The Life I Lead

18 Thursday May 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Court Street, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Roger Hull, Sculpture, Uncategorized

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Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jennifer Viviano, Lucinda Parker, OCAC, PNAA, PNCA, Sidney Day, studio visit

Life changes in a second or two…we have come to know that. A misstep, a speeding paint truck, a diagnosis, a sloppy politician who has the nuclear codes, a tsunami or earthquake…poof…our beautiful lives are gone or irrevocably changed. While we are in these lives though, it is worthwhile to notice them, to be impressed with a sunny day, a hilarious child, people and places to visit and things to think about, a decent cappuccino.

I’ve won the lottery, I know that. I have a nice house, an interesting, loving and very witty partner, a family and friends so lovable it would take another 10 blog posts to describe. I have the huge luxury of time to make things and look at things. Art work, gardens, beaches, studios, books, meaningful work…these are what my life now is made of. Next week, next year, who knows? Since I know these will be taken from me by accident or design or just time itself, I want to look at one day…today for instance…so here it was…

Leaving home early and picking up Sidney (with new knee patches and sun hat)

We met up with friend Jennifer Viviano, newly minted MFA from the Applied Craft and Design program, a combined effort of PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art) and OCAC (Oregon College of Arts and Craft). Jennifer was a very successful graphic designer of talent, but was wanting more creative time, a shift of scene from the graphic needs of clients to thinking of things in a deeper and more personal way.

Jennifer toured us through the “Otherwise Chaos” Practium Exhibition at the Bison Building (421 NE10th)…

We liked Becca Gore’s ceramic pieces a lot…

and this terrific cafe (didn’t find the artist’s card)…caught Sidney’s eye…

and then Jennifer’s piece…

plaster base, basalt blocks, porcelain “bones”…and as Jennifer explained the thought process and the actual physical activity of combining a plaster base, basalt blocks topped with “bones” made of porcelain wrapped around rolled newspaper and auto glass, she explained the serendipity of what happened with the piece…

when one “bone” fell off revealing the charred paper,

and when people at the opening began scooping up the broken glass and throwing on the pile to hear the lovely tinkling sound as it trickled into the blocks…

Sidney found it irresistible…

and Jennifer showed him Maria Garcia’s light piece…

Aaron’s video construct…

the studios

the metal shop

the air stream…the Air Stream? Time for lunch…

and then a quick stop at Cindy’s studio. R’s begun the research and writing process about the work of painter Lucinda Parker in preparation for a monograph and show of her work at the Hallie Ford Museum in 2019…and he had to make a quick stop to pick up some files so we ran in to check the newest mountain paintings…pretty nice…

She’s certain this one is finished…

then some static electric sliding…

playtime (not sure what game they had going…?)

eventually heading home…

and so this day of interest, privilege, fun, family…a day not unlike so many days…comes to an end….and having written about it here I can revisit this day again…

Farewell to Louis Bunce

27 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Roger Hull, Salem, Uncategorized

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Art, Dialogue with Modernism, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Louis Bunce, Northwest painting, PNAA, Roger Hull

The Louis Bunce show “Dialogue with Modernism” closed at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art Sunday, with curator Roger Hull leading one last gallery tour.

Here’s Roger talking about Portland painter George Johanson’s portrait of Louis and one of Bunce’s beautiful Harold Street paintings (on the right)…

and here’s a snapshot of Louis talking intently with painter Willem de Kooning in de Kooning’s Long Island studio in 1972, with Portland sculptor Manuel Izquierdo on the left and Portland painter George Johanson just behind Bunce…Bunce and de Kooning were old friends from “back in the day” when Bunce lived and painted in NYC…

and Bunce’s studio on Harold Street in Portland…

The four years of sleuthing, of archives, of visits with collectors…all came to an end…all the things Roger found and put in the show, and all the things that got away…

What a fascinating process as we’ve slowly come to know Louis…a terrific painter and a person who had a lot of fun…(here with George Johanson)

the last paintings…

curator Roger Hull

painter Louis Bunce…

Looking at Art

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Roger Hull, Salem Art Association, Think local

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12X16 Gallery, Ant Proctor, Bush Barn Art Center, Duplex Gallery, Emily Wobb, Eunice Parsons, Genevieve Lawrence, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jim Hockenhull, Louis Bunce, Nastja Nynkazu, PNAA, Roger Hull, Salem Art Association, Susan Trueblood Stuart, Thea Phillips

I guess if you have read this blog a time or two you know that looking at art is a major part of my universe. Just reviewing this past week, I see all the ways art enlivens my own life and thinking and experience, and I hope this is true for you too. As we begin to see the loss of support for art thinking, making, and showing at the Federal level looming towards us, it is more important than ever to support the making and looking at art in ways we can.

Roger Hull’s lecture on inauguration day opened the wonderful Louis Bunce retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, on view until March 26. R gave a good lecture, well attended and well received…

Monday he gave a lecture/tour to the museum docents, and Wednesday he walked through informally with SAG, my artist friends (here talking about the work on paper part of the show with Nancy Eng and Katy Viegland)…

I love these Bunce paintings…

On Sidney day, otherwise known as Thursday, the three of us went down to Duplex Gallery in Portland to see their last show, Emily Wobb’s “Bad Dreams”. This little gem of a gallery has been holding forth for four years presenting the work of 63 artists. R, S and I started going a couple of years ago because A) it was the only gallery open on Monday in the whole city, B) because they had an adorable dog named Otto, and C) because we could see the back of the big deer sign from the front door (there are always reasons…). Sidney looked at a lot of art and this visit he engaged interestingly in a conversation about bad dreams, why they were in art, and really…what were they anyway (“monsters” for S, “a bridge that I’m driving on that disappears into the water” for me, “the slides for the lecture are lost” for R)…(I encourage you to look at art with a three year old and really listen to what they have to say…)

goodbye Duplex friends…

Time for lunch with the dinosaurs and a cupcake break

before heading to Mark Humpal’s Fine Art to see a Louis Bunce painting, and then on to 12X16 to see Cary Doucette’s photos and a group work by a variety of artists from the collection of artist Eunice Parsons. As I was looking at the photos a small voice said, “Nana, I’m a work of art…look at me”…too true!

We ran into Suzanne who was picking up a Eunice Parsons’ painting “Mill Race” at Mark’s …especially interesting to us since it is a Salem location…

On Saturday we went to Bush Barn to check out the three excellent Louis Bunce paintings from Salem collections now on view…

and while there looked at Jim Hockenhull’s digital prints,

and Susan Trueblood Stuart’s retrospective…60 years of art making

which included this lovely oil painting from her student days when she was a student of Carl Hall’s in the late 1950’s…

and this nice sort of Marsden Hartley-esque pastel…

Downstairs was an interesting exhibit of Willamette University students examining and interpreting the body through art….

Ant Proctor’s “Self Portrait”

Thea Phillips’ “Hairpiece”

Genevieve Lawrence’s “Landscape and Residency”

and Nastja Nynkaza’s “Playing the Part of a Woman Girl”

We dropped a piece of mine off at the Public Library for a show about to open Tuesday for the Salem Reads program…”Spare Parts”, and while heading up to sign a form I spotted my lamp painting of some years ago, still glowing away on the mezzanine…(behind Tom Hardy’s birds)…

humorously placed near a reading chair…

So in-so-far as there is a point to all this, it is this…WE NEED ART. We need to make it, we need to think about it, we need to look at it. And we need to begin to think about what we can do to assure that all this making/thinking/looking is ongoing, in spite of a difficult political culture. Support your local artists, galleries, museums as a start…more thinking will be required later I’m afraid.

Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Roger Hull, Uncategorized

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Art, Dialogue with Modernism, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, hanging an art exhibition, Louis Bunce, modernist painting, painting in Portland, PNAA, Roger Hull

On January 20th, 2017, at 5:00 p.m. (in the Paulus Lecture Hall) art historian/curator Roger Hull will give a slide talk about the work of the Portland Painter Louis Bunce (1907-1983) as the show opens its two month run at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem. Available on that occasion (and afterward) will be copies of Hull’s book on Bunce (also titled “Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism”).

The show and book have been in the works over at our house for the last three years, and we have come to know Louis Bunce pretty well. We’ve driven by his former homes in Portland, we’ve gone to read his archival material in Washington D.C. at the Archives of American Art, we’ve visited many of the collectors who own his work, we’ve talked to former friends, students, colleagues, relatives…now when I say “we” of course, it is Roger Hull who has looked and thought and talked and written, while I have been lucky enough to tag along on some of these adventures. I’ve come to know that the work is beautiful, varied, thoughtful. But knowing that, looking at hundreds of images, is NOT the same as being in the same room with the paintings.

This past week the show that Roger Hull has carefully curated has been going up over at the Museum and Friday I got a sneak preview. Come take a look:

Because Roger Hull is an art historian and a writer, and because his shows are usually whole-career retrospectives, the work is in chronological order which develops the narrative as well as letting the viewer see the artist’s progress. The show begins with Bunce’s self-portrait from 1932 and some text and moves to the first room with other paintings from the early 1930’s.

Louis Bunce loved the Oregon landscape, most especially the Oregon Coast, and thematically, coastal painting figures all through his work, even into the most abstract paintings. He traveled the state, he summered in Mosier, he lived in Salem. His work is deeply Oregonian.

and on we go. I won’t give you details here…you need to come see the show and the paintings loaned by the Whitney Museum in NYC and the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio as well as loans of beautiful work from collectors all over the west coast

and these three courtesy of the Portland Art Museum…

Here’s George Johanson’s portrait of Louis Bunce from 1975…Johanson was a student of Bunce’s, a friend and later a teaching colleague at the Museum School…

Look forward to seeing you the 20th…

The Proofs Arrived!

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Books, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Roger Hull

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Art, books, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Louis Bunce, modernist paintings, PNAA, Portland painting, Roger Hull

Roger Hull has been researching, writing, interviewing and thinking about the Portland modernist painter Louis Bunce for 3 years, at least. As usual I’ve had the most interesting time tagging along to lenders, archives, museums and galleries as Roger pulled together the story of Bunce’s life and work…a VERY fascinating story. The book, “Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism” is written, and yesterday the proofs arrived from the designer. As many times as this has happened, and this is the ninth book about regional art and artists that he has written, this moment of the box arriving (nowadays from Fed-ex) is always exciting. Of course these days there’s a PDF but Roger always prefers to have one hard copy for a final edit. Here’s a sneak preview….

The big painting show will open in January with the work on paper opening on November 5th…more specifics as we get closer…this calls for a toast!!

Sandgren Season

12 Thursday May 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Modern Life, Roger Hull

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Art, Erik Sandgren, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, KARIN CLARKE GALLERY, Michael Parsons Gallery, mid centery northwest painting, modernist painting, Nelson Sandgren, Roger Hull

The first in quite a string of events this summer featuring the work of Corvallis painter/print-maker Nelson Sandgren happened last Saturday. In conjunction with the exhibition opening June 14th at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Michael Parsons also is featuring the Work of Sandgren this month in his Portland gallery (716 SW Madison Street), and to kick off his show he asked curator/historian Roger Hull and painter/son of Nelson Sandgren Erik Sandgren to give “remarks.” It was a beautiful sunny Saturday and many people turned up at the gallery, which got very stuffy…and NOT from the remarks!

Someone was looking over Roger Hull’s shoulder…

and it turned out to be Nelson himself…

Inside looking out…

Outside looking in…

LOTS of photos being taken…it’s a nice show…worth a look.

Meanwhile in Salem, the Nelson Sandgren show is up and open to the public starting Saturday the 14th and running until July 17th, with the “opening” on June 3rd. In conjunction with this show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Roger Hull has written a monograph on Nelson’s work, “Nelson Sandgren: an Artist’s Life” and the books arrived at the museum this very morning!

R has undertaken a re-evaluation of Nelson’s vast body of work which extended over the course of 65 years (he died at age 88 in 2006, born in 1917). Much of the work is beautiful and worth taking another look at…like this gorgeous painting of 1953, “Road of the Brave”, which is in the lobby…

this untitled farmyard watercolor of 1941….

this lithograph of 1969, “Moratorium Day” (BTW a day I remember we marched in an anti-Viet Nam war protest in Chicago)

and “Evening Rider by the Sea” of 1997 (used for the cover of the book)…

R was writing this book and doing research for a forthcoming book on Louis Bunce this year, and noticed how often Bunce and Sandgren were in the same shows near the mid-century…they visited each others studios and had a dialog which you can sometimes see in the work (here Bunce on the left, Sandgren on the right).

The book is well illustrated and filled with wonderful photos of Nelson’s interesting life…here with his very good friend writer Bernard Malamud

and here in his studio with paintings in a style he developed at his artist-in-residence stint at Yaddo, as well as images of paintings, prints, water colors…

Additionally the Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene (760 Willamette Street) will be featuring oils, watercolors and lithographs from the Sandgren estate from June 1-25, with Erik giving remarks on Saturday June 11th. On Sunday June 12th Roger Hull will be speaking at the Hallie Ford Museum at 2:00 about Nelson’s work, followed by Erik Sandgren talking about Nelson’s methods as a painter. A final even will be on June 26th, a Sunday, when Hull and Sandgren will have a “conversation” in the gallery about Nelson and his work. Better consider Nelson Sandgren this summer….

The “State Street Corridor”

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by bonniehull in City, Modern Life, Roger Hull, Think local, Trees, Uncategorized

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grass roots street planting, Marcia Hoak, Oregon, State Street Renewal, State Street tree planting in Salem, tree planting, Trees

The City of Salem is rolling out a new plan called “The State Street Corridor” …and to that end we attended a recent neighborhood meeting where we were to sit around some tables and “brainstorm”…and the idea of planting came up, and trash, and this reminded us of the “State Street Renewal” group of the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. This was a cooperation between NEN (Northeast Neighbors) and SESNA (Southeast Salem Neighborhood Association)…brought about really by Roger Hull (NEN) and Marcia Hoak (SESNA). Over the course of several years neighbors from both neighborhoods picked up trash (my “beat” was the north side of State between 14th and 17th) once a month, on the theory that trash begets more trash. Then Marcia and Roger spearheaded a tree planting initiative that involved the planting of some 20 trees along State Street on both sides of the street….

NOBODY at our table, including senior city staffers, had heard of “State Street Renewal”. As luck would have it, Marcia was seated at another table and NOBODY at her table had heard of it either. I had written about it here https://bonniehull.net//?s=State+Street+Renewal+trees&search=Go but promised Roger and Marcia I’d revisit the subject…I found this original clipping with the photo of the two of them but was wondering how I’d ever get a current photos and…voila…we turned up at the same event…

and I found this with R on the left and son Zach on the right…1991…

so I ran out and took a couple of the street today and it looks like now, 25 years later, they are getting ready to cut them down as they are beginning to break the sidewalk…ah institutional memory..this is for Marcia and Roger who were determined.

Visiting Artists

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Celebrations, City, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Roger Hull, Studio

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Art, Jackie Johnson, Kim Murton, Louis Bunce, Mardy Widman, PNAA, studios, visiting artists

And by that I mean the verb, not the noun. I consider it one of the real privileges I have to tag along with R when he’s off to interview an artist (future interviewees–I don’t always go, only sometimes.)…we smile and chat, he goes into to interview mode and I look and look. All good. So we went to visit the painter Jackie Johnson the other day for R to talk to her about her remembrances of Louis Bunce, current biographical and curatorial subject of Roger Hull’s work. I consider Jackie a friend so I got to go along…in the entry the last piece she made after almost 20 years in New York and the first piece she made after her return to Portland…

Jackie grew up in Portland, her family living next door to sculptor Lee Kelly. She counts the Kelly family as very important as a window into a world where she felt comfortable and happy and involved…a world she jumped into with both feet. Her own paintings are everywhere…

but so is the work of others…

and R likes to look at the backs of paintings too…

There is a texture to the houses and studios of artists that works for me…

Then Monday we zoomed up to Kim Murton’s studio to pick up some bunny plates…

where she was in full production mode with her assistant there working away…

and sometimes if you are lucky you can arrive at a magic moment…Happy Birthday Mardy Widman!

The Proofs Arrive!

17 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Books, Modern Life, Oregon, Roger Hull

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"An Artist's Life", Art, Artists, book proofs, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Nelson Sandgren, Northwest painting, sunrise

Lately it has been like this, wet and gray, day in-day out:

But this morning, when we headed out very early (by our standards…) it was gorgeous…I just couldn’t stop snapping pictures as an unknown orb edged over the horizon…

and then, when we got home…THE PROOFS CAME!

Roger Hull is curating a show of the work of Corvallis painter Nelson Sandgren which will be on view at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art from May 14th to July 17th…an exhibit titled, as is the monograph, “Nelson Sandgren: An Artist’s Life”. Most of the copy editing is done on-line these days, but there comes a point when everybody has gone over it several times when R likes to see a printed proof. True to form there were a few last issues to be corrected, but I like this moment as it seems “old fashioned” but REALLY tangible to see the pages laid out and printed…

It’s a good read, and will be a beautiful show. You’ll want to come visit this summer…

Road trip to Wallace, Idaho

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Celebrations, Just visual, Modern Life, Roger Hull, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

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224 Cedar Street, all-class high school reunion, family reunion, Mosier, Slippery Gulch, Wallace Idaho

Time for the Wallace High School all-class reunion again. We packed all the important stuff and headed east/northeast…

We stopped in Mosier in the Gorge…Louis Bunce spent a few summers in Mosier back in the 1930’s with the Givlers and others…R wanted to get a feel for it.

We headed across Washington and by now the heat was about 102 degrees…and against all odds R found a picnic table in the shade…possibly not the loveliest picnic spot in the Northwest BUT…IN THE SHADE!

Eventually we arrived in Wallace, Idaho…

and checked in to the Stardust Hotel, built in 1962…the year R graduated from Wallace High. Synchronicity in all things.

For the Hulls of Wallace this is really a family reunion. None of them live in Wallace anymore, but all have been influenced by growing up in a place like Wallace. When the Hull kids were growing up it was a mining town. Their Dad Piatt, their uncle Alden and their grandfather H.J. were attorneys in Wallace, and the windows still gleam down from the now empty space…

Over the course of the weekend we met up with 5 of the 6 sibs and 2 nieces, but the first night it was Jennifer, George and Fanny, Carolyn and Terry Lee, and we headed to the Smokehouse for some BBQ…

and a long funny evening of remembering…

There were breakfasts and various events, but mostly the reunion stuff was at night…leaving the days for wandering the town…

and heading to the Red Light Garage…

for a huckleberry milk shake (and yes easterners…huckleberries are NOT blueberries)…

before the tour of former Hull houses. We started with 202 River Street because we had been invited to see the progress the new owners had made in making it into a B&B… It was the first house of R’s Wallace experience, one they moved into in 1949 arriving from New York. Talk about culture shock…but it’s looking good…

a drive by 313 Cedar…(1955-1963)…

and then 224 Cedar…originally the grandparents house, and then Piatt and Fanny’s house from 1963-1993. It is being kept impeccably, but all trees and shrubs have been eliminated giving it a sort of “stranded” look…

to those of us who remember it this way…

Past the houses now, up into the hills,

a dinner under a tent and then, when darkness falls (earlier than elsewhere because of the mountains…) the fun begins. Words fail…it’s crazy, not like anyplace I’ve ever been, the streets are blocked off, the middle-aged business men in Wallace dress in drag for Slippery Gulch where they dance the Can Can and Swan Lake…I mean, really. Friends and family meet and greet…too much fun.

and the blue moon rises…

We avoided the 1910 experience…the reason why the downtown is mostly brick…(Tim Egan’s “the Big Burn” tells the tale)

Sunday we head home down through the wheat country, which is beautiful to see…

past towns with familiar names…(and we really could have used an iced coffee right about here…)

In Wallace we had no internet, which enhanced the sense of it being a place out of time…just this beautiful country without thinking of the politics or the candidates or the gun mayhem…just this beautiful country. Heading home.

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On The Way

Category Archives: Roger Hull

The Life I Lead

Farewell to Louis Bunce

Looking at Art

Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism

The Proofs Arrived!

Sandgren Season

The “State Street Corridor”

Visiting Artists

The Proofs Arrive!

Road trip to Wallace, Idaho