Around Oregon Annual 2020
July 16 – August 29, 2020
- Thursday, July 16, 5:30-7:30 pm – “Masquerade on the Plaza”
- Thursday, July 23, 12-1 pm – Lunchbox Artist Talk Zoom:
- https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83911851413
The Around Oregon Annual exhibit is open to artists living in all parts of our state. This exhibition recognizes the quality and diversity in the creative expression of artists throughout Oregon. Our intent is to show young and upcoming, as well as mature and established artists together. The Around Oregon Annual also recognizes and encourages excellence by awarding cash prizes, thoughtfully selected from the actual work. Each year, a juror from outside The Arts Center is chosen to curate the exhibit.
CONGRATULATIONS – Juror Awards went to:
- Kelsey Birsa: “Family Recipe”
- Uyen-thi Nguyen: “At the End”
- Lorraine Bushek: “Cat Napping”
This Year’s Juror:
Jane Brumfield serves as the 2020 AOA juror. She is the co-owner of Imprint Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon, opened in 2017. Jane & Mike Brumfield have operated galleries in Boise, Idaho and Hastings, England, before settling on the Oregon Coast. Prior to Imprint Gallery, Jane had a 20-year career curating for small regional museums in the South of England.
View artist images below:
I work in the medium of drawing, painting and printmaking. I prefer to work back and forth from memory aided with sketches or photos. The work often goes through multiple starts, stops, and restarts. I am drawn to bold colors and textures, I paint on raw linen or boards, or use a combination of painting and print making techniques. My subject matter varies widely from exotic animals in dream-like landscapes, desert and dense coastal forests to family and historic figures.
The landscapes and spaces in my work encompass the feelings of impending doom when we reflect upon the environmental and contemporary political climate. Who will be left to take stock of the world we have created? Who will regard the mountains of capitalism’s wreckage, sunken among the waters of catastrophic flooding? Because of these numerous and growing fears, charlatans and swindlers continue to profit from the manufacturing of comfortable fantasies and distractions. We find pleasure in the remnants of a more analogue age; the marquee, an ancient mode of advertising, with even fewer characters of expression than a tweet. As we witness what remains from the past, we wonder if it is possible to save what we find precious or if our endowment will be what we discard. I see creating these depictions as a hopeful act. By elaborating on these issues I hope to incite dialogue that can foster a different future.
The current work builds upon my interests in the connection between art and science and the evolution telling nature’s story through images. While inspired by history and the unfolding legacy of botanical art, I am equally fascinated with the structure and architecture of botanical forms. The myriad shapes found even within a single plant allow me to explore a miniature landscape and the relationship of botanical forms to one another in physical space. Also important for me is to get people to slow down and notice the small miracles in the world around them and nature’s amazing bounty.
I see the world differently now. The camera, which narrows the field of vision, has actually expanded my vision. When I realized I was viewing reality as if it were a series of photographs, I initially questioned that perspective. Now, I know my perception is enhanced and enriched from my pursuit of photography. An already dynamic and interesting world has become more so. I am delighted by quality of light, vibrancy of color, unexpected and often unnoticed detail. The stunning structure of an orchid, the intricate ornamentation on an older building, or dishes stacked in a dish drainer are fascinating to me. Abstractions and patterns are richer and invite investigation. My subject matter is limitless. Anything that appeals to my eye is fair game for my camera.
I am a painter and print maker. The paintings are part action painting and images created on polyester film and canvas. It gives me three layers to unite my pursuit of abstraction and landscape painting. In the these works I am able to combine the physical landscape worlds with the interior emotional world of my life. My prints emulate some of my painting processes and help me to think in new ways and connect my ideas and images.
Inspiration for my work comes from what I observe on my daily walks along the Oregon Coast. Recently I realized that I cannot not paint a storm. Part of that must be the influence of living on the Oregon coast where the environment can be extreme. But it’s not only my natural surroundings that inspire me. I also think the storm I paint has to do with the political and social environment we all experience right now. The world for me has to be processed and released through painting. It is the only way I can articulate the world I observe.
I am a late-life emerging artist who grew up in the American West. Using a traditional medium – hand-colored black and white photography – in a contemporary way, I’ve examined such topics as the persistence of old-growth stumps in the Northwestern rain forest and the role of tourism in shaping our relationship to the land. My work grows out of a fascination with the interplay between the cool Modernist process of photography and the more personal art of painting. My hand-colored photographs are made the old-fashioned way – no Photoshop – using paint and brushes on large black and white prints.
Nature inspires me to photograph or illustrate its bounty and digitally blend those images with other visual media. I exert control with my camera or pencil in choosing what I will add to the image. It is when I am deep in the process of layering those facets, that my control diminishes and I allow the digital “magic” to take over. As the image develops, I am once again in control. My work is collaboration between the image, technology, and me.
I bring together different mediums into dramatic interplays between object and symbol to tell a story visually. Every one of my collages has a hidden narrative made up by me but lends the opportunity for the audience to come up with their own version. Women and animals are the most common subjects in my work. They are symbolized whimsically in surreal bohemian- like scenes representing dramatic themes. I use various materials such as printed papers, oil pastels, pencil marks, acrylic paint, beads, lace and anything else to complete the story.
Art is visual. Music is auditory. Words are literature. If you want music, go and listen. If you want literature, go and read. If you want art, stay and see.
I am a ceramic sculptor, who lives and works in the foothills of Western Oregon. Clay is my chosen medium for its malleability and transformative nature. My sculptures are a tapestry of form, texture and color. Floral patterns and painted imagery cover the surfaces of my work. My subjects are women of varying ages, origins and eras. I work with paradoxical themes – youth and aging, joy and grief, instability and equilibrium – embodied in maternal archetypes and botanical adornment. By making this work, I hope to express an eternal optimism for the human spirit in this beautiful, delicate and chaotic world.
My work is based on decomposition and regeneration. I live next to Deer Creek, a tributary of Tryon Creek in Portland, Oregon and being in close proximity to nature in order to draw and photograph these things is the foundation of my paintings. A visitor to Jackson Pollock’s studio remarked that he didn’t work from nature. He responded “I am nature”. I agree. Making is my nature. I use encaustic paint as well as oil and other things like crochet because they feel like extensions of myself and get me closer to an understanding of the fuzzy space between life and death.
I believe all of our experiences are somehow embedded inside us. Some come to the surface while others are obscure and remain underground or below the surface, an internal landscape. The content of most of my work is about a narrative. A narrative that comes from a personal history that I explore and redefine as I move onto the next body of work. I am drawn to the duality of words and shapes. I explore a bird shape, a silo, a ladder, a tower, or a winged bee in many different ways. They all have connection to a piece of my history. Some become literal, many are not. How I use abstraction, pieces of language and my personal history, becomes the ground for which I am continually reworking to find new meaning in my work.
Art to me is a necessary escape from our complicated lives. My goal is to share art that is a daily reminder of the simple beauty that can still be found in this hectic world. Inspired by everyday objects from life I attempt to capture their abstract characteristics in texture, line, and color. I paint in a loose rustic style, starting each piece with a plan and finishing with a journey of imagination.
What does it feel like? In my best days, I remember to ask this question and listen for an answer. All things alive feel. This is my work. To look, to love, to learn what it is to see with eyes unburdened by preconceptions. To find the relationships that are interlaced between within around us each. Sometimes the exploration reveals dark places, sometimes I simply bask in the ten thousand pretty things. I paint to express the inner world within exterior avatars, our human condition, the beauty and life around me.
This photo is part of an essay titled “Long Summer Days” follows my daughter’s journey through childhood as she struggles with the boredom of living as a single child in the same small home where I grew up. We largely choose a device free lifestyle for her, which leads her to explore the world and envelop herself in her imagination and creativity. These images include subtle undertones and rich metaphors that disrupts the stereotypes of girls, while highlighting my daughter’s delightfully unconsciousness strength, independence, defiance, and playfulness.
Birds, and more specifically corvids, have regularly been turned out as garden guardians bearing the hints of a human expression. Through ceramic sculpture I explore the complex relationship between form and material, using the alchemy of the firing process to bond the two. The enigmatic figures that result from my practice display subtle human emotions that might often occur during the course of daily life. Generally though, their expressions will specifically portray a peaceful or contemplative mood suggesting a state of serenity during meditation or intense focus and deep concentration, which are all valuable tools in the creative process.
I am an oil painter and am in love with the human form, skin, and fabrics. My work is inspired by my own spiritual insights and renewal. My love for capturing details results in realism, yet my paintings often have subtle surrealistic qualities stemming from my attempt to bring a physical depiction of the “invisible” workings of personal transformation and emotional experience.
My artwork is produced through careful, live observation of still life set-ups and involves many hours of work to produce a finished painting. I enjoy using classical realist art techniques that have been passed down since the Renaissance to explore modern themes. Much of my work deals with the intersection of the Natural world and the Human-made world, and our experience of that intersection.
Jill R Baker is a visual artist whose work employs drawing, performance, and video to document improvised interactions with the natural world. We are gatherers and gleaners who sometimes mistake a fallen tree limb covered in lichen and moss for the body of an animal. We kneel by the water to return rocks to the creek. If there is no water we look under rock until our hands turn pink. We measure rainfall each morning in the garden beginning in the fall and think of ways to make drawings with raindrops.
This image celebrates the flora and fauna that I find right outside of my studio door.
Lorraine’s work explores the relationships between light, form and subject. With influences as diverse as the Dutch Masters of the 17th-18th century and today’s plein air style, she varies her work between realistic still lifes and relaxed, light-hearted animal portraits. The variations and relationships generated from both opaque and transparent oil paints fascinate Lorraine. With either subject-still lifes or portraits-she starts her paintings in the grisaille method, employing a single color to wipe out paint until she feels she has the under-painting perfectly laid out. It is at this point she moves to full color.
I am fascinated by the idea of consciousness and the connection, or disconnection, that we can feel with our physical selves. Painting the body is my way of processing experiences of body dysmorphia and it allows me to reconnect with a body that I at times feel dissociated from. Our bodies are how we experience the world and, though I can never embody another person’s experience, painting the vessel allows me a small window into it. “Here” is a representation of my fear of impending loss and the love that is at the core of that feeling.
Influenced by her past work in fiber art, Vicki Idema weaves fabric designs into her human forms while telling stories with her carefully detailed cut paper. Some pieces are from a series depicting hardships and despair many people experience such as mental illness and gender identity.