front of Country Village. She likes to mix media, so among the artists in the gallery — 90 percent local and regional — are glass artists, painters, book artists, paper artists, potters, wood turners, even a knife forger.

"So many different mediums is fun, like a treasure hunt," she says.

And rather surprising in quirky Country Village. With its roving bunnies, chickens and ducks, a park and nearly 50 shops, including a glassblowing studio, there's a lot going on beyond its ranch-style entrance, adorned by a large statue of a chicken.

"The name 'Country Village' is kind of deceiving," Yaranon says. "Regardless of the giant chicken, it's not all country."

Yaranon and Duval go back three years, when he premiered his "A Touch on Jazz" series of musician photographs at Art & Soul.

"Here's a guy who really loves his work but also is a marketer," Yaranon says. "Had he sat around and waited for someone to find his photography, no one would know who he is, he wouldn't have done a book, he wouldn't have been in several shows."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com