"ArtSpace" Oregon Encyclopedia, 2008-11 By David A. Horowitz

Oregon Encyclopedia, 2008-11

By David A. Horowitz

From the Museum of Peoples Art  WPA Collection, Bay City Oregon

Established in 1989 on the site of a former market in Bay City, on Tillamook Bay, ArtSpace Gallery is a leading promoter of twentieth-century and contemporary regional art. Proprietors Trisha and Craig Kauffman focus on modestly priced representational paintings and prints, and specialize in art depicting ordinary life and working people. The couple publicizes Oregon's legacy of labor-oriented work by promoting relatively unknown artists, such as Albert and Arthur Runquist and Martina Gangle.

Like Oregon painters C.S. Price, Charles Heaney, Doug Lynch, and Harry Wentz, the Runquists and Gangle portrayed commonplace scenes of the Pacific Northwest for the New Deal's OregonArt Project during the 1930s. Adhering to the Roosevelt administration's effort to promote beauty and an ethic of solidarity among Depression Era Americans, the Runquists created historical murals for a variety of public buildings, and Gangle's work included a mural of western pioneers for Portland's Rose City Grade School and several pieces for Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge. During World War II, their paintings documented the diverse aspects of the work environment of the Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver, Washington.

In the desire to share the visual experience with as many enthusiasts as possible, the Kauffmans joined with friends in 2002 to form the Museum of People's Art: Labor, Life, Landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Housed in a corner of ArtSpace, the facility has amassed a permanent collection of paintings and prints. Its debut exhibit in 2004, "Working People," brought together informational displays and 250 paintings and drawings by the Runquists, Gangle, Doug Lynch, and Ralph Chesse, as well as canvases by contemporary artists such as Brent D. Burkett, Yolanda Valdes, Huberto Gonzales, and Kurt Hollomon.

Written by: David A. Horowitz

From the Museum of Peoples Art  WPA Collection, Bay City Oregon

Other Works by this Author:
ArtSpace |

  







  

Further Reading:

Allen, Ginny, and Jody Klevit. Oregon Painters: The First Hundred Years (1859-1959). Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1999.

Horowitz, David A. "The New Deal and People's Art: Market Planners and Radical Artists." Oregon Historical Quarterly, 109 (Summer 2008): 318-327.

Horowitz, David A. Martina Gangle Curl: People's Art and the Mothering of Humanity. Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, 2004. www.ochcom.org/gangle

WPA Links:

WPA Murals   Timberline Lodge and WPA Art   ArtSpace in a recent Oregonian article

Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission   Guide to WPA in the Oregon Federal Act Project Collection   The WPA played prominent role in the relief effort throughout Oregon from 1935-1942

Recently at MOPA: Dorothea Lange Photos

   

Dorothea Lange at MOPA

    

Dorothea Lange's images of Depression America made her one of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the twentieth century. She is remembered above all for revealing the plight of sharecroppers, displaced farmers and migrant workers in the 1930s, and her portrait of Florence Owens Thompson, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, has become an icon of the period.

Since much of this work was carried out for a government body, the Farm Security Administration, it has been seen as an unusual test-case of American art being commissioned explicitly to drive government policy. After the Depression she went on to enjoy an illustrious career in photo-journalism during its hey-day, working for leading magazines such as Fortune and Life, and traveling widely throughout Asia, Latin America, and Egypt. She was instrumental in assembling the "Family of Man" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Unpolished Appeal of Daniel Belardinelli

 "Trapeze"

Belardinelli was born in NYC in 1961. Raised in Manhattan, his work has been classified in such categories as “neo-expressionist”, “outsider”, and “self-taught”, to “new generation art brut”. Whatever classification it may be, Belardinelli’s work is passionate and intensely powerful.

"Beauty is on the Street" by Daniel Bellardinelli

Daniel's work has been exhibited and collected all over the world (New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Montreal, Geneva). He was included in the "High On Life--Transcending Addiction" show at the American Visionary Art Museum (2002) and had work in a traveling museum show called "Revelations and Reflections of American Self Taught Artists".

Belardinelli maintains two studios. One in Soho, New York City and the other in the attic of a pre-Civil War building in Boonton, New Jersey. He is represented by the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York City, Galerie Bourbon Lally in Montreal/Haiti, and Gallerie Chiz in Pittsburgh.

As a child, Belardinelli had difficulty expressing himself verbally to others. As a result, he would draw and paint in order to express his voice.

Belardinelli at Gallery Bourbon Lally

Greg Carrigan Wood Carvings

"Alex" Drag Queen Stewardess, 2011 Wood Carving and Paint by Greg Carrigan

I put a bird on it... 2011 by Greg Carrigan

Greg Carrigan is inspired by the Kienholtz's, Tom of Finland, and Pierre N. Giles. He is a collagist and painter. Finding found objects is his big obsession. 

Recently,  he discovered a love of wood carving and adds touches of assemblage and paint.

Carrigan is a 60 year old gay man who has been a working artist for over 30 years. He carves disco heads,  male nudes,  drag queens and iconic figures that reflect gay culture and everyday life - bringing a whole new theme and disco vibe to wood carving. You can find Carrigan in his studio carving lumber jacks, fishermen, navy men, and gods like Mercury and Neptune. AMG 2011

Mercury MM Assemblage by Greg Carrigan

Rachael Christensen

Energetic Angel 2010 by Rachel Christiansen

"Art has always been my friend and my truest companion.  Its never lied to me or done me wrong.  I work in several different media and as I find my style as as I find myself I’m drawn to the Natural and Spiritual.  I suppose everyone has experienced the raw power of the coastline and open sea, but the minutae found in the flotsam reveals to me the intricacies of the continuing survival of the life."

Rachael is a longtime Northwest native. Moving several times she has made her home in Portland.  With an eagerness for self taught art, she has not shied away from any formal training that presents itself.  Though she works in several types of media she has recently worked in oils, inks and wood block printing.

Robert Collison’s life-like cardboard Wild African Dogs

"My name's Robert Collison. I've been Anne Grigich's friend since 1982-- young art punks in Portland, Oregon. We'd spend whole days rummaging & rampaging through the downtown blocks, acting it out on Super-8, only to find the camera never had any film. We studied art and made art and encountered a pile of trash on the street and had an epiphany it was "true" art. The Day We Met Collage God. I moved to San Francisco in 1985 and Anne lived down here then and we've stayed close over the years. Along the way she's always pushed me to show my work, even today. These pictures I've worked on since 2002. These things are all about finding bits of things at random, re-combining them and just letting them find their own natural flow. I enjoy making this stuff, picking up things off the ground, gluing, etc. once I get into it I can't stop--that's honestly the only reason I do it. Compulsive behavior." -RC 2007

Robert Collison’s life-like cardboard Wild African Dogs 2008

 

Rob Collison Dogs at Track 16 Gallery

Open publication - Free publishing - More anne grgich

The Carvings of Tom Cramer

Influenced by his journeys to India, Egypt and Europe, Tom Cramer's concerns emerge from his interests in higher consciousness and the infinite nature of reality. Deliberately apolitical and idealistic, Cramer strives for an emotionally-rich pure aesthetic that achieves what Pablo Picasso declared art ought to do: be everything that nature is not.

Website for Tom Cramer: Tom Cramer

The Fantastic Work of Paul Gasoi

Gasoi, Girl on  Tricycle without her Monkey 2011

Gasoi creates visceral works that automatically conjure images from an abstract flow to illustrate the multidimensional interactions he perceives as the on-going process of life itself. Paul recently was in the exhibition curated by Tom Patterson, "High on Life," at The American Visionary Museum, in Baltimore MD. His work was featured in the catalogue for the Gexhibition and his work is also in Revelations and Reflections, a museum show traveling until 2005.

   Gasoi Book Page Excerpt

Recently Gasoi coined the title "Internal Guidance Systems"

New Gasoi website under construction

More paul gasoi

Open publication - Free publishing -

Publish Post

More paul gasoi

Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday-Anne Grgich by Colin Rhodes

The Ornamentalist 2009 by Anne Marie Grgich

Bird Woman 2010 by Anne Marie Grgich Collection of Joanne Soja NY

"Yet the simplicity of this overall representational superstructure is a necessary organising device for the complexity of the interdependent units that constitute the physical object that is the work."  Text from Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday, The University of Sydney Art Gallery, 4 October to 13 December 2009 by Colin Rhodes" See full article

      Crown Yourself 2002 by Anne Marie Grgich MM on Canvas

About Colin Rhodes  Rhodes is Director of STOARC (the Self-Taught and Outsider Art Research Collection), which is based at the University of Sydney. STOARC consists of a growing study collection of Australian and international Self-Taught and Outsider Art, the International Journal of Self-taught and Outsider Art, and Callan Park Gallery, which has a rich public program of exhibitions of established and emerging figures within the field.

The Raw and Refined Sculpture of Chuck Iffland

My current work explores the psychological nature of the human condition via human form and architectural juxtapositions. I view the art-making process through an expressive, archeological/historical and situational(place) lens.





























I usually start with carved, molded or cast cores done in the automatic tradition and under the shadow of an idea or an emotion that dominates a current state of being (in both a collective and individual sense). I use locally found materials, ie., stone, wood, or cast earth / concrete. I then construct homes/houses/shelters/cages for the artifacts. I carve or cast again using local materials to en-bed the place in the work.

My current lines of inquiry have to do with the forgotten, shelter, abandonment, and fear. In the past my work has explored monuments, cages, ancestors, technotopia, violence, lost children, icons, religion, modern/primitive, nature versus urban, and borders.

The Collage Work of Kurtiss Lofstrom

The Thread of Eternity Disappears Just Over Her Shoulder (aka Dam Development) 45 x 54" Kurtiss Lofstrom 2011

Kurtiss Lofstrom 2011

Lofstrom’s work is concerned with the formal elements of color and pattern. Through a technique of hand-tearing the found papers he uses in his collages are stripped of original context and brought down to their bare, physical characteristics; any portion of recognizable imagery remaining becoming more of a shade or emotive color than an explicit narrative expression. This abstraction of the familiar in Lofstrom’s work elicits fragments of experience and things half remembered to create a nostalgia for an experience yet to be had. Caitlin Moore – Administrative/Co-Director, Gallery Homeland, Portland , OR.

Montage, a fantastic compilation of early collages from 1992 by Kurtiss Lofstrom.

Portland Painter Bethany J. Major

Curtain Call, 2011, 22 x 26 by Bethany J. Major

Landsea, 2011, 24 x 36 by Bethany J. Major

I view most of my work as imagined seascapes and landscapes. I concentrate on horizon lines, light, and deep layers of color. My goal is to create a sense of place. Using flashes of brightness in a horizon line, or a dark streak hiding in a field of light, I am trying to create that special area the eye will gravitate towards and then search for what else might be hidden there.

I fight with my paintings. I wrestle them into what you see. One time I found myself sneaking up on a painting to put tape over it, as if I was trying to take it by surprise. I laughed at myself after, but the feeling was real. There are usually about five “other” paintings underneath the last, layer upon layer, sometimes taking months, sometimes set aside for years before I put it back on the easel and continue. Really they create themselves, I just try to guide them in a direction, but often I feel as if I have no control at all over the finished piece. They become what they are meant to be.

My early work was done using gouache with colored chalk and charcoal on paper, the only painting tools I'd been familiar with. I've since graduated to gouache and acrylics mixed with gel mediums on canvas to create texture in the surfaces.

Major Graduated from Maine College of Art (MECA) 1992. BFA with concentration in Ceramics.

Kandace Manning-Quilts, Water Color Paintings and Handmade Papers

KANDACE MANNING

Rocks and Water, water color by Manning 2010

Kandace Manning is a native Portlander grounded in gardening, animal husbandry sewing and the fabric arts. We met on her summer break from Cooper Union where I lived in her long-time family property nested in Forest Park, in 2009. Manning is obsessed with her work, whatever it might be, raising goats, sculpting gardens, drawing, quilting, paper-making, she is one of the most talented and productive artists I have met in years. Anne Marie Grgich, May 25, 2011

Out Past Estacada, water color by Manning 2010

Cropchalk, hand made paper by Manning 2010

LINKS:

Kandaces Quilts

Manning in a recent article about a New Orleans gallery, Barristers

Manning in Folk Magic by Marcus Mårtenson 2009

Skate Bowls of Ian McMartin

Hand Carved-Recycled Wood Skateboard Bowls by Ian McMartin 2011

I challenge the hierarchy of materials by empowering the worthless. I turn to art because it too can challenge standards and hierarchy and alter function. I transform refuse and the unnoticed into art in order to give it a place in this world. These bowls were carved from discarded skateboard decks, multiple layers glued together and then carved by hand. The hand shows through in the organic form and irregular contours in contrast to the even layers of colorful machine made plywood. The qualities of machine production are a consequence of using refuse and the qualities of the hand made are a product of the creation of an art object. I want my art to draw attention to the handmade and the unnoticed.

Photography by McMartin

Photography is commonly used to capture what would fearfully become the forgotten. I use photography to capture the unnoticed, the mundane and the simple. I use a Minox camera with 8x11mm negatives. The sub-miniature camera allows me to photograph without intruding on the everyday. My camera has become an extension of my body, always in my pocket.

When it rains it pours, McMartin by Dave Hupp March 2011

Eliza Murphy-Animalis Tabulum

Woven into a Dream by Eliza Murphy 2008

Animalis Tabulum

Several years ago I stopped wincing when I saw a dead animal lying in the road. I could no longer avert my gaze. Road kill began to rivet my attention. Although each one made me sad, grief struck me as an insufficient response.  It wasn’t enough to offer an apology as I passed by. Aside from trying to avoid hitting an animal, I had no idea if anything could be done to curtail the slaughter. As a participant-observer in this colossal tragedy unfolding wherever roads lead, to not do something about the carnage was to shirk responsibility. Seeing animals ravaged beyond recognition diminished my squeamishness over time once I lifted, peeled, scooped or scraped one body after another off the blacktop.

Gila Monster Midway 2008 by Eliza Murphy

             

Animalis, (Latin) having breath

Animals deserve a more honorable end than to have their lovely bodies assaulted repeatedly or left to rot, buckled against a concrete barrier. By offering each animal a more respectful resting place, I hope to reduce traffic carnage by donating the meat to the wildlife eking out a living along the edges of our travel corridors. Wildlife often risks injury or death while scavenging on the center line. Instead of tires rendering an animal to dust, this practice permits me to participate in the economy and beauty of the recycling practices of the natural world. The box shrines I assemble are meant to memorialize our vanishing wildlife. 

 

Snake has many Facets, 2008 by Eliza Murphy

                            

Animalis,  (Latin) having breath

The two types of objects that inspired me to make these box collages first came to my attention in New Mexico – descansos and retalbos, both of Latin American origin. Descansos, originally a resting place for a loved one, now refers to roadside memorials that have migrated north over the past decade. Retalbo is a wooden box, often carved and painted, that holds and frames other art objects of spiritual significance.

Desert Crossing by Eliza Murphy 2008

Originally used as a portable altar made of a single carved icon surrounded by bits of colorful paper, and candles to light as offerings, contained for travel in a painted wooden box with hinged doors, retro-tabulums (“behind the altar”) were used for protection by Spanish warriors determined to impose their religious beliefs on indigenous South American cultures. After the conquest, the Andean people adapted the form to honor local spirits as well as the imported saints. 

 

Back to the Flower World Eliza Murphy 2008

Animalis, (Latin) having breath

Dedicated to animals who no longer have breath and to all the animals still breathing, I offer these shrines in apology and celebration. 

 by Eliza Murphy 2011

 

Eliza Murphy is a freelance writer who lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. More gatherer than hunter, she cannot resist a good bone or other detritus found along her journey, most often underfoot, that she knows will come in handy when making something. 

Beauty is not suspect, but an antidote to the preponderance of ugliness in the world; ugliness in its multi-nefarious forms – pollution, limited access to birth control, poverty, over population, chemical and biological warfare, genetically modified crops, torture, consumption, off road vehicles, illegal trade in wildlife for mythical erections, rigged votes, private jets and yachts, and the remainder of the trophic cascade of horrors that occur as a result of ignorance, fear, and greed, in the name of patriotism, one nation under the god, that insolent fantasy figure delusional people slather prayers on, the schizoid faithful who readily attribute his ongoing dismissal of their prayers to his divine plan.  

Photos by Anne Marie Grgich 2011