Deschutes Gallery's specialty, Northwest Coast Native art, has some design and color that look familiar even when you're looking at them for the first time.

Deanna saw Central Oregon for the first time in February of last year. She had just become a bride-to-be. Her husband, Harry - they were married in June - works for the Bend firm InFoPak. The romantic Presidents Day weekend trip made quite an impression. "The moon was huge," Paik recalls, rolling her eyes. "I thought he had paid someone to put it there." Paik, born in Canada and raised on Vancouver Island, B.C., has logged 20 years in sales, most recently as a product rep in soprting goods.

She liked Bend. It reminded her of her hometown, Courtenay, a city of 50,000 people with a river in the middle and mountains all around it. And it somehow catalyzed a vision: a gallery specializing in Native art from the Northwest coast. Returning to Vancouver after that first visit, Paik plunged into market research. She opened in a 450-squared-foot space adjacent to Honkers. In mid-June, she moved to long-term quarters.

The 1,200-square-foot Deschutes Gallery, upstairs in the plaza area of the Old Mill District, overlooks its namesake. The logo is based on "The Raven that Steals the Salmon," an Indian legend recounted in a book of the same name by Bill Reid.

In that rich Genesis-like allegory, the Raven - pre-eminent symbolic figure in Northwest tribal culture - actually emancipates the light, freeing it from a secret box in a dark world. Paik stocks the book in her gallery, and there's a comfortable corner for reading. "We represent seven of the top (Northwest coast) artists," Paik says. How was this arranged in such short order? "I just called them up," she says, "and put on my best charm."

The two-and three-dimensional work on display in the Deschutes Gallery includes prints, bowls, fiber art, ceramics and wood carving that ranges from canoe paddles to totem poles. Paik likes Northwest Native art because it can provide a spiritual grounding for anyone who lives in the region. "People need to feel grounded," she says. "I think they gravitate to Native art because it's where our identity fits."