City Day

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, City, Coffee art, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Sky

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Augen Gallery, George Johanson, John Yeon, PNAA, Portland Art Museum, rain, Randy Gragg

Saturday we left home early to hear George Johanson talk about his new show at Augen Gallery (in the DeSoto Building)…the paintings are lovely and lively, as is the painter. I particularly liked this self portrait…(just above George’s head in the upper left of the painting is Louis Bunce’s life mask, which hangs in George’s studio…) but they are all nice. Go take a look…

City lunch followed…

and then we took in the show of architect John Yeon’s work curated by Randy Gragg, which recently opened at the Portland Art Museum. There are some rather fantastic new models of some of Yeon’s famous houses, and these GIANT photo murals of places he worked to save…it’s a nice show…go take a look. Here’s the Aubrey Watzek House (1936-38)…

and this fascinating description of his idea of letting the balloon frame “show” and just inserting windows in the spaces between studs…

Leaving the museum I was reminded of Dale Strand’s gardening advice to me some years ago…”stake every stem”…

We headed to Sidney’s house and crossing the bridge saw a view of about the closest I’ve ever been to a rainstorm but yet NOT been in it…

then a hole in the storm…

then hail (or “kale” as Sidney later told us as in “there was kale all over the ground after the storm).

It WILL stop raining, right? We chatted with Sidney while some activity was going on…

and did a sleep over so that we could be on hand for the Mother’s Day Brunch…Yum!!

then home to the Capital City once again for a quick 15 minutes of gardening before the next storm…

and a Blue Apron dinner…

off into the new week ahead…

Remembering “Newt”

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art World, Artists, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Preservation, Sculpture, Uncategorized

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Archives, Darcia Krause, Eunice Parson, Francis J. Newton, George Johanson, Jonathan Bucci, Joseph Newton, Laverne Krause, Phyllis Johanson, PNAA, Portland Art Museum, Rex Amos, Russell Childers

Francis John Newton was a curator at the Portland Art Museum from 1953 to 1960. In 1960 he became Director of the museum until he retired in 1975. He was very involved in the Portland art community, and well remembered. We came to Oregon in 1970 and as “new kids from a different neighborhood (Salem)” we never met him…until now.

By a VERY indirect route we discovered that there still existed an archive of material about Newton in his old house…now rented to a friend of a friend of a friend. We set out with Rex and Diane Amos, Linda and Peter Janke to do some art sleuthing and hit the mother lode. The house…Newton’s house

…now belongs to Darcia Krause, daughter of the painter LaVerne Krause. Krause, Newton’s partner, died in 1987, and when Newton himself died in 2004 the house went to Krause’s daughter Darcia. Darcia generously welcomed the art sleuths to come take a look…

here R and Darcia look at photos…

We discovered there wasn’t much about Newton on the internet, so much of this information adds to what little there is, and since most of what we saw were photos, the man came alive for me. He was born in 1912 in Montana and grew up in Butte. His paternal grandparents were from Ohio…

he had an older brother Joe…

He graduated from many places over the years…(middle of the back row) Butte High School maybe?

(far left) University of Idaho maybe?

got an honorary degree (?)

Played baseball for the University of Idaho and later up in Burke…

was in the pacific in WWII…(on the right)

traveled to Korea after the war before coming home…(again on the right)

was a curator at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.

He traveled…

he lectured…

he loved to bake bread…

and built a baking corner into his kitchen…

He had friends and partied a bit…here with Phyllis Johanson and Milton Wilson…

Ken Shores…

LaVerne Krause and Linny Adamson…

The Gilkeys…

George Johanson…

LaVerne Krause

and as always, there were a couple of amazing archival “moments”…three actually. The first was when we stood around the table each reading something. Rex Amos picked up a clipping and a note of condolence on the death of Newton’s older brother Joseph and as he read he realized the note was from himself…

A small wooden sculpture was produced that LaVerne Krause found in a junk store and brought to Newt…carved by the artist Russell Childers…who we know about because this summer the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem is mounting a show of the work of Russell Childers, opening in early August and curated by Jonathan Bucci. (Childers was a self-taught artist who spent 38 years at the Fairview Training Center…and made many carvings while there…including another version of the Bear nursing her cubs. He was deaf and could not speak, and was sent to Fairview at age 10, released at 48 when his work was then discovered by the sculptor Jan Zach.)

and then, the final thing…proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is a small world…was this letter from July 4, 1960, congratulating Francis J. Newton on being named director of the Portland Art Museum and inviting him to a party in his honor, a letter written by Eunice Parsons (then Eunice Jensen) who this very summer is celebrating her 100th birthday. (Luckily the Pacific Northwest Artists Archive at Willamette University houses the papers of both Jan Zach and Eunice Parsons…and many more.)

So very nice to finally meet you Francis J Newton. Your life was full.

Retreat from “Bag Week” Part 2

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

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

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Carl Hall, Clara Jane Stephens, Leroy Setziol, Louis Bunce, Myra Albert Wiggiins, Portland Art Museum, Rae's Lakeview, Washington High School

Saturday Happy Hour was at Washington High School…now home to bars, restaurants, music venues, offices all with the feel of the old high school… followed by dinner with loved ones.

Sunday brunch at Rae’s Lakeview…no lake, no view, lots of mimosas and hipsters…we snuck in before the crowd…

and then off to the Portland Art Museum for a leisurely stroll…starting with the atrium massing items from the museum’s collections with paintings wittily paired. In the center a jumble of sculpture

which from above looks like a chess board…

and my favorite painting pair a Charles Heaney of 1939 and a Lazzaro Bastiani of 1680-90…

both with wonderful details…

Upstairs I began my meditation on Portland/Salem. There is nary a trace of Salem artists or collectors in Portland usually, so it was nice to see a group of work of Leroy Setziol on view, much of it borrowed from Salem collectors Carole Smith and Eric Kittleson…

and nearby the work of Clara Jane Stephens, notational almost, freely painted and collected for years by Salemite Cobe Grabenhorst…

Curator of Northwest Art Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson has rehung the northwest galleries to good advantage and we loved seeing Carl Hall included in this gorgeous foursome with (left to right) Hall, Kenneth Callahan, Robert Huck and Louis Bunce…

then the self portraits of Salem’s own Myra Albert Wiggins. As a photographer Wiggins was a member of Alfred Steiglitz’ Photo Secession, and she went on to become a painter later in life.

We wandered, seeing hints of yesterday for me,

next week/next month/next year for R…

not exactly careening at this point we began to notice random things…including seasonal…

oh…and the photo booth…

we couldn’t pass up the chance to depict a Katherine Ace painting…

out the door in time to see a photo op, a secret message, and a fall leaf before another lovely dinner and a last look at the deer on the tall crane…

and Monday was Sidney day, the best day of the week…

“rooster, robot, cow, sheep”…and we are thankful for our varied and colorful lives, and especially for this small boy. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Portland Quick Trip

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Artists, City, Coffee art, Ephemera, Just visual, Modern Life, photography, Uncategorized

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April Gornik, Art, Blue Sky Gallery, David Hockney, Milton Avery, Paul Allen Family Collection, Portland Art Museum, pretty coffee, Thomas Hart Benton

I headed up to Portland Wednesday with Katy and Kathy to see the Paul Allen Show of Landscapes “Seeing Nature” at the Portland Art Museum, and the Emmet Gowin aerial photos of various nuclear dumps and bomb sites “Force of Nature”…first though–lunch…

and a quick run through the Desoto Building galleries…with the emphasis on Blue Sky…celebrating it’s 40th anniversary. Some of us remember the early years well…

…in fact the archivists among us still own a few of the early membership “cards”…

…there was one of those messages on the sidewalk, but we decided it wasn’t for us…

The Paul Allen show of landscapes kind of cracked me up…that family has a little of everything including Hockney…

April Gornik

Milton Avery…

Thomas Hart Benton…

Brueghel the Younger…

you name it…Monet, Manet, Canaletto, Turner…you get the idea. Some nice paintings.

I was so shocked and deep in thought at the Emmet Gowin show I neglected to take a single photo…better go see that one too to see the absolute horror and beauty of this earth and what we’ve done to it…fascinating, sad, scary.

Once home I picked up my donation (“Rose hips”) for the Straub Environmental Center fund-raiser “Cart to Art” featuring up-cycled art work. I don’t think of what I’m doing as up-cycling, but there you have it. November 14th, this could be yours!!!

Art in Portlandia: October

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Drawings, Modern Life, Uncategorized

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Abelardo Morell, Art, Blackfish Gallery, Blue Sky Gallery, Carol Benson, Charles Heaney, George Johanson, Henk Pander, James Lee Hansen, Joan Mitchell, Katherine Ace, Louis Bunce, Michael Knutson, Morris Graves, painting, PDX Gallery, Pearl Bakery, Portland Art Museum, Ralph Pugay, Rick Bartow, Squeak Carnwath, Storm Tharp, Upfor Gallery, Winston O. Link

We “scampered up” (as Harriet J. Connor used to say) to Portland Monday to see SRH and continue our training for a street Band…

and for me to get to play with his toys…

but we worked in a nice visit with George and Phyllis where we saw the big version of Johanson’s painting…recently back from Seattle…”Mirrored Porch”, 1984,

and this is of particular interest to us as we have a small version of this painting that George made for R…2007…

we talked about Louis Bunce (this was a “research call”) and they shared some photos of Louis including this one with Doll Gardner, Louis, George and Milton Wilson…

Louis painting to jazz…Jim Smith’s group “The Way out”

and, well, fun…

Tuesday we headed into a full art day running some books by Blackfish Gallery where Carol Benson and husband Michael Knutson are showing together…nice vibrant show…

across the street to Upfor where I kinda loved these oddly nice paintings by Ralph Pugay…

and then to PDX to see the VERY nice Storm Tharp show…here was R’s Favorite…

and mine…

Jane Beebee said ROSE COTTAGE refers to Tharp’s favorite Joan Mitchell painting called “Rose Cottage”, 1953…here it is, for just an art historical moment…

by now though, we needed a break and a tuna sandwich before going on to the museum…

The big show at the museum now is selections from the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection…

and though various of our correspondents were under-whelmed by the show, we liked it. First highlight a painting George had shown us in the show catalog the night before and the photo just seemed sooo dark…and the painting isn’t…(Geoge on the left in the eyeshade, Louis Bunce in the dark jacket, then Mike Russo, Jack McLarty, Sally Haley, Don Normark, and Phyllis on the right in profile…)

the docent was telling his group “and he’s still painting”… true enough…

and then other work by “friends”…Henk Pander’s portrait of Arlene…

a nice James Lee Hansen sculpture…

LOTS of Louis Bunce pieces…

Other things of interest included this nice big Katherine Ace…

Rick Bartow

…and I was delighted to see the Bay Area artist Squeak Carnwath’s painting…

“Will or Won’t”

since I’ve been sending these cards out for years…

I was also particularly taken with these two Morris Graves paintings…the first is the catalog cover for the show and is way more vibrant in life than in my not too good photo…

Next Stop the really beautiful Blue Sky photo show. Blue Sky Gallery opened 40 years ago and we were members right away. Membership cards in the early years were spatulas, collapsible cups, and so on. We have ALWAYS been big fans and members and were delighted with the show. Go see it…lots of nice photos from “away”…but LOTS of nice photos made right here by Oregon photographers.

or my iPhone panorama version (I’ve been “playing” with panorama)

FAVES:…Winston Link, there’s just SOOOO much going on in this photo, transportation wise…

and then this Abelardo Morell photo from his giant pinhole series that still knocks me out…

By now our energy was waning but we managed to get upstairs to see the newly hung and augmented room of Charles Heaney paintings (the museum owns 376, I noted on the label)…

but wait…what about this early Johanson?

and what about these gorgeous beaded bags from 1900-1920???

Enough. Off home. Try to go look this month.

Francis Bacon at PAM

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Modern Life, Urban Farm

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"The Rake's Progress", Amy Bernstein, chicken coops, chickens, collectors, Elaine Wynn, Francis Bacon, Hockney, Nationale, painting, Portland Art Museum, Three Studies of Lucian Freud, urban farming

On the way home from the farm we stopped to get a last look at the Francis Bacon triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” on view at the Portland Art Museum until March 30th. These paintings were bought last year by collector Elaine Wynn at a Christies’ auction. Christies estimated the sale at a possible $85 million, but the final figure Wynn paid was $142.4 million. Sharp intake of breath.

The paintings are portraits of painter and long-time friend of Bacon’s Lucian Freud. I kind of didn’t really want to see them, but in fact, they are terrific…they were painted in 1969 and split up to three collectors in 1971-72. Reunited by an Italian collector in the 1990’s, they have been out of the public eye for a long time. If you have a chance…get down and take a last look before they go away again for a while.

Bacon on the left, Freud on the right.

Nearby was a big Hockney landscape…

with a sign reporting the fun news…in June of 2015 the Portland Opera will present Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” using the Hockey 1975 sets and costumes, and the Portland Art Museum will concurrently have a show of Hogarth’s original “The Rake’s Progress” etchings and some of Hockney’s “Rake’s Progress” paintings as well as drawings for the sets and costumes. Sounds like a fascinating combination…

a quick look at “Salem’s Renoir, ” turned down by the mayor because she was…ahem…nude…eek!

Then a quick stop at a little gallery on E. Burnside…Nationale…to see Amy Bernstein’s nice paintings. I’d picked up a postcard someplace and wanted to see them…dead white background and the images looking like a comic-book narrative…nice…

Late breaking chicken news-notes: the coop got painted…

and everybody settled in for the night…

Rothko, “Red”, and a day away…

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists

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Art, Mark Rothko, Portland Art Museum, Portland Center Stage

Today we took a “vacation” day. We went to a matinee at Portland Center stage….haven’t been there yet? Do go…

we went to see “Red” a play by John Logan about the painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). The play was fascinating, mordant, funny…worth the trip up I-5…

and then on to the Portland Art Museum where there is a show of paintings by Mark Rothko. Rothko and his family (the Rothkowiczs) came from Latvia to Portland in 1913. Rothko attended Shattuck grade school and Lincoln High School before going on to Yale and New York, and the world beyond. His story, not unlike the story of Manuel Izquierdo, fascinates me. A kid, age 10 or 16, arrives in Portland from Spain or Latvia, speaking no English, and in 10 years is on a different path…a path to a mature body of art work fueled by a fierce determination and work ethic.

The show of Rothko’s paintings at PAM had some wonderful surprises for me…the earlier work that predates the famous “Mark Rothko” that we know so well. (The new museum policy allowing photos…except for the painting Paul Allen owns…is brilliant for me.)

You’d better go take a look…

The Amazing Way Life Is…

15 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Sculpture

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Art, Manuel Izquierdo, Portland Art Museum

Still on the Manuel Izquierdo trail. For MONTHS R has been searching for a sculpture that was at the Seattle World’s Fair “Century 21” in 1962, which was called “Figure”. He had a photocopy of a B&W photo showing the piece…

but nobody knew where it was. Katrina at Laura Russo tried to track it down, to no avail. Today a collector called Roger about a piece of Manuel’s they had that R might like to borrow for the show in 2013, and in conversation it came up that the collector owned another sculpture R might be interested in. Though it is currently at his vacation home, he DID have a photo of it…an old photo from a PAM brochure celebrating PAM’s 75th anniversary in 1967. I bet you can guess…WOOHOO! (Thanks Marilyn!)

Gordon Gilkey, March 10, 2012

10 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Uncategorized

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Gilkey Print Center, Gordon Gilkey, Manuel Izquierdo, PNCA, Portland Art Museum

Gordon Gilkey gave us a lot. He rounded up lost works in Europe after WW II, he taught a few generations of students at OSU, he curated prints at the Portland Art Museum from 1978 until his death in 2000. Additionally he established the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey print Center at the Portland Art museum donating over 7000 prints from his personal collection. Today is the 100th anniversary of his birth! This photo came to light recently with Manuel Izquierdo on the left and Gordon Gilkey on the right, on the occasion of the opening on a show of Manuel’s sheperds in 1999 in the gallery at PNCA named for Manuel. Happy birthday Gordon…

Eunice Parsons at Luke Dolkas

04 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Coffee art, Uncategorized

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Eunice Parsons, Luke Dolkas, Portland Art Museum

Eunice Parsons is a woman of such talent and focus it often takes my breath away. I wrote about her in May 2009 and a studio visit R made to see her work. Today a new show of small collages opens at Luke Dolkas art & framing (2707 SE Belmont) and I zoomed by Friday to take a look. Really they are so beautiful…if you have a chance they are up until January 6th and WELL worth a visit. The reception is today, the 4th, from 6-8. After Seeing Eunice’s work I went to the Portland Art Museum to see the Lee Kelly show and 5 absolutely gorgeous small water colors by Thomas Moran of waterfalls here in the far west. Of course the museum frowns on photos, but I did sneak ONE from the gift shop, where there are NO guards. A quick coffee and then home we came. I leave you with the images.