Cara Tomlinson, Born With, 2011, oil on wood, 16 x 20 inches

Cara Tomlinson’s exhibit of paintings and installation opens May 7 in Fairbanks Gallery, on the Oregon State University campus.

Tomlinson’s recent painting is concerned with the process of construction: how houses, paintings and bodies are made. In these works, paint conceals and covers over but also creates the illusion of an opening and space, transforming familiar boundaries into the unfamiliar. Her continuing body of work is motivated by questions about the construction of self, boundaries of subjectivity, and the interconnection of self and environment.

Cara Tomlinson has exhibited her work nationally in museums and galleries. She has received numerous national artist residency fellowships as well as an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. She has lectured on her work at many universities and colleges, including Carnegie Mellon, University of Montana and University of Iowa. In the last few years, the breadth of Tomlinson’s studio practice has expanded to include not just painting, but drawing, video installation, and sculpture—work she undertakes with a shared material and philosophical approach taken from painting.

Currently Tomlinson lives and works in Portland, where she teaches painting at Lewis and Clark College. She earned her undergraduate degree from Bennington College and her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.

Fairbanks Gallery is free and open to the public Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and Fridays from 8 a.m.-noon. The exhibit ends May 30.

~ Douglas Russell

A photograph by Betsy Hartley is one of the pieces of staff and faculty art now on display at the LaSells Stewart Center. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

While only a small percentage of Oregon State University faculty and staff can call themselves professional artists, there are myriad hidden talents among the OSU community, and a few of those are now being revealed at the OSU Invitational Staff Art Exhibit, on display through Feb. 17 at the LaSells Stewart Center Galleria.

Photography, painting and drawings reveal a well of artistic skill from faculty and staff, and represent a variety of media, styles and subject matter as varied as the jobs they perform on campus.

Betsy Hartley, director of external relations for the College of Agricultural Sciences, first bought a camera when she was working in South Dakota. She began taking photos of the thousands of geese who were flying by her on a migratory flight path, in order to share the experience with her parents back home.

“I simply picked up a camera to take pictures to show my mom,” Hartley explained.  “She was disabled and not able to travel and get out – but was fascinated with my travels for work.   So I started taking pictures as a way to share my travels/work with her.  It grew from there.”

Hartley was impressed with how a photo could be so much more than a snapshot, and could tell a very distinct and detailed story if done right. She became enamored with photographing tiny details that are often overlooked by most observers.

Faculty and staff artwork is now on display at the LaSells Stewart Center. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

Her portrait of a ladybug perched on a bright pink flower is one of the larger pieces in the exhibit.

“I love to put my pictures on large canvases,” she said.  “Especially pictures that lean toward being macro or single-subject.  I like making the little things jump to life and take center stage — ladybugs, spider webs, petals on a flower, drops of water.”

Hartley’s mother passed away almost two years ago, but Hartley still goes out to capture those stories on film.

“I still feel like I’m taking pictures for her sometimes,” she said.

The art show is made possible with the assistance of the Association of Office Professionals and the Professional Faculty Leadership Association.

The regular gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

~Theresa Hogue

Sean Caulfield, Phlegyas, Mezzotint, digital, Chine collé, 6” x 5.5”, 2007

“Darkfire” and “The Waiting Room,” an exhibit by Sean Caulfield, with collaborators Sue Colberg and Jonathan Hart, opens Oct. 10 in Fairbanks Gallery.

Darkfire, and The Waiting Room is an exhibition of two collaborative artist’s books, which explore the interface of visual art, design and creative writing. Each of these works is exhibited framed and unbound in the gallery, consisting of mezzotint prints by Caulfield, accompanied by poems written by Hart, with Colberg’s book design, which consists of a title page, text layout, colophon, and portfolio box.

In creating Darkfire and The Waiting Room, Caulfield, Hart and Colberg used themes and poetic images taken from Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory as a common start for each of their image and text pairings. They eventually worked towards responding to all three volumes of Dante’s famous work. Caulfield, Hart and Colberg share an ongoing interest in the Divine Comedy, as well as with the long history of illustration associated with this work by Blake and Botticelli.

Sean Caulfield is a Centennial Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, and has exhibited his prints, drawings and artist’s books extensively throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Susan Colberg, who teaches Visual Communication Design at the University of Alberta, is a Fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Her research and practice focus on book and publication design and typography.

Sean Caulfield, Waiting and Yearning, Mezzotint and Chine collé, 12” x 12”, 2010.

Jonathan Hart, who teaches at University of Alberta, has written books of poetry, history and literary criticism and theory. He has held visiting appointments at Toronto, Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, the Sorbonne-Nouvelle, and elsewhere.

Fairbanks Gallery is free and open to the public Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Fridays from 8 a.m. to noon. The exhibit concludes Nov. 2.

Image cutlines (from last year’s OSU Graduating Seniors’ Art Exhibit): 2010 Provost Award Winner, Morgan Williams, charcoal on canvas, “What Have You Been Waiting For?”

The OSU Graduating Seniors’ Art Exhibit reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 31 in Fairbanks Gallery. During the event, awards for the exhibit, and scholarships for the upcoming year, will be announced.

Twenty-seven graduating art students will participate in this year’s exhibit. During the reception, President Edward Ray will present the President’s Award for Excellence in Art. Sabah Randhawa will present the Provost’s Purchase Award, and Larry Rodgers, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will present the CLA Dean’s Purchase Award.

Senior of Distinction certificates will be presented to outstanding seniors in the fields of Fine Art, Graphic Design, and Art History.

Scholarship awards will be announced for freshmen, transfers and for returning students. These awards are selected through a competitive portfolio review.

Fairbanks Gallery is open to the public Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and from 8 a.m.–noon on Friday. The exhibition runs May 31–June 10. The public is welcome to all events.

For more information: Douglas Russell (541) 737-5009.

Type/Life is a participatory installation involving the shifting meaning of language. The artists have expressed dualities of modern life in pairs of words printed on large floating balloons, in a dreamscape for interaction and reflection. Visitors can contribute by drawing their own lettering on blank balloons.

These artists ask you to get physical with language. The designers’ instructions to visitors say, “Walk through the forest of balloons, passing a typographic border on the floor. Shift your perspective. Consider your own lexicon of dualities. You may want to draw them on your own balloon and let it become part of the work. We invite you to wonder, reflect, engage and contribute.”

Nancy Froehlich is a photographer and graphic designer. She teaches graphic design at OSU. She recently completed her second stint in Vandh, a small village near Bhuj, India, teaching design basics to native craftswomen.

Nadra Moritz a graphic designer, lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her cultural complexity — Algerian-American-French, Indonesian, Austrian and Dutch, and her interests have lead her to collaborations with clients that span the geographic and creative world.

Zvezdana Stojmirovic teaches graphic design at MICA in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and is always on the lookout for ways to return to Belgrade, her hometown, as often as possible. Designing for Participatory Culture, her forthcoming book, co-authored with Helen Armstrong, is due out Fall 2011.

Azin Valy is a partner in I-Beam Design, an architecture firm in New York City. In September of 2010, I-Beam’s Pallet House, a humanitarian housing project, was featured in A Garden Party to Make a Difference, an exhibition in London hosted by the Prince of Wales.

For more information: Douglas Russell (541) 737-5009 or drussell@oregonstate.edu
Or see http://oregonstate.edu/fairbanksgallery

Morning Coffee: Animated projection and installation

Materfamilias, a multi-media installation by Oregon State Professor of Art Shelley Jordon, opens Jan. 10 in Fairbanks Hall. A reception for the artist will be held from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., Jan. 12 in Fairbanks Gallery.

In Materfamilias, Jordon expands the realm of her previous still life paintings to include exploration of family relationships, connections between past and present experiences and the complicated nature of memory; physical and emotional, collective and personal. Combining traditional drawing and painting materials with animation and animated installation, explores issues of vulnerability and risk and how easily shattered the illusion of safety can be.

“Images culled from every day life and personal dreams and memories combine with images that refer to Roman mythology, discarded stuffed animals and brain scans,” Jordon said. “Interior and exterior worlds are woven together and domestic affairs become interchangeable with current events in a stream of consciousness. The process of creating hand painted animated paintings by repeatedly layering new images over old becomes a metaphor for life itself. Though the previous images are buried, they remain integral to the understanding of the finished piece.”

Jordon is a Brooklyn-born, Portland-based painter and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection between interior and exterior worlds and connections between past and present experiences. A recipient of a 2010 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Fellowship Award, a Fulbright-Hayes Group Travel Research Grant to Yemen and Tunisia, a 2010 OSU Center for the Humanities Fellowship Award, and an Oregon Artist’s Fellowship Award in Painting, her artwork has been exhibited in numerous venues nationally and internationally, including the Frye Museum in Seattle, Washington, the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum, the Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Portland Biennial, at the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME.

Terremoto. 2010. Still, animated installation 7 minutes.

Her award-winning, hand-painted animated films have been shown in Hamburg, Germany, Sydney, Australia, Jerusalem and Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and her MFA from Brooklyn College. Jordon has recently returned from a research trip to Berlin, Germany and to Jerusalem, Israel, where she was the 2010 Visual Arts Fellow for the pilot program for the Jerusalem Cultural Fellowship.

This exhibit will have special hours of 12:30 to 5 p.m. on Mondays, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Untitled, mixed media collage, 99 x 98 inches, 2010

Degree of Beauty, an exhibit of paper and debris constructions by New York artist Jeesoo Lee, opens Oct. 11 in Fairbanks Hall. A reception for the artist will be held from noon to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 13 in Fairbanks Gallery.

Jeesoo Lee has a fearless attitude towards the making of art. She bases her work on psychological states of being and through the physicality of her materials, namely trash, debris and paper.

“Trash by definition is unwanted by some yet beautiful to others.  More essentially, I see a different degree of beauty within the context of the environment where trash lives, letting it simply be,” says Lee.  “There is such a mixture of freedom and emotions when it is liberated from its isolation and legacy.  It loses its center of gravity and becomes a part of the abstract dynamics and organic nature of the whole.”

Lee seeks to convey the tension between traditional notions of abstract painting and the expanded palette of contemporary practice. The deconstruction and construction of her imagery is synonymous for the search for enlightenment and reason.

The gallery and reception are free and open to the public. Fairbanks Gallery is open Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Fridays from 8 a.m. to noon. The exhibit concludes on Nov. 2.

For more information: Douglas Russell (541) 737-5009 or drussell@oregonstate.edu or see http://oregonstate.edu/fairbanksgallery

Faculty art on display now at Fairbanks (contributed photo)

This exhibit demonstrates a dynamic diversity of styles and approaches to the making of art.

Sandy Brooke, Julie Green, Shelley Jordon and Douglas Russell show work in a variety of approaches and in the various media of oil, acrylic, and mixed media paintings.

Kay Campbell’s work, Perceptions, deals with interaction with the audience.

Graphic designer Christine Gallagher contributes several pieces that address of lettering, design, and conceptual concepts. Andrea Marks’ type diptych, Type Specimen, is reminiscent of the framed & pinned butterfly collections of the 18th century.  Nancy Froehlich has a number of ceramic works that involve typography in their design. Nathan Langner’s, “Drip Brew,” is a study of package design, and Paul Mazzucca’s, This, That and the Other Thing (Chapter 1) is a crossover graphic design/fine art installation of inked lithographic plates.

Yuji Hiratsuka is one of the northwest’s prized printmakers, and his Flower Heads, Gallaphant and Jungle Gem an intaglio, relief, and Chine collé prints reveals his colorist talent in a rare reduction intaglio process.

Shelley Jordon’s displays a new short video Dreaming/Drowning, her newest exploration in this field after her work, Family History won the “Silver Coyote, Critic’s Choice Award” at the Gold Coyote Super Short Film Festival in Marylhurst in May of 2009.

John Maul’s Genesis series, of five encaustic wall sculptures, typifies his broad-range experimental use of material, in this case encaustic and foam core, and once again includes the smell of sweet beeswax.

Andrew Myers’ moves from larger than life charcoal drawings to an intimate series of monotype prints this year.

Fairbanks Gallery is located in Fairbanks Hall, at the corner of Jefferson Way and College Drive on the OSU campus.  Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Hours on Friday may vary.  Due to reduced staffing in the summer months, unexpected closures may sometimes occur. For more information please visit our website at http://oregonstate.edu/fairbanksgallery.

The exhibit ends after the closing reception on Oct. 6.

For more information:  Douglas Russell at drussell@oregonstate.edu

Burton’s obsession with decorating envelopes and postcards started around 1985. At first they were vessels for correspondence, but occasionally they also acted as surrogates for sketchbook pages and also became explorations of technique, color and form. Burton soon found them increasingly fascinating because they dovetailed with his interests in topographies, systems, and the complexities those elements create in both art and life.

Fred Burton is a professor at the Memphis College of Art where he has taught since 1987. His paintings, drawings and woodcuts have been exhibited in Paris, London, New York City, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, and Orlando. Burton has held residencies at the Edward Albee Foundation, Montauk, Long Island; the Michael Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France; Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic; the Tyron Guthrie Center in County Monaghan, Ireland; the Millay Colony for the Arts, Steepletop, Austerliz, New York; the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois; the Woodstock School of Art in Woodstock, New York and the Morris Graves Foundation, Loleta, California.

Fairbanks Gallery is open Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m, and Friday, 8 a.m. to noon.

Stephen Hayes, Those Lives, That Light, 2008, Oil on canvas on panel, 60” x 120” diptych

Hayes focuses on painting images of land, and made his first paintings outdoors in the face of nature more than 25 years ago. He works to fill his paintings with more than a simple depiction of a place, or of a particular light at a certain time of day.

“When I have succeeded in making paintings that resonate and take on a life of their own,” says the artist, “I have been able to meld an inner ‘weather’ with an outer vision. This work is sometimes unabashedly beautiful and imbued with emotion. I am convinced that there still is room in painting for beauty to play a key role, and for emotion to serve the painter positively.”

Hayes was born and raised in Washington D.C. where his earliest memory of an interest in art is of a drawing he made with silver crayons of John Glenn and his “Rocket Ship” in the 1960s He was about six.

Hayes, received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1980, having focused on drawing and specifically on drawing the human form. His studies took him as far as a full dissection of the cadaver via the University Medical School, culminating in a thesis on portraiture.

Immediately following graduate school, Hayes moved to the Middle East for nearly four years where he was overwhelmed by the awesome beauty of the Cypriot landscape. It was there that his interest in the land as a vehicle for expression of human condition began. His travels and work in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Bahrain and Cyprus planted a seed that is still bearing fruit in his work today.

Stephen Hayes, Caldera, 2008, Oil on canvas on panel, 60” x 120” diptych

In 1984 Hayes moved first back to Washington for a brief stint at the Phillips Collection as one of their Museum Assistants, and then within six months decided to go somewhere unknown. He headed west and settled in Portland, where he currently lives. He continues through his painting and print work, to translate, viscerally, the physical and emotional experience of places of nature.

In the roughly 20 years that Hayes has spent working and teaching in Portland he has participated in scores of exhibitions and produced dozens of one-man shows of his paintings, prints and drawings. His work is well represented in numerous private, public and corporate collections throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Japan and South America.

Fairbanks Gallery is open Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be a reception for the artists, with a brief artist’s talk at noon Jan. 13. The gallery and reception are free and open to the public. Support for this exhibit has been provided by Art Work Fine Art Services. The exhibit concludes Feb. 3.

For more information: Douglas Russell 541-737-5009 or drussell@oregonstate.edu or visit http://oregonstate.edu/fairbanksgallery

~ Doug Russell

Stephen Hayes, The Bean Field, 2008, Oil on canvas on panel, 60” x 120” diptych

“Gallimaufry” is defined as a mixture or a hodgepodge of items brought together as one. This exhibit is a gallimaufry of textile and fiber art quilts including a group color challenge, a textile homage to the OSU Women’s Building, and other individual member work of the group “Loosely Bound.”

Loosely Bound is made up of 11 regional fiber artists who have been meeting since 2004 each month to study, critique, create, support and learn. Members are Nancy Bryant, Diana Cleland-Boyle, Marcia Gilson, Marcy Gregg, Babette Grunwald, Liz Hoffman, Susan Johnson, Kerry McFall, Ann Smith, Sidnee Snell, and Shirley Strub.

Loosely Bound’s creative explorations include a variety of media and techniques, always with some kind of fiber or textiles at the core.

“The name ‘Loosely Bound’ represents an acknowledgment that our skills and experiences come from a variety of traditions built by past artists, academics, quilters, historians, home economists, and family members. We are loosely bound to these traditions, yet appreciate and give homage to the people working in these realms past and present,” said Liz Hoffman, Loosely Bound member and one of the exhibit coordinators.

Nancy Bryant, the other exhibit coordinator, said for the last three years the group has selected a common theme and created a piece based on that.
“For the current exhibit, we each drew a color name from the hat. Each of us has created a 24-inch square piece that features the selected color.”
This exhibition is part of Quilt County 2009, a biennial community exhibit that’s been held throughout Benton County every other year in the month of September since 1991.

The Memorial Union Concourse Gallery is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, through Sept. 27.  After Sept. 27, the Gallery is open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to midnight on Fridays, 7:30 a.m. to midnight on Saturdays, and 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Sundays. For more information contact Susan Bourque at 541-737-6371.

Students in agricultural sciences get hands-on training at six campus-based farms: dairy, beef, horse, chicken, sheep and vegetable. (photo: Lynn Ketchum)

The “Savory Images” exhibit will be in the Murdoch Gallery throughout August and features images from the pages of the magazine, Oregon’s Agricultural Progress, showcasing the bounty of Oregon agriculture.

“The exhibit is a reflection of the role OSU’s research and people play in sustaining our state’s rich agricultural heritage,” according to Sonny Ramaswamy, incoming dean of the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

Magazine editor Peg Herring said, “Food is the handshake between urban and rural communities. Our hope is that the exhibit, along with the special food issue of the magazine, will prompt conversations across Oregon about food as a necessary – and delightful – part of life.”

After the August exhibit in Corvallis, the show begins a year-long tour across the state with stops in Astoria, Sept. 1-30; La Grande, Oct. 5-30; the Food Innovation Center in Portland, Nov. 2-27; and Madras, Dec. 4-Jan. 4.
In 2010 the exhibit shows in Prineville, Jan. 4-29; Pendleton, Feb. 16-March 19; Klamath Falls, March 26-May 3; Central Point, May 3-28; The Dalles, June 1¬-30; and Myrtle Point, July 5-30.

The exhibit is presented by OSU’s Extension and Experiment Station Communications and the College of Agricultural Sciences. Photos are by Lynn Ketchum, award-winning EESC photographer.

~ Judy Scott

This exhibit demonstrates a broad diversity of styles and approaches to the making of art. Harrison Branch exhibits a beautiful platinum-palladium photographic print with beautiful soft tonal qualities that only this alternative process can produce. His work is counter-point to the digitally manipulated figurative work of Felicia Phillips, rich in tone and mezzotint like texture, with reconstructed fragments and spatial layers.

Paintings by Sandy Brooke, Kathleen Caprario, and Stephen Hayes, show work in a variety of styles and in various media of oil, acrylic, and mixed media. Kay Campbell continues in a series of work dealing with thorny issues and which has moved from mixed media to serigraphy. Jim Folts presents a pair of ink-jet photographs, crystalline in his signature mastery of digital photography.

Graphic designers Christine Gallagher and Andrea Marks contribute four pieces that speak of lettering, design, and conceptual concepts.
Mark’s work, “Basel Book” is a book design built with collage of schedules, tickets, and print memorabilia, which she collected while in Basel, Switzerland.

Julie Green brings four prints that were published by the famed Lawrence Litho Workshop, and which show case her quirkiness, humor, and unique drawing abilities.

Yuji Hiratsuka is one of the northwest’s prized printmakers, and his “TriumpFigure”, an intaglio, relief, and Chine collé print reveals his colorist talent in a rare reduction intaglio process. Stephen Hayes oil, “River to Lake” provides insight to this Portland artist’s love of nature, his innate feeling for the power of stillness, and the emotional resonance of color.

Shelley Jordon’s three short videos include “Family History” which won the “Silver Coyote, Critic’s Choice Award” at the Gold Coyote Super Short Film Festival in Marylhurst in May of 2009. Family History is an animated painting that explores the quixotic nature of memory and how each new experience is filtered through our perceptions of previous ones.

John Maul’s rapturous “Wings” is an eight-foot wood and encaustic sculpture that typifies his broad-range experimental use of material, based in his esthetic of clean design, glowing color, and the smell of sweet beeswax. It is rivaled in scale by Andrew Myers’ larger than life charcoal figure, drawn on cut and sewn paper and pinned directly to the wall. Myers’ work was previously featured in “Art in America”, and he continue to impress viewers with his bold compositions and confident drawing ability.

Douglas Russell has included a small plein-air painting, “The Edge”, a golden grass meadow interlaced with oranges and blues, and boarded by a dark line of trees diminishing into the distant mountain range.

“The edge,” says Russell, is in reference to the landscape, and also to the blending where colors come together, a detail that painters often relish.

Fairbanks Gallery is located in Fairbanks Hall, at the corner of Jefferson Way and College Drive on the OSU campus. Gallery hours are 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Due to reduced staffing in the summer months, unexpected closures may sometimes occur. The exhibit closes after the closing reception on Oct. 7.

~ Douglas Russell