Salem Sketchers

10 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, City, Drawings, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Salem, Uncategorized

Tags

Art, draw every day, Drawings, Mike Bergen, Salem fun, Salem Sketchers, urban sketchers

For a couple of years an intrepid group of local artists has been participating one Saturday a month in what is an international movement of urban sketchers…very casual, very fun. Each month they draw at a different location…I’ve dropped in and out, but decided to join today, even though the weather was iffy…(58 degrees on June 10th…yikes…thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon and it almost NEVER thunders in Oregon). The group was led up to the terrace over the restaurant Orupa at the Water Place building and at first there was some watery sun…

I chose this view…

and everybody settled down to work…

Katy and I were at a table under an umbrella…

Uh oh…

and then the rain started and this person captured the moment…boing!

Still, in spite of the rain, it was a jolly morning…(Happy Birthday Jessica!)

some people headed inside…

Mike Bergen showed us his new book …

and then “the reveal”…

duly photographed…

Way too much fun…better think of coming along…the second Saturday of every month. In July the sketchers will be in the Gaiety Hollow Garden and in August at the Rogue brewery in Independence. COME! it’s free fun.

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

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

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…

The Varied Life

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Cutler City, Drawings, Quilting, Trees, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Alden Mason, Art, Artists, Cutler City, Drawings, Edgefield, Henk Pander, Jon Bunce, Quilts

I keep waiting for a coherent body of photos, events, thoughts to surface (other than the car wash)…to no avail. I guess the life I’m leading is chaotic these days, so lets go anyway…we left the car wash and headed east …first stop Edgefield, a destination spot in a former poor farm…odd but true, and now very beautiful…

Our room had tons of windows and was lovely day and night…

and then we headed east stopping briefly at Vista House

Hood River, Dufur, Maupin, Madras, Sisters…over the pass

down into Salem in the middle of a spring wind storm…

Studio time…

We’ve spent some time with the laughing boy…

and visited some artists including Henk

and we took Jon Bunce a funny little painting of his boyhood home that Mary Lou Zeek found at a junk sale…

We had a play-date at Sara and Marcus’ house where Sidney fed the fish and made a play-dough birthday cake…

I worked on the cross quilt…

we saw a nice Alden Mason painting at Mark Humpal’s (with a rug made by Amanda Snyder in front…)

and we went to the beach where the view from our living room has looked about like this for the last 25 years…

and virtually every time we have driven up we have expected to see the trees cut and a mobile home on the site…and finally…the day came…

there’s more probably, but not for tonight.

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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…

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

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…

“Still Talking”

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Coffee art, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Quilting, Salem, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

"Still Talking", Art, Chemeketa Community College, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Gretchen Schuette Gallery, hand quilting, Kay Worthington, PNAA, quilt show

Today for me was a day of beginnings and endings…

Kay Worthington and I spoke today at Chemeketa Community College at the third quilt show we have produced together. Last year we were invited by Tim Timmerman to show at George Fox University Gallery in the fall.

This year we were invited by Laura Mack and Kay Bunnenberg Boehmer to show our quilts at Chemeketa Community College’s Gretchen Schuette Gallery. The 24 quilts in the show (12 from each maker) were all made since January of 2016, and all are hand quilted.

We dropped them off a week ago and just put them on the floor in pairs for Kay BB and her assistant to hang later on…and they looked kind of pitiful lying there on the floor…

here was one hanging suggestion we had…

But by today, for the opening, they were all on the walls looking good…

we had a good crowd for our opening remarks, lots of questions and lots of enthusiasm, which made us happy, If you are out and about go take a look. It’s open until October 28…Building 3 on the campus. Closed weekends…

After grabbing a coffee (it was National Coffee Day today)…

R and I took down my paintings at the Compass Gallery at the Willamette Heritage Center, and turned off the lights…the end of a fascinating nine month experiment with Dayna Collins and Tory Brokenshire…

…and on to the next adventure…

The Proofs Arrived!

01 Thursday Sep 2016

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

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

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!!

Off the Grid

28 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Art, Art Camp, Camp Sherman, central Oregon, off the grid

I like the Internet, (even as I’ve come to believe the constant and instant sharing of information has not been good for our politics) and I like the easy access to images. Sometimes though it is sensational to leave all the voices behind and return to the world of living in the moment, thinking and doing, reading. Books.

And so, in the midst of a busy summer for me, I headed over the mountains with Katy and Nancy for four days of art making, laughing, talking, art making. Salads. Our destination was Katy’s family’s cabin on the Metolius River at Camp Sherman…a place I have really come to love. We went there last summer and it looked like this. Not a McMansion in sight. The US Forest service owns and leases the land to the residents and there are strict restrictions on what you can do and build (just about nothing at all). Katy’s family couldn’t replace the footbridge leading to an island in the river when it was washed away in a storm. They were asked to remove a big bell they used to call themselves for dinner.

But there we sat for four days. I chose the picnic table station on the deck where the strong lullaby of the river kept me company, and the birds. I made a workbook called “three Things”, Katy put out the hummingbird feeder and the hummingbirds were my constant companions. Katy and Nancy moved around in the sun, seeking shade and space, but I just could not budge from the deck over the river. One day we went to the Camp Sherman store and all of our phones lit up…we admit to a beer and a moment of connecting with loved ones, but not for long. We had a Sisters “retail moment” and a coffee for me…but otherwise we drew, painted, quilted…we found three dead things and drew them, we drew our cups of coffee in the morning, we made stamps…it was fun.

So that’s my description…I’ll let you review the images and contemplate getting off the grids yourselves for a bit.

and then it was time to head home, to pack up, to say goodbye to the cabin by the river and head to the dump to recycle and where we were serenaded by the dump attendant …on the trombone…

See you next summer!

Art Laundry, III

30 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Bonnie Hull, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Drawings, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Salem, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Art, Art Laundry 3, Art work, Bonnie Hull, Carolyn Schneider, Drawings, hand quilting, PNAA, Quilts

Carolyn Schneider and I met in a 7th grade art class. Our first forays into the art world were on the subway into the city to go to the Art Institute of Chicago when we were 13. We’ve been looking at art, thinking about art and making art ever since. For the last decade we’ve had an annual studio event either in her California studio, or in mine…more talking, more looking, more art-making, some writing.

In 2012 we had a gallery show in Fort Bragg, California which we called “Art Laundry” and it looked like this.

Drawings, quilts, mending, sewing, prints…it even included my little “Gallery of Plaid”

and then in 2015 Carolyn and ART LAUNDRY came to Salem…and it looked like this:

It was drawing, it was quilts, it was talking and masks and thinking of that interface between making art and doing routine work and domestic work, it was fun and serious.

This year Art Laundry III comes to the Compass Gallery at the Willamette Heritage Center, 1313 Mill Street SE. August 3 the gallery will be hung with Carolyn Schneider’s drawings, my quilts and monoprints. Beginning Monday August 8 Carolyn and I will be in the gallery for 4 days, 11-3 daily. Carolyn will be performing public ironing and talking about work of all kinds. The “opening” will be Thursday night August 11th at the gallery, from 5-7. We urge you to come see us, bring some ironing, sit and talk about the work you are making, the work we are making, or how you learned to iron a shirt…see you very soon!

The Melange That is July…This Year

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, Design, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Quilting, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Art, Art work, Compass Gallery, July fun, PNAA, quilting, sewing, Susan Cianciolo, Waterlines, Yale Union

What a crazy mixed-up fun month this has been…so far. Possibly there is a limit to how much fun you can actually have in one calendar month, but I haven’t maxed out yet. The fourth of July of course (see below). Then visitors…

How and Amy came and we looked at the bridge progress..

How pointed out the end-of-the-day routine the workers have for the crane…

we checked the local architecture…

went to the MIG farm cart and had a coffee at Archive…

We drew…

we hugged…

Martha and I headed up to Yale Union to see the last day of the Susan Cianciolo show and to attend a “workshop” (we had no clear idea of what we’d be doing…but what the heck…). Yale Union is just a beautiful space in an old garment factory/warehouse…you must go and take a look as it is now one huge open space with a running ribbon of windows…well, you just want to move in and start working.

First we look at Susan Cianciolo’s work…I was especially interested in the idea of “kits”…of her mixture of fabric/quilted pieces and narrative and collections and the stuff of everyday life…the evidence of children and their ideas was engaging to me.

kit 11

and now it was time for the workshop…

Susan Cianciolo

and the task at hand was to make a kimono. I was more interested in her ideas of making notational books, and began to develop the idea of “workbooks” as I slouch toward “Art Laundry” (stay tuned for that one…) and so…voila, the kimono work book was the end result of my 2 1/2 hours of work…

Many people there though really did make kimonos, and it looked like this…

with three young designers, former students of Susan Cianciolo’s, there to help…

Ellen and Larry were here for a few days of total relaxation and I obliged by NOT photographing them…

“Waterlines” went up at the Compass Gallery and here I meanly only photographed my own work, but Dayna Davidson Collins has a bunch of lovely paintings…come take a look…up til August 1st.

Quilt group met at our house this week for the “reveal”…all the things we made from Kate’s “ugly fabric” give-away last December (the fabric she gave us wasn’t ugly really…it was the color of a mouse)…true to form the projects were as different as the makers…and just as nice…