Florabundance 

the art of Ariana Heinzman and Sarah Helen More 

May 7 - June 22, 2026

Strange and colorful plants, birds from North and South America, and playful sketchbooks get together in Northwind Art's fertile springtime show. Two prominent Northwest artists, ceramicist Ariana Heinzman of Vashon Island and mixed media artist Sarah Helen More of Wenatchee, have filled Jeanette Best Gallery with their soulful work.

More is known to many travelers for 29-by-6-foot mural, titled “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” which shimmers near the Alaska Airlines check-in space at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In Florabundance, More is showing an altogether different kind of body of work: dozens of framed pages from her personal sketchbooks. Collage-like images, drawings and paintings of flowers, color charts and birds fill their pages.

 Juxtaposed with More’s art are Heinzman’s creations, which have names such as “Banana Split Plant,” “Flower Spouts in Yellow Petal Stripes” and “Rubbernecking.”   

For her part, More said she feels eager but also a little uncomfortable about unveiling her sketchbooks. The pages in the Northwind exhibit are from the past six years or so, and they show plenty of play and experimentation.  

“There’s a lot of excitement for me, because I’ve never shown any of my sketchbook work,” she says.

More's public art works such as the Sea-Tac mural are “very precise and composed. You don’t see the mistakes or the places where I tried something new. The working process is often hidden,” she said, “and there’s value in showing it. For me, it’s important to see the messiness behind all of it.”  

Heinzman is also an experimenter, an artist who allows her clay shapes to evolve in her hands.

 “There’s so much surprise in it that’s exciting and fun,” she said of her art form, adding that humor and vivid colors are key parts of her practice.  

Those colors — yellows, blues, greens, reds — “are how joy comes across in my work,” she says.  

Heinzman, who is from Cincinnati, Ohio, earned her bachelor of fine arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design and then moved to the Seattle area, where she is represented by J. Rinehart Gallery. Her art in Florabundance appears courtesy of J. Rinehart.

More grew up in Houston, Texas, and Portland, Ore., and found her first inspiration in her mother and grandmother’s quilts and craft work. Long before she became a maker of murals and mosaics, she learned how to crochet, embroider and sew. With her art, More seeks to elevate those traditional crafts, while offering a reminder of the beauty in the world.

Florabundance was curated for Northwind Art by Seattle Art Fair and Paul Allen collection curator Greg Bell. A celebration of the show is set for June 6 during Port Townsend’s first-Saturday Art Walk from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.