For the sixth year now, Daniel and Talya Pite will celebrate the life of their daughter, Hannah, by hosting Bpositiv, one of Bend’s biggest art shows of the season.

The first Bpositiv took place in January of 2005 and served as a birthday party for Hannah, who would pass away only months later from leukemia. Since then, the Pites have continued the annual art show to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, always choosing the weekend closest to Hannah’s birthday – and this year it falls right on the dot, January 30.

“Bpositiv is not meant to be a birthday party, it’s still about the celebration of our community, but for friends and family it will always be a bit of a birthday party in our hearts,” says Daniel Pite, who incidentally just celebrated his own birthday on Tuesday.

The event brings in pieces from around the region and beyond, all of which is donated by artists who want to help out. This sprit of giving permeates the entire event as well with nearly every aspect of the night donated, including the wine from Columbia Distributing and the venue and staff at McMenamins Old St. Francis School.

Through the Bond Street Market’s door, past the buzzing coolers and the bottles of beer and soda they dutifully keep cool, there’s a hairpin turn that leads up a staircase lined on one side by a row of ascending paintings, some featuring the increasingly recognizable iconography of emerging Bend artist Alex Reisfar. At the top of the stairs on most days, or at least afternoons and evenings, you’ll find Annie Shininger and her Tew Boots Gallery.

On an inversion-dampened afternoon, Shininger is in her second-level gallery looking over the current works on display through her distinctively vintage cat-eyed glasses. My Morning Jacket’s “One Big Holiday” emanates from speakers on Shininger’s desk, bouncing off the art-covered walls of the cozy albeit small space, as she takes a second to reflect on the current state of Bend’s art scene.

Growing up, Clyde Keller knew he had some big shoes to fill. Keller comes from a strong art background. His grandfather Clyde Leon Keller, also known in Portland as "The Art Man" in the early 1900s, was a premier impressionist painter. If you look him up on eBay, you'll see his paintings going for big money.

The younger Keller learned the classic rules of composition as a child and began taking photographs in the '60s. Politics sparked his interest as a teenager and was eventually hired by the Kennedy family to document Robert F. Kennedy on the campaign trail in 1968. When the Triborough Bridge in New York City was renamed the RFK Bridge, the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority used some of Keller's RFK photos to promote the change, thus placing his photos all over the New York subway system. Now, Keller draws his inspiration from a broad spectrum. His photos range from the fine arts to candid, documentary type photos. He coined the phrase, "documentary arts" to define the theory behind his craft of essentially photographing what he observes. At his show at Sisters Coffee (in the downtown Subway) this month, you'll see panoramic landscape photos he has taken including Central Oregon shots like the moon over For Rock.

Clyde Keller
Photographs on display at Sisters Coffee, 939 Bond St., Bend

Tom Monson wears his art on his sleeve.

He is a postmodern scavenger, in his words "projecting value onto something un-valuable, like redemptions." Tom turns kitschy thrift store finds into gems by adding bittersweet Maurice Sendak style characters, often placing them in grievous situations in a humorous way. In "slogan" a small plaque's original saccharine image is over painted with a simply drawn nude that stares blankly at the viewer, his arm severed on the floor Monty Python style, the words "Win Some, Lose Some" fade into the background behind him. These altered appropriations confront universal emotions, but are also unabashedly autobiographical. Monson's show at the PoetHouse last November called "Images that Breethe, frum thawts that bur^rn" (misspelling intentional) presented pieces that dealt blatantly with betrayal, hypocrisy and grief. In one piece, "Untitled," a bright red snake is hacked in pieces and bleeding, X's for eyes.