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…

Jackie Johnson

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, City, Just visual, Living the Creative Life, Modern Life, PNAA, Studio, Uncategorized

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Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jackie Johnson, Laura Russo, paintings, PNAA, studio visit

Recently we visited painter Jackie Johnson’s studio in Portland on the occasion of a purchase/donation to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. A generous donor bought one of Jackie Johnson’s paintings for the museum collection, and on that occasion Jackie offered to donate a painting of hers to go along with the earlier donation. We hopped in the car with the donor and headed to Portland for a studio visit and a look at what work Jackie has on hand. I’ve written about Jackie before here and here.

Her house and studio are always fun to visit so the three of us enjoyed trooping down to her studio.

Jackie talked of her New York days when she and her then-husband bought a building in Brooklyn (no doubt the site of a posh condo these days) where the roof was falling in and the plumbing almost non-existent

and of her years as young painter in New York…

here she is during a visit from friend and later gallery owner Laura Russo

She described the work of that time as “difficult”,

and it was…difficult and powerful…

and HUGE. The Hallie Ford Museum of Art, like most museums, can’t show everything in its collection all the time and storage is at a premium…R was looking for something smaller…but the looking was so much fun…

and we checked some of the show cards out from earlier shows…

and here’s the final choice, soon to arrive in Salem…”Blue Stacks”

We said our goodbyes, grabbed a quick coffee to talk about our visit,

and headed home.

At A Glance

01 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Just visual, Quilting

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Art work, Faith Ringgold, Greg Kucera, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Kerry James Marshall, Louisiana Bendolph, prints

While in the Hallie Ford Museum of Art the other day I went up to the corner on the second floor where new work is often shown, and found these three nice prints, gifts of Greg Kucera and Larry Yocom of Seattle. Collections Curator Jonathan Bucci had alerted me to the Louisiana Bendolph print “Shared Legacy” which was donated in honor of artist Marie Watt. I had seen the show of Gee’s Bend prints back in 2000 or so at Kucera’s Seattle Gallery but had forgotten how really nice they are…certainly referencing the Gee’s Bend Quilts but also Korean pojagi construction.

Additionally Kucera/Yocom have donated this handsome Kerry James Marshall print “Untitled (Young Woman)” in honor of artist Stephen Soihl

and this print by sculptor Martin Puryear …

and hanging with these is a perennial favorite from the museum collection…a lithograph by Faith Ringgold “The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles”…

So even though Louis Bunce has departed there is still a museum full of artwork to go see…

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…

“Outsider” Art

25 Sunday Sep 2016

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

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"Strange and Wonderful", folk art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jonathan Bucci, outsider art, PNAA, Russell Childers

I like the two shows at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art this fall. Today we went to hear Collections Curator Jonathan Bucci talk about the Russell Childers show of wood carvings that Bucci curated and that is on view at the Museum until the end of October. If you haven’t seen the Childers yet show I highly recommend it…the work is beautiful and poignant, the narrative almost filmic. Childers was sent to the “Fairview Home for the Feeble Minded” by court order in 1925 when he was 10…removed from his mother who did not wish him to go. Childers was deaf and could not speak, possibly was what we now call autistic, but was decidedly not feeble minded. His mother died 4 years later, and with no advocate, Childers spent the next 38 years institutionalized. The happy part of his story is that people recognized his talent and intellect, he was released at age 48, hearing aids worked for him and at age 50 he learned to speak. He was able to spend the last 3 decades of his life making art among sympathetic people. He had gallery representation (Jamison Thomas Gallery) his work toured the region and was collected. It ended well. I wrote about that show in early August and hope you’ll go see the show this next month.

The other show, in the big galleries and up until January is:

It has elements I LOVE…interesting narratives (here is “Woman With Bird and Flashlight” Whaaat????)

“Red Girl”

“Big Cat”

all by Alma Dexhimer. And then the writing. I’m partial to words appearing in work and have my own “font” (thanks Sloy) which I use in quilts and paintings and drawing books….here are three details from Jesse Howard paintings…

(now I’m wondering what DID become of John the Baptist’s head…?)

Zebedee Armstrong’s “Three Calendars”

…a couple from Howard Finster…

Benjamin Perkins’ terrific map…

(I mislaid the note with the artist’s name on this one…)

W.J.Blackmon’s “God’s House”…(think Giotto here…)

and very sadly only one quilt…quilts being perhaps one of the most vibrant of “folk art” forms…Sarah Mary Taylor”s quilt…

Andrew Johnson immigrated from Copenhagen, Denmark in 1865 and wound up in Montana where this was painted with barn paint on wallboard…”Tornado”

These artists are people from what we now call “the margins”. People from institutions, people of color who lack a formal art education, people who work a day job and then make art on top of that. Looking at all this work, at other examples in the Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. , I long for a re-imagining of descriptors for art made by Americans, for an art world that is more inclusive of good work, no matter where it came from regionally and no matter what the race, gender or educational level of the maker.

In any case, go take a look and think about it, and while you are there…in these last few days of Barack Obama’s presidency, take note of this quote on the wall…

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!!

Art Laundry and Where Art Comes From

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Compass Gallery at Willamette Heritage Center, Drawings, Family photos, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Sculpture, Uncategorized

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Art Laundry at Compass Gallery, Carolyn Schneider, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jan Zach, Jonathan Bucci, making art, Marie Watt, Milton Avery, PNAA, Russell Childers

This week of working in the backyard studio with Carolyn Schneider, somebody I’ve known since the 7th grade when we met in an art class, has been fun. Interesting. Poignant. Hilarious. Sad. Our own work, our dead mothers and fathers, our family dynamics, aging, our own work…all this talk whirling around while we have worked has brought feelings, ideas and thoughts to our dialog beyond just what the art project of the moment might be. Depth of feeling and meaning in work have been our topics…

and everything we have talked of and thought of was brought to the fore when we visited the Hallie Ford Museum today to see the wood carvings of Russell Childers. Beautifully curated by Jonathan Bucci the show “Russell Childers: Oregon Outsider” is up at the museum until October 23rd, giving you LOTS of time to see it.

A victim of the Eugenics movement (removing the “damaged” from society) the deaf and dumb Childers was placed by a judge in Salem’s state facility “Fairview Training Center for the Feeble Minded” (as it was then called) when he was aged 10, over the objections of his mother…and he spent the next 38 years of his life at Fairview. He began to carve wooden pieces while there and it was his talent as a carver that eventually gained his release. This work embodies all that Carolyn and I talked of this week and much more…feelings, memories, the desire to make…it’s all here in this beautiful work. I’m not going to label each piece but reading the informative labels will deepen your feeling for the show I think, as it did ours.

Also on view at the museum in another nice show curated by Bucci, are the drawings of sculptor Jan Zach…Zach and a student of his “discovered” Childers and his work, giving him some years of acclaim and inspired working. The Judith and Jan Zach Archive is part of the Pacific Northwest Artists Archive of the papers of regional artists, and many of the drawings are from the archive.

In the “on-loan” section of the museum just now is a nice Milton Avery painting

…and then I visited my family blanket in the Marie Watt piece…

before we headed off for a restorative coffee…

Two more days of “Art Laundry” before Carolyn goes home and the Compass Gallery returns to a gallery…laundry no more. 1313 SE Mill Street…11:00-3:00. Tomorrow Carol Green will be with us sewing bags. Come on down.

What to Do in June…

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, Drawings, Ephemera, Modern Life, Sky

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drawing, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Summer

Well the month is half gone…the light remains until 9:00 p.m….there’s lots of time to do stuff. Things comes into the house as shares …

there are the activities of house-holding…

play…

…oh…draw…

sew…

look at art…

send off the last Circle 8 drawing book…

Draw…

and draw…

and it isn’t even summer yet…ahhhh.

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On The Way

Tag Archives: Hallie Ford Museum of Art

The Life I Lead

Jackie Johnson

At A Glance

Farewell to Louis Bunce

Looking at Art

Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism

“Outsider” Art

The Proofs Arrived!

Art Laundry and Where Art Comes From

What to Do in June…