The artist behind all the work isn't a bright young talent right out of college, but a 66-year-old woman who's been beading and painting since high school. That a lot of her art represents forms she didn't try out until recently shows that for some artists, learning never ends.

"An Old Fashioned Christmas" also shows beautiful handmade work, the kind of presents everyone dreams of being able to make and give away, if only they had the talent and time.

Jump grew up in Klamath Falls, Ore., in Pacific Northwest timber country. Her grandfather was a tree feller and her grandmother a cook in a logging camp. She and her husband, Jack Jump, moved to Homer in 1992, when Jack came up to be the loading supervisor at the Circle D-E chip facility on the Homer Spit. Char Jump had been a payroll clerk for a logging company in Oregon and also worked for Circle D-E. When the logging and chipping boom ended, the Jumps stayed on and retired in Homer. Jump now works part-time as an associate and sales clerk at Fireweed Gallery, one of several artists working as well as selling their art at the gallery.

In Oregon, Jump used to teach beading at summer camp. She lived near several Native American reservations and often went to pow-wows and dances.

"I started out just doing the standard Indian-type beadwork," Jump said. "When I moved up here is when I went into the artsy type of beadwork."

Beading often has a craft element it's something to decorate clothing or to wear as jewelry. Jump's show includes some of that, but several pieces work as fine art, like her "Marilyn," a series of Marilyn Monroe images inspired by Andy Warhol's series of pop icons. Called tapestry beadwork, the images are beaded on a loom, sometimes from a pattern not that Jump stuck to it.

"The 'Marilyn' started out with a pattern I had seen in a magazine, and I changed it to fit what I wanted it to be," Jump said.

Another piece, "Fauzia of Ghana," shows an African woman with a bright headdress and downcast eyes. Jump said the image is based on the story of Fauzia Kasinga, a woman who escaped to the United States to avoid forced ritual female circumcision and then had to struggle for refugee status.

The tapestries use subtle shadings of beads to show detailed patterns. Jump uses delica beads, tubular shaped beads.

"They're really tiny little beads, but they pack a wallop when you do a picture," she said.

Jump doesn't specialize in any one kind of beadwork. If there's a new pattern or technique, she'll pick it up and try it out.

"I like learning all of them," she said "Bead embroidery is a big one with me right now."

In that form, beading is done on cloth or leather. Several pouches and purses in the show feature embroidery, like a pouch with a butterfly image and another with a chickadee.

"I start with an idea and it just goes from there," Jump said. "You never know what it's going to be like."

That willingness to let the idea take form also is evident in Jump's whimsical dolls. Her dolls allow her to combine her sewing and beading skills. The dolls have a habit of asserting their personality, she said.

"Sometimes they want to have their own opinion," Jump said. "They're very much individuals."

She intended Crystal, a beautiful, white doll with silver and ivory beadwork, to be an angel.

"She absolutely refused the wings. I tried sewing them on three times," Jump said. "I said, 'I give up.'"

A series of still lifes and landscapes show another side to Jump's art, her water-based oil paintings. In Oregon and in her first years in Alaska, Jump painted a lot of landscapes. Another Fireweed Gallery artist, Carol Lambert, inspired her to move toward still lifes.

Working at Fireweed Gallery leads to associations like that.

"I've learned a lot. I see artists that have put up their show and say, 'How did they do that?'" Jump said. "That's the part I like: standing there and picking it to pieces."

Jump also has had another association with an artist who has supported her work: her husband of more than 40 years, Jack Jump. His pen-and-ink drawings are reproduced as cards sold at Fireweed.

"We've always inspired each other," she said. "He does drawings that are absolutely gorgeous."

The variety and skill in Jump's work proves that for this lifelong learner, there always are new challenges and new things to try.

"I've always had to have something to do to be creative," Jump said.

"It's not my nature to just sit. I have to have something going on. I'm a little manic that way, I guess. My poor husband has to put up with a lot."

Jump's show continues through Jan. 4, but her work is displayed regularly as part of Fireweed Gallery's eclectic collection of local and Alaska artists.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong.@homernews.com.