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More! Past Exhibit Highlights |
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Catherine J. Lee: New Paintings Oct/ November 2008 in the East Oregonian Gallery
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When Catherine J. Lee set out to find a place where she could live and paint, free from the noisy distraction of city life in Sacramento, California, the wide open spaces around Condon, Oregon drew her in. Her new exhibit at the Pendleton Center for the Arts features paintings and drawings that convey her great affection for this land that she now calls home.
Lee has made art most of her life. She graduated from University of California at Davis in 1989 with a degree in Studio Arts, but like many artists who pursue higher education, her art was put on hold after graduation as she entered corporate life to help pay off her student loans. She was able to carve out pockets of time to paint, and began exhibiting work in 1994.
Her original art training had focused on the human figure but later became interested in exploring landscape imagery. She started out painting very simple landscape compositions, a single horizon line of sky and ground. She tried to paint outdoors, but was often frustrated by the noise of a nearby freeway roaring by and the creep of massive subdivisions licking at the edges of a beautiful open space.
Looking for a change of scenery she made several road trips up to the Pacific Northwest, visiting the Palouse region in Eastern Washington, northern Idaho and finally Eastern Oregon. |
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“It was the landscape of Eastern Oregon that I found most intriguing,” she says. “The vistas went on seemingly forever, vast open skies with unobstructed views of the undulating hills of wheat and deep shadowed canyons.”
She admits that the move to Condon required some adjustment. The slower pace of rural life was a change, and it took time to settle in to the community. The small, tight-knit community members wondered why Lee had arrived in town. “One person actually asked me if I was in a witness protection program,” she says. Lee found sharing her artwork to be a good way to make connections. Her neighbors appreciated her talents and obvious affection for the land.
“As I drive over it along empty country roads, the undulating hills of golden wheat and sagebrush are a marvelous and sensuous contrasts to deep canyons, shadowed in late afternoon light. It is a landscape of great presence. It is this ‘presence’ and deep quietness, stillness that I very much try to capture in my paintings. Somehow the emptiness of the landscape, with few people, cars and structures, allows the presence of the land to have greater resonance.”This exhibit was made possible through the generous support of Thompson RV. |
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Sept. 25 - Oct. 24, 2009 Marie Watt: Pendleton Stories in the East Oregonian Gallery
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Marie Watt is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Born in 1967 to the son of Wyoming ranchers and a daughter of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation (Iroquois / Haudenosaunee) Watt identifies herself as "half Cowboy and half Indian." Formally, her work draws from indigenous design principles, oral tradition, personal experience, and Western art history. Much of her work uses reclaimed wool blankets as their material and inspiration.
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Bonnie Day: First Aid
In the Lorenzen Board Room Gallery Pendleton artist Bonnie Day will be showing an exhibit of mixed media works that incorporate slip-cast ceramic works that she created in the Arts Center’s ceramics lab. Day holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Oregon and plans to continue her studies after a move next month to Boston. through the generous support of Colleen and Jeff Blackwood. |
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Julia Henning - Negotiations April 3 - May 1, 2009 In the East Oregonian Gallery
This exhibit takes as its subject various parts of women’s lives, with musings both perplexing and challenging. It is concerned with differences between the interior and the exterior, of not only appearances, but experience. Using the vocabulary of construction in fabric, wood, and various found materials, the artist focuses on containment, trauma, transformation, and desire, and the fine lines that separate structures that liberate and boundaries that enclose.
The pieces are sculptural objects of clothing, containers of agricultural origin, and structures of indistinct or redirected function and purpose. The processes of sewing, weaving, and building used in these pieces are demonstrations of tactics that enable women to survive and adapt. References are made to rituals of reconciliation, including obsessive repetitions, religious devotion, and re-making.
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This exhibit was made possible through the support of Grable & Hantke, LLP |
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Pat Courtney Gold - Joe Fedderson - Joey Lavadour Woven Works by Northwest Masters
June 13 - July 10, 2009
In keeping with 2009’s fiber arts and textiles theme, five artists exhibited their baskets and basket-inspired art in “Woven Works by Northwest Masters.”
Many thanks to Frank and Betsy Moss for supporting this exhibit.
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Anne Greenwood lives and works in Portland, Oregon and showed a collection of works that highlight her residencies and collaborations over the past few years. Her work has been supported by the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Oregon Arts Commission and the Multnomah County cultural Coalition along with other foundations and organizations.
Greenwood was born and grew up in rural North Dakota, daughter to a wildlife biologist and nutritionist. Drawing, painting, and stitching with her artist grandmother lead her into a Bachelor of Arts degree from Moorhead State University, Minnesota. In 1990 she moved to Portland, Oregon and began working as a gardener and assistant to photographer/historian Thomas Robinson. Through her experiences working on projects for several music and art publications, including Snipehunt and PDXS, Anne established a deep, rich connection to many creative people within her community and her work continues to be inspired by these connections.
In 2002 she inherited a sewing studio and began to integrate more handwork into her art. Her work is autobiographical and explores her connection to daily life and the world around her.
“Transition and change deeply inspire how I work and I often reference imagery that is connected to my own personal experience and emotion. As a naturalist, my connection to plants and animals influences my work. I use written, visual, and collaborative forms of communication in an interdisciplinary fashion to express my ideas.”
In the Lorenzen Board Room Gallery visitors viewed the work of Pendleton artist Peter Bryan. Both exhibits were made possible through the generous support of Ron and Valorie Martin of Pendleton Pioneer Chapel Folsom-Bishop. Lodging for the artist provided courtesy of Best Western Pendleton Inn.
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July 17 - August 10, 2009 Anne Greenwood in the East Oregonian Gallery
...with paintings by Peter Bryan in the Lorenzen Board Room Gallery
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We invited faculty, alumni and select students from the fiber arts department at Oregon College of Art and Craft to share their new work. Embodying Oregon’s legacy of individuality and independence, OCAC has been championing artmaking through craft since 1907. The offerings by 28 artists displayed the beauty, versatility and sense of adventure that marks today’s contemporary crafts scene. Made possible through the support of Umpqua Bank.
In the Fireplace Annex Gallery: New Work by Amy Foss
In the Lorenzen Board Room Gallery: Photography by Denise Henkle Owen |
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We’re proud to be exhibiting a major mid-career exhibition by Willamette University Professor James B. Thompson in the main East Oregonian Gallery, on loan from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.
James B. Thompson: The Vanishing Landscape features paintings and prints and focuses on an important body of work the artist has been developing for some time that explores the transformation of the western U.S. Thompson holds a bachelor of arts degree from Ripon College in Wisconsin and a master of fine arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis. He has been on the art faculty at Willamette since 1986.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 52-page monograph written by Henry M. Sayre, author, curator and distinguished professor of art at Oregon State University, Cascade Campus. The monograph will be distributed by the University of Washington Press, Seattle and London
The exhibition has been supported with funds from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art Publication Fund, the Department of Art and Art History's Mark and Janeth Sponenburgh Endowment Fund, and College of Liberal Arts Dean's Office at Willamette University, and by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the City of Salem's Transient Occupancy Tax funds, and the Oregon Arts Commission.
Art critic Bob Hicks of The Oregonian recommended the exhibition, calling Thompson’s art “a considered and sophisticated grappling with matters of space, color and mark-making.” Read his review here. |
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January 21 - March 6, 2010 James B. Thompson: The Vanishing Landscape in the East Oregonian Gallery
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In the Lorenzen Board Room Gallery view the photographs and digital manipulations of Tabatha Ball. |
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Both exhibits are made possible through the generous support of Diana and Gary Zimmerman |
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OCAC @ PCA - October 30 - November 14, 2009 |