Originally published Saturday, August 8, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

There's an upstairs toilet in Amy Burnett's Bremerton art gallery that doesn't work right, but she's too busy making and selling art to fix the plumbing.

It will be fixed someday soon, she says, before it becomes something titled "Water Descending A Staircase." "But we've been soooo busy!"

Go figure. Amy Burnett doesn't even need to call a plumber to get it fixed. But she doesn't much care, either, to be recognized as the first woman licensed as a journeyman plumber in this state. "Oh! I didn't think anybody outside town even knew about that!" she said.

Amy Burnett, the daughter and granddaughter of Bremerton plumbers, is more comfortable in the role of sort of latter-day cultural maven -- the woman who stopped the leak of vital juices from this aging downtown core and got things running again.

Not single-handedly, of course, but in large measure because she "believes in this town," and because she works day and night, in three different studios, to make art happen here. In recent years, several other galleries and related businesses have sprung up around the gallery that bears her name at Fourth Street and Pacific Avenue.

"People have told us that we should try to be more like Seattle, but Seattle is too . . . snobbish about art. Bremerton, on the other hand, is more like a pot of good homemade soup. There's so much bubbling here!" said the enthusiastic, raven-haired Burnett.

Even some local old-timers have a hard time believing the place that used to house Christensen's Shoe Store and several other downtown businesses has been resurrected as a nationally recognized art gallery. In blue-collar Bremerton, for goodness' sake. And by a woman plumber, don'tcha know.

Before she got the art and cultural scene bubbling, Amy Burnett was actually stopping the leaks. "I got four different college degrees in the arts (Olympic College, Los Angeles Art Center, and Central Washington University) and came back home right after things had gotten real bad because of the 'Boeing bust.' Remember those billboards that said: 'Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle Please Turn Out the Light!'"

So she went into her father's plumbing and contracting business, even married a plumber, and supported herself and her art work by threading pipes and sweating joints. "But I never stopped making art," she said.

Eventually, she left the plumber. She also went to work as a Kitsap County plumbing and mechanical inspector, then left the trades entirely and returned to her first love: painting. She has three studios, but the huge 14,000-square-foot gallery and studio building downtown is the focal point of her art world.

"I bought this building back in '91 to help protect the arts in Bremerton. We've had dance recitals, music, readings, art shows and you-name-it, but I never wanted something this big," Burnett confessed.

Ah, but with her round-the-clock painting as well as involvement with other artists, Burnett would have needed this much space to accommodate her ambitions. "People who come through here -- and more than 50 percent of our customers are from outside the Puget Sound area -- are always surprised to find this much here," she said, sweeping her hands to take in the several rooms and floors of artwork.

Amy Burnett Gallery represents about a half-dozen other artists, most of them local because Amy wants to foster the hometown arts. And she has 160 feet of sidewalk-level display windows to entice passers-by, especially those on their way to and from the state ferries just a few streets downhill to the water. If she happens to be outside, cranking down the window awnings, she invites folks to meander inside.

Amy the artist is also Amy the merchandiser. She hangs all the major shows herself and directs placement and lighting of all the art on three floor levels. Body sculptures made of brown paper, by local artist Juan Rodriguez, inhabit an entire wall of the lower level, where they were wrapped around nude models. The main gallery upstairs is an eclectic presentation of sculpture and two-dimensional art, much of it Burnett's figurative work involving historical and ethnic subjects. Her work is carried in galleries in Santa Fe and elsewhere in the Southwest.

In Bremerton, Burnett moves constantly between husband Earl Sande, who runs a marine business from their huge log home, and her own business and painting. "I sometimes paint downstairs (in the gallery), but I have a big gallery at home and I just bought another house not far from here, where I have more space to paint."

With her much of the time is Edward Curtis, a 100-pound-plus black Labrador with a pussycat personality and a penchant for straying into her display windows "or pretty much anywhere he wants." Edward Curtis sometimes finds himself pressed into service as a model, a job he does well and willingly for just a few dog treats per sitting. At home Burnett also has a cat, which she says has learned not to step on freshly painted canvases set here and there about her loft studio.

Amy Burnett may have to call a plumber to fix that recalcitrant upstairs toilet in her gallery. Some folks might think that's a priority, but Amy Burnett marches to a different drummer. That's why she's running a successful art gallery in downtown Bremerton.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.

Amy Burnett Gallery, 402 Pacific Ave., Bremerton. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays; until 4 p.m. on Sundays; closed Mondays.