Old School

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Salem, Think local, Uncategorized

Tags

East School, historic photos of Salem, Salem, wooden Victorian-era schools

That’s a phrase now, “old school”…meaning the way things used to be done or even how things used to look. My brother Doug was here the other night and the talk turned to his blog about a real old school in the Alameda/Alberta district in Portland. He was writing a blog post about the Old Vernon School in Portland which he “published” this morning (https://alamedahistory.org/2017/03/11/old-vernon-forgotten-neighborhood-ghost/)…take a look for a fascinating story of land development, neighborhoods, shifting perceptions.

Originally, many public schools across the nation were big wood-frame schools, buildings that occasionally burned down with disastrous results. The trend in the 1920’s and 30’s was to tear town such schools and replace them with brick buildings, and Salem was not immune. When one of these schools came down it was a total shift in the surrounding area as schools always serve as community centers, in a way, and there was usually a shift in the resulting land use once the school was gone.. I wonder if you know of old East School in Salem? Here it is in it’s glory days…

Many photos of the developing neighborhood around the school were taken from the top of the school building, like this one looking east along Marion Street

and here’s a view of the old State Capitol building in the upper right before the dome was added…with Center Street, Chemeketa Street and Court Street visible…

and seen from the old State Capitol building, East school is the large white building on the left in this photo (you can see the turn in Center Street as it heads out to the State Hospital).

…And here’s East School ready for demolition…

Have you guessed what sits on the East School site now?

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

≈ 16 Comments

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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.

Good News!

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Design, Modern Life, Oregon, Preservation, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

downtown Salem, preservation, Starkey-McCulley Building

On the whole this is NOT a season of good news, though at last the debates are finished. The other day we noticed that something super-nice is happening downtown though…from the point of view of preservationists like us.

The building which housed the S&H green stamp store in the 70’s and 80’s is being restored! The Starkey-McCulley Building of 1867. Until recently these windows were totally covered…

Sometime in the 1960’s the brick was covered over with this sort of modeled stucco stuff which covered all the windows. The black and white design motif under the cornice beneath the windows is actually part of the original cast iron front of the building (the cast iron made by the Oregon Iron Works in Portland, and thought to be among the oldest examples still existing in Oregon…). The other half of the building was restored in the 1990’s by Robert Kraft and the second floor was a lovely residence apartment running the full depth of the building. Kraft carefully restored the exterior to its historic look.

the block was originally called the Starkey-McCulley Block…check the internet for images, none of which would download into this blog, darn it. And DO take a drive-by. The building is now owned by the Salem-Keizer Schools Foundation.

Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint

10 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Just visual, Modern Life, Recipes, Salem, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint, fresh from the garden, MIG Farm Stand, New York Times cooking, Recipes

Friday morning I was flitting through emails…including the NYTimes “What to Cook This Weekend” and I saw this recipe which looked super easy and super delicious…and it IS both of those. I had to pass it on…the recipe is for “Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint” and gives directions for using frozen corn, but NO…you must use fresh corn this time of year! I won’t even give you those directions…

We were heading to the MIG (Minto Island Growers) food cart for lunch, so IF they had corn it was a go (we have mint in the garden). Yay they had corn (and radishes too…not in the recipe, but irresistible to some of us…)

Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint (New York Times)

4-5 cups fresh corn cut off the cob (they said 12 ears, but I used three ears and it was almost 4 cups…maybe the corn is dinkier in NYC?!)

1 stick of butter (I used less…maybe 3/4 of a stick of butter)

1/2 cup chopped mint leaves

salt

Basically you melt half of the butter in a large flat pan over high heat until melted but not browned…add half the corn and cook until it begins to brown (and some will POP!) then add the mint leaves and salt and put in a bowl. Add the second half of the butter, repeat the whole process…serve. No kidding this is one of those dishes that is totally simple, fresh, sweet/savory and delicious. It looked like this…

(Hey check out the poppy seed cake R made for my quilt class…what a guy…and he can make orchids re-bloom too…)

…waiting for the salmon off the grill…TRY THIS…no kidding.

The “State Street Corridor”

08 Friday Apr 2016

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

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

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.

“Short Stories”

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Bonnie Hull, Drawings, Modern Life, Oregon, Salem, Salem Art Association, The Annex, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bonnie Hull, Constance Fowler, GAllery Guides, George Johanson, Harry Widman, Jack McLarty, James Castle, Kristin Kuhns, Myra Wiggins, Nancy Lindburg, permanent collections, Robert Colescott, Salem Art Association

“Short Stories” is the title of a little show up at Bush Barn this month…well worth seeing. Ross Sutherland (curator of Bush House) chose pieces reflecting the title “Inside Out/Outside In”, Kathy Dinges Rice (director of the Community Arts Education program of SAA) used the title “”Who We Are”, and Caroline Brooks (the new exhibition director at Bush Barn Art Center) “Behind the Scenes”…each chose a few things from the permanent collection highlighting the place and it’s history.

(This beautiful painting on the title wall is by Oregon painter Constance Fowler.)

The permanent collection, you might say? Starting in 1953 there has been an active docent program at SAA called Gallery Guides. This group has actively collected work from the many many shows that have been showcased at the Bush Barn Art Center over the years. Some pieces have been purchased by the Gallery Guides, some pieces donated by the artist showing work, and some pieces have been donated to the collection outside of the exhibition program. The collection includes 140 drawings, paintings and sculptures from Willamette Valley-related artists and is more inclusive than might be guessed. Here are a few things that caught my eye…

Robert Colescott’s 1959 piece “Snow Scene” donated by the artist after his 1960 show.

As a result of this 1960 show at Bush Barn, Portland gallery owner Arlene Schnitzer (The Fountain Gallery) met Colescott and represented him as he left for California and established a national reputation.

Here’s a lovely Harry Widman watercolor from 1960 of the Bush Barn and the park as seen from the servant’s quarters in the Bush House Museum. The former servant’s quarters served as a caretakers’ residence from 1953-2005, and Widman and his family lived there as caretakers for a while in 1960.

Here is a Jack McLarty self portrait and a George Johanson portrait of McLarty of 1963…(painter Jack McLArty was one of the subjects of SAA’s excellent Preservation of Oregon’s Artistic Heritage film project spearheaded by then exhibition director Sara Swanberg)…

James Castle:

Myra Wiggins (Wiggins, a well-known Salem photographer, who moved to painting in her later years):

Nancy Lindburg’s “Three Peaches and a Bottle” or 2005 (Lindburg directed the Salem Art Association in the 1970’s before moving to the Oregon Arts Commission).

Salem artist of note Kristin Kuhns…an excellent painter but also a constructor of intriguing things…

and…my own piece of 2010 “White Moss Climber.” I was the first Artist in Residence in the Community Arts Education program providing studio space for local artists. It was an important 6 months for me during which I completed 50 works, some of which were on view in a 2010 spring show. The studio is adjacent to the wonderful Bush Garden rose gardens and roses crept into much of my work that spring…

On the sales side of the gallery I noticed this handsome Susan Trueblood Stuart watercolor…it’s for sale (!)…(ohhhh that pink!)

So go for a walk in the park noticing the construction progress on the new Annex which will house the Community Arts Education program, new experimental gallery space, the artist in residence studio, a print making studio and an ELEVATOR!

and speaking of PINK…

Editing Cutler City

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Cutler City, Modern Life, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

beach cottages, Cutler City, Siletz Bay

In our two plus weeks at the beach I rode my bike around our neighborhood, Cutler City, several times a day. Sometimes I had my camera and took pictures of my favorite small cottages, the “old” Cutler City….little cottages for fishermen built on the sand. Many many of these are gone and some (like ours) have been put on foundations.

The charm of the houses themselves and the scale of the community are what attracted us to Cutler City years ago. Small. Intimate. Easy to care for. Sand on the floor. Over the years big houses have been built on the edge of the Bay and the neighborhood’s perimeter by people who can afford to capture the view…in the center there are many deteriorating 1970’s and 1980’s ranch houses, quite a few double wides jammed onto (sadly in my view) lots cleared of all kinds of native growth. When you ride or walk around you can’t help but see the whole range of building.

HOWEVER, in a blog you can edit out the ones you don’t want to look at, so here’s is my edited version of Cutler City…a sweet neighborhood on the Siletz Bay.

BLINK

27 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Modern Life, Salem, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Art, art openings, Blink, Mary Lou Zeek, pop-up gallery, Salem Art

Well if you blinked this week you’ve almost missed it…Mary Lou Zeek’s current POP-UP gallery show, “BLINK”, which is a nice show…four rooms of painting, sculpture, work on paper…a wide variety of artists represented…a handsome show. I went to the artists’ reception and of course it was too crowded and filled with friends for very good reportage on my part…but here are some miscellaneous impressions…you still have two days to get on down there! First the work…Carol Hausser…

Paula Booth…

Elizabeth Bauman…

Patricia Giraud…

Nic

Sloy

Me…

…and the people…

You still have time to check it out!

Risotto

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Recipes, Salem, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

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Fitts Seafood, Italy, Recipes, risotto, shrimp broth

Well, I’m beginning to think Italian thoughts, as we get organized for our trip this spring. The other day I felt the “Spring trajectory” cross the “Italian trajectory” in my head and…presto…RISOTTO! Our totally terrific local fish store FITTS SEAFOOD makes wonderful broth…halibut, chicken, fish stock and shrimp broth. They make the broth there at Fitts Seafood and it has no added sodium…very important to us. So I decided on a shrimp risotto as I had some fresh asparagus, fresh peas, carrots, and the desire to try the shrimp broth.

INGREDIENTS:

1 TBLSP OLIVE OIL

1 CLOVE OF GARLIC, MINCED

1 SMALL SHALLOT FINELY CHOPPED

1 CUP CARNAROLI (ARBORIO) RICE

1/2 CUP DRY WHITE WINE

3 CUPS STOCK (IN THIS CASE I USED SHRIMP BROTH)

1 PINCH OF SAFFRON (or use 1/4 tsp turmeric…cheaper but colorful)

1 TSP LEMON ZEST

JUICE OF ONE LEMON

1/3 CUP GRATED PARMIGIANO OR ROMANO CHEESE

3-4 SPEARS OF FRESH ASPARAGUS, BUT INTO 1/4 INCH PIECES

1/2 FROZEN PEAS (DON’T THAW)…I USED FRESH…

I ADDED A BIT OF CARROT…ORGANIC, CHOPPED FINELY…

FRESH SHRIMP…I served 4 whole shrimp per serving…

DIRECTIONS:

1. Remove tails from shrimp and in a small bowl combine with a little olive oil, a splash of white wine, a squeeze of lemon juice, one small clove of freshly minced garlic, pepper. Set aside to marinate.

2. Heat broth in a small pan.

3. In a good sized pan heat olive oil over medium heat and saute garlic and shallots, stirring until fragrant.

4. Add rice to pan stirring for a few moments to coat rice. Add wine and half a cup of the broth. Stir frequently until most of the broth is absorbed. The trick with risotto is to keep the heat slightly under medium and to pull the spoon or spatula across the bottom of the pan until the liquid is absorbed and the bottom of the pan is revealed as you bull the spoon across it. Add another 1/2 c. of the broth…etc. until all the liquid is absorbed (about 20-25 minutes).

5. Meanwhile (within 10 minutes of the risotto being ready): in a small skillet heat 1 TBSP olive oil and a tiny bit of unsalted butter and saute the asparagus (and the carrots and fresh peas)…5-6 minutes until asparagus is al dente…then add shrimp and cook until pink…about 2 minutes per side…

6. When risotto is finished, remove pan from heat and stir in lemon juice (I started with less lemon juice and added more until the taste was right for us), lemon zest, cheese, asparagus (and other veg) and/or frozen peas…I added a few roasted tomatoes this time as I had them on hand. Plate risotto, top with the shrimp and sprinkle with a bit of shaved cheese…

Serve with a glass of cold white wine and begin planning your trip to Italy…!

The Church Street Bridge

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Design, Salem, Think local, Trees, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

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bridges, historic landmarks, historic Salem, Moss, R.A. Furrow, Salem, Saving bridges

Ellen Stevens and a group of citizens is working on saving the beautiful Church Street Bridge. It was built in 1928 and designed by then Salem bridge engineer R.A.Furrow, one-time colleague of well-known bridge designer Conde McCullough. The bridge is a beauty…

spanning Pringle Creek (which is a pretty swollen, roaring body of water today…due to our rain-that-will-not-stop)

Ellen walks a lot, and became disturbed by the deteriorated condition of the bridge. She was particularly interested in the restoration of design and the spirit of the old bridge. She came by the other day to show us some proposed designs for the balustrade replacements and she spoke so interestingly about the bridge we went to take a look during our brief sunny respite between storms…

The span is longer than we thought, and the bridge environs are gorgeous. The original bridge has a variety of curves and “balconies” that provide access and views…

and two exceptional curving staircases…one leading into Pringle Park…

the deterioration is accelerated due to the rusting re-bar inside the cement, causing the cement to break down…

and then…the moss…

The second stair leads down into the Woodland Chapel garden…where there are various serene delights…

The bridge advocacy group is meeting with the Salem Landmarks Commission March 20th and we’ll await word of support, or further advocacy needed ahead. There are 12 bridges from 1927-29 around Salem, all gems. Get out there and take a look!