About Us - Collecting since 1978

Doug + Laurie Kanyer met in 1978 while college students at Central Washington University (CWU). The Kanyers spent much of their courtship enjoying exhibitions at The Sarah Spurgeon Gallery on the campus of CWU and Gallery One in downtown Ellensburg. Their first art purchase was in 1978 and was a graphite-on-paper drawing by Nancy O’Connell, then a CWU art student. In 1981 they graduated from CWU, Doug with a degree in business economics and Laurie with a degree in family life education. Laurie eventually went on to get a master’s degree in human development from St. Mary’s University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

 They married in Yakima, Washington, USA, in 1981 and they reside there today. They have three grown children, Elisabeth Kanyer, Kirsten (married to Andy) Dahlhauser and Wyatt Kanyer. They have one grandchild, Wesley, who was born in 2017.

 Doug worked in banking, technology and is currently a partner in Glacier Sales, a frozen food company focused on potato products. Laurie worked with families until her retirement and wrote two books on parenting. Laurie is also an artist with a practice dating back to 1998.

Art of the Co-founder

Collection co-founder Laurie Kanyer has her own vibrant art practice dating back to 1998. She worked in sculptural beadwork from 1998 to 2005. From 2000 to present, she has made art using ink on paper. Her work can be found in a number of permanent art collections.

She added collage to her art practice in 2016.

Her early collage exploration dates back to 1986, where she previously used collage in her professional work setting as a parenting educator and a counselor. Then, she began exploring collage in her art practice in April 2016.

Her accidental discovery of collage led to a journey that created this collection’s vision. Today, that journey includes a daily exploration of collage. That daily exploration has facilitated a deep kinship and understanding with fellow collage artists. Laurie now has a personal view and knowledge of the importance of recognizing collage, collagists, and the need for a historical collection. She is dedicated to ongoing work that might further the movement of elevating collage in art history.

Philanthropy

Beginning in 1998, the Kanyers slowly started making contributions to the arts community in Yakima. They underwrote numerous artist awards at Larson Gallery and Allied Arts of Yakima and sponsored a number of exhibitions during their early days as art patrons.

Yakima Light Project

In 2007, the Kanyers engaged with Yakima arts and culture leaders to initiate discussions to expand visual arts in the town’s downtown core. These efforts eventually became Yakima Light Project (YLP), an effort that allowed Laurie to become a facilitator for the discussions about elevating Yakima’s artistic profile.

YLP sought to unite the Yakima arts and culture leaders under a unified brand and mission with the theme of LIGHT. Yakima is located in the high desert climatic zone and enjoys 300 days of sunlight annually. It is a premier location to explore the wonders of light (and shadow) and is known world wide for exquisite agricultural products such as apples, hops, mint, and vegetables, as well as craft beer and wine. The goal of YLP was to expand the art offerings to the East side of the community, the downtown core and to highlight Yakima as the capital of LIGHT. 

Out of these efforts, Laurie and YLP opened The Light Project Gallery in 2015. The Gallery was in partnership with an existing non-profit, The Seasons Performance Hall. The gallery was the first non-profit art gallery in the Yakima downtown core. All of the leading cultural organizations supported and contributed to this effort to expand the arts to downtown. The Kanyers were the primary funders of the gallery space remodel and underwrote the gallery’s operational costs for years. In the gallery’s first year, the Kanyers supported a facility remodel, which included painting the entire interior of the The Seasons Performance Hall space (a converted church sanctuary) and landscape improvements.

Laurie was the volunteer director of Yakima Light Gallery at its inception. She was awarded the Washington State Museum Association Award for Individual Excellence in 2015 for her work on Yakima Light Project Gallery. In that same year Laurie appointed Yesenia Hunter as gallery director. Fifty-five percent of Yakima’s population are Latinx, and Yesenia was the first female Latinx director of an arts organization in the region.

Mighty Tieton

Tieton, Washington is the home of Mighty Tieton, an art and design business incubator founded by Ed Marquand and Mike Longyear. Mighty Tieton’s non-profit entity is Tieton Arts & Humanities.

Since 2009, the Kanyers have been the primary underwriters of 10 x 10 x 10 x Tieton, an annual exhibition produced by Tieton Arts & Humanities. This open call exhibition invites artists from anywhere, working in any medium, to submit pieces that are no larger than 10 inches in any single dimension. In 2019, over 1000 entries from around the world were submitted for professional jurying. The final show included 193 artworks. A catalog of each exhibition is published and bound in Tieton.

Since 2017, a newly graduated college art student is selected each year to coordinate 10x10’s production, including art handling, installation, gallery supervision, and communication with the artists. This offers each new graduate their first professional job in the art industry. 

In 2015, when a need arose to support the Tieton Mosaic Project—one of TA&H’s major efforts—the Kanyers stepped in to provide short-term funding, allowing the artist to complete the project.

Yakima Valley Museum

Along with John Baule, Laurie was the founder of an artist residency through Yakima Valley Museum, initiated in 2015. Due to limited exhibition space in Yakima, Laurie felt it was important to give both seasoned and emerging artists an opportunity for deeper exploration of their art and a guaranteed exhibition. Residents have included Doug Johnson (2016), Tom Hauskin (2017), Carolyn Nelson (2018)  and Bill Brennan (2019). Each selected resident receives support to further develop their careers. Specifically, this support includes provisions of all artist materials, a printed catalogue of works, and an exhibition opportunity at the Museum. In the end, each artist contributes one of their works to the Museum art collection.

Additionally the Kanyers were the co-executors for the artist Charles A. Smith estate. Upon his death the Kanyers invited the Museum to make selections from his extensive art collection. A total of 60 works were donated. 

From their own collection of Central Washington Art the Kanyers made a total donation of 161 pieces of art. An initial bundle of artworks totaling 126 pics were gifted to honor the retirement of museum director, John Baule.

National Artist Development

The Kanyers have funded individual artists’ projects to expand a number of respective artistic endeavors. Recipients include musician Justin Klump (Nashville, Tennessee) and Lucas Spivey (Boston, Massachusetts). Klump was able to expand his production studio with his grant monies. This allowed him the opportunity to produce both his and other artists’ music. Spivey used his grant to fund Culture Hustlers which in its inception was a podcast focused on cultural leaders. His work is presently focused on a creative business school. 

 Yakima Maker Space

In 2016 when the Kanyers learned the Yakima Maker Space (YMS) was in danger of closing, they offered a grant to hire the first director of YMS. This grant also funded an organizational remodel and reboot. The YMS is thriving three years later.

 Sagebrush Film Festival

In the fall of 2016, the Kanyers underwrote support for the first annual Sagebrush Film Festival. This grant included an educational travel grant that sent the festival’s founders to the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Sagebrush is now planning their fourth season.

Yakima Schools Foundation - Yakima School District

The Kanyers were made aware that art offerings for Lewis and Clark Junior High School were being cut. They worked with educators at the school and the Yakima Schools Foundation to create an endowment for an after school art club for the students.

 Kolaj Fest

2017 also brought a new partnership with Kolaj Magazine and the magazine’s publisher, Ric Kadour. Laurie had begun to work in collage and sought out others to hold a gathering to bring collage artists together to further the appreciation of collage. She approached a number of people with an offer to underwrite a proposed event if they would provide the production. Kadour agreed, and the first Kolaj Fest was held in New Orleans in 2018.  One-hundred and fifty collagists from all over the globe attended.