T he arts scene in 2019 will be filled with returning favorites and new events: Patrons of the arts can expect more visual art shows and sales, more indie film fare, a changing theater scene and inventive twists on traditional fare.

Visual arts

Each April, QuiltWorks in Bend holds a show of art quilts based on a book. Usually, it coincides with that year’s A Novel Idea, Deschutes Public Library’s annual community read. That, however, changes this year, according to owner Marilyn Forestell. “We have chosen our Oregon author and book,” she said. “Pamela Royes, who wrote ‘Temperance Creek.’ She will be attending our April First Friday event and giving a presentation the next day here at QW. The response from quilters has been awesome.” Forestell said it was time to look for alternative inspirations in order to re-energize the participating members of the quilting community.

The 2018 20-Dollar Art Show at Bright Place Gallery in Bend was the annual sale’s most successful yet with 60 artists and more than 900 pieces. “We had a line out the door, around the patio and out into the parking lot for,” said artist Stuart Breidenstein (Stuart’s of Bend). “The plan for (2019) is to do the same thing, but better. Entertainment for people waiting in line, mostly. Marching band, carnival games, fire dancers, etc. We will also be pushing to get more Portland artists as well as artists from Seattle and San Francisco. The date will be Saturday, Oct. 19.” Because other types of work often have to be turned away, Bright Place is planning a new event, the 20-Dollar Craft Show, tentatively scheduled for March 23.

At Liberty in Downtown Bend will host an opening for “SIFT: a selection of works by Whitney Nye,” during the January First Friday Gallery Walk, happening Friday. A collaboration with Portland’s Russo Lee Gallery, it shows through Feb. 23.

Bend artist Kelly Thiel is collaborating with Healing Reins Therapeutic Riding Center on a reception and show tied to plein air work artists are doing at the equestrian center, which works with special needs children, struggling teens and challenged adults. Expect the show, titled “Essence of Place,” sometime in June. More immediately, Thiel is collaborating with Athleta in the Old Mill, starting with Tuesday’s photo shoot using females modeling Athleta wear. “From that photo shoot, I will create seven to nine large portraits of the women, showing their natural strength, power and elegance,” Thiel said.

Painter and art professor Ian Factor will set up shop at Base Camp Studios for the winter semester of his Bend Academy of Art. He’ll teach long-form figure painting Monday and Wednesday evenings. Factor also teaches art at Central Oregon Community College where he’ll be teaching Painting I and Figure Drawing and Anatomy during winter quarter. Works from the Figure Drawing class will exhibit in March at Gallery at the Pinckney Center for the Arts; the opening is scheduled for 5 p.m. March 7.

Speaking of the Gallery at the Pinckney, a show of paintings and ceramics by COCC students will exhibit Jan. 7-31. The opening reception will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 10.

A few months later, expect the invitational exhibit “Drawing Connections,” boasting student drawings, illustrations and watercolors. Curated by adjunct instructor Karen Z. Ellis, it opens on May 2.

Four COCC art faculty members — Paula Bullwinkel, Bill Cravis, Shin Yeon Jeon and Carolyn Platt — are among the 34 artists participating in Bend Art Center’s “Winter x Winter” installation, for which Oregon artists have created multimedia works to create an intertwining landscape. It opens with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday.

In March, Bend Art Center will host “Hot Off the Press: New Prints from Crow’s Shadow,” featuring contemporary lithographic prints produced at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton between 2016 and 2018. Back in October, Bend Art Center held voting for the most anticipated shows of 2019, and patrons picked “New Visions in Contemporary Photography” in the top spot. Featuring fine art from photographers who are pushing the medium in new directions, it opens in July.

Bend Art Center also plans to continue its Cheers to Art lectures through May. The popular talks are held at 7 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month. Admission is $10 and includes wine — sounds like “Monet” well spent.

Mockingbird Gallery has its year mapped out, starting with January’s “Oregon Explored,” a solo show by Jennifer Diehl. “Outside Perspectives II,” featuring works by artists Kathy Odom and Perry Brown, follows in February. Other highlights include July’s “Summer Rhapsody,” a three-person show by Marc Hanson, Richard McKinley and John Traynor, and September’s “Western Visions,” featuring works by a Western-focused group of artists.

Mockingbird’s sibling shop Peterson/Roth Gallery will feature the fine art of Valerie Winterholler and Robert Schlegel from February through April; Rand Scott Smithey and Holly Smithey from May through July; Donald Yatomi and Tyler Swain from August through October; and Ken Roth and Anton Pavlenko from November through the end of 2019.

The High Desert Museum is looking forward to its upcoming contemporary art exhibit “Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain,” opening Jan. 26. The gestural charcoal works of Portland artist April Coppini will show in “The Beauty of Wild Things,” opening March 2. The installation “Water Shapes the West” brings together science, art and culture around the subject of water. It opens April 27. High Desert Rendezvous, the museum’s largest fundraiser, returns Aug. 24.

The 44th annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show will return to downtown Sisters on July 13, bringing quilts and quilters from around the country and world. The show accepts up to 1,200 quilts for display; registration opens Feb. 15 at sistersoudootquiltshow.org.

Look for Art in the High Desert to return to the banks of the Deschutes River Aug. 23-25 for its 12th year. The juried fine art and craft show features 120 artists, is produced by local artists who are also active show artists, and is once again ranked 10th best in the nation out of 600 shows for the third consecutive year by Art Fair Sourcebook.

Theater

It’s Sharks vs. Jets in Thoroughly Modern Productions’ first show of the season, the musical “West Side Story.” The famed musical is being staged Jan. 25-Feb. 2 at the Tower Theatre, where TMP will stage all its 2019 shows, including “Legally Blonde, Jr.” May 18, 19; “Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Jr.,” Aug. 21, 22; “Disney’s Newsies!” Aug. 16-25; and “Mamma Mia!” Sept. 13-22.

Speaking of the Tower, head down to the downtown theater Jan. 18 or 19 to glean some wisdom “Late Nite Catechism 2: Sister Strikes Again” (think Catholic school for grownups). Bend A Cappella Festival returns Feb. 7-9, with a performance by Naturally 7.

Cascades Theatrical Company’s first show of the new year is “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a Black Box musical directed by Michelle Mejaski, who made her directorial debut last summer with “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Presented in collaboration with Mejaski Choreography, it runs Jan. 10-20.

The CTC main season continues with the “The Matchmaker,” a Thornton Wilder comedy directed by Brian Johnson, Feb. 15-March 3. The rest of the 2018-19 season’s shows are “Stupid F#%*ing Bird,” March 28-April 7; “The Columnist,” April 26-May 12; and the musical “She Loves Me,” June 7-30. In-house comedy troupe Triage will perform Jan. 25, March 8, April 12 and May 17. By the way, “Kiss of the Spider-Woman” director Mejaski will also be helming “La Cage Aux Folles” when Theater in the Park returns to Drake Park in August.

In January, 2nd Street Theater will host its last show, a revival of “Grounded,” the stunning one-woman show starring Kit Foreman as a jet pilot turned drone pilot. The small midtown-area theater opened its doors in 2001, and the building, at 220 NE Lafayette Ave., is in the process of being sold. Stage Right Productions, which runs the theater, will soldier on, said Sandy Klein, co-founder of the nonprofit company.

Sunriver Stars Community Theatre will present the comedy romp “Suite Surrender,” set in Palm Beach during World War II, March 8-16 at The Door in Sunriver. They’ll follow up with another comedy, “The Butler Did It,” June 6-15.

Volcanic Theatre Pub will host The Dirty Sexy Chocolate Show on Feb. 15. Based out of Missoula, Montana, the show has been described as a cabaret meets cooking show. After focusing on its popular live music shows, VTP will get back to staging live theater in 2019, said Pub owner Derek Sitter, an actor, director and filmmaker. Look for the plays “Doubt, a Parable,” by John Patrick Shanley in the spring, Edward Albee’s “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia” in late summer and “Sweat,” by Lynn Nottage, in the fall.

Film

VTP will host two Feb. 16 screenings of the Backcountry Film Festival, at 6 and 9 p.m. respectively. Sitter is himself a filmmaker and said he’ll continue to focus on filmmaking in addition to live theater. Early in the year, he’ll be reshooting his short film “Second Sleep,” and he’s planning a feature-length adaptation of his award-winning 2018 short film “Tutu Grande” for the late fall.

Local filmmaker Jesse Locke is in the process of editing his documentary about 7 Hills Skatepark in Amman, Jordan, and hopes to complete it by March. Locke’s planning a Skate Jam — that’s a skateboard contest in layman’s terms — on Feb. 16 at Bearings Skateboard Academy in Bend, with money gained going toward the documentary.

BendFilm will screen “Dawn Wall” on Jan. 11 at the Tower Theatre as a thank you to BendFilm members, who get in free (otherwise, tickets are $15). BendFilm Executive Director Todd Looby called it the best climbing film of 2018. BendFilm will screen “Woman at War,” a 2018 BendFilm Festival foreign language favorite, on Jan. 21 at McMenamins Old St. Francis School as the first installment of its “In Case You Missed It…” series. In its celluloid world, the third month of the year is known as BendFilm Women’s March, heading into its second year on March 4 with an “In Case You Missed It…” screening of the best women-directed short films from the 2018 Festival.

March 15-17, BendFilm and ScaleHouse will present the “No Man’s Land Film Festival,” a program of short films redefining what it means to be a woman in adventure, sport and film.

Budding film buffs will want to keep an eye open for BendFilm’s inaugural Wednesday Early Release Film Club for Bend-La Pine high schoolers. Slated to start in April, the four-part film series will consist of screenings of classic cinema with an accompanying lecture at 2:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Tin Pan Theater.

Classical

“Of course, I think that what we do on a regular basis is special (don’t we all), but this year, we have something that I think is terrifically out of the ordinary,” said Michael Gesme, artistic director of Central Oregon Symphony. In its Spring Concert, May 18-20, the community orchestra will perform “Malheur Symphony,” by Bend composer Chris Thomas. “This five-movement work was inspired by the beauty, grandeur and storied history of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns,” Gesme said. Audio clips of birdsongs and other natural sounds from the refuge, along with select images, will intermingle with the music.

High Desert Chamber Music kicks off the rest of its 2018-19 season Jan. 19 with a performance by the Neave Trio at Wille Hall. Guest Peter Van De Graaff, music director of classical music station KWAX, will give a pre-concert talk on the program.

Oregon Guitar Quartet will bring its lovely tunes to the Tower Theatre for HDCM’s annual Valentine’s Day concert on Feb. 14. The HDCM season concludes March 30 when violinist Michelle Kim, assistant concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, performs for the first time in Oregon. On March 29, she’ll lead a master class at Bend Church. It’s free and open to the public.

The winter term of Cascade Chorale, a one-credit choral class at Central Oregon Community College, will be focused on the new mass by director James Knox, composed during the professor’s sabbatical in Estonia in early 2018. The new mass will be performed in concert over the weekend of March 16 and 17.

Central Oregon Mastersingers will conclude its 2018-19 season with two performances on April 6, a tango mass titled “Misa a Buenos Aires,” or “Misatango.” Performances will be held at the Tower Theatre and will feature the music of well-known Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, and award-winning musician Giovanni Parra, who plays an accordion-like bandoneon, will lend a hand. “He’s Columbian, and his group (has) won Latin Grammy Award,” said Christian Clark, director of Central Oregon Mastersingers. “We’re really excited to bring him over for us.”

OperaBend will hold its “OperaGanza” fundraiser on Valentine’s Day Feb. 14. The night of singing, dinner, wine, silent auction will be held at Aspen Hall in Bend. From April 5 through 7, OperaBend will present Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” The full production opera with chorus and an orchestra conducted by Michael Gesme will be sung in Italian with English supertitles and will be performed in Pinckney Center for the Arts on COCC’s Bend campus.

Sunriver Music Festival will return for its 42nd season Aug. 9-22, bringing with it such world-class soloists as pianist Olga Kern. But you don’t have to wait too long for a taste of its quality entertainment and virtuoso performers. First up is the Valentine’s Day Dinner and Concert: That’s a gourmet dinner by Sunriver Resort chefs and music by pianist and composer Michael Allen Harrison and singer Julianne Johnson in the Great Hall. On April 12 and 13, SRMF’s annual Piano Showcase returns to the Tower Theatre for two days of music with acclaimed classical pianist Sean Chen and boogie-woogie blues great Arthur Migliazza for two concerts, plus workshops, master classes and music conversations.

Dance

The Central Oregon Dance Showcase will mark its 16th year on April 20 at the Tower Theatre. Presented by Terpsichorean Dance Studio. Organizations that have participated consistently include Gypsy Fire Tribal Belly Dance, Jazz Dance Collective, Madras Dance Arts, Gotta Dance!, Hokule’a Ohana Dancers, Academie de Ballet Classique, Velocity Dance Theatre, Central Oregon Aerials, the Vibe, & High Desert Dance Arts and of course Terpsichorean, according to Director Dakota Weeda. Tickets will be available at the door or in advance at towertheatre.org sometime in late January.