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Daily Art Moment: Ralph Chessé

A square oil painting of a family of three dark skinned individuals: a male presenting figure, a female presenting figure and a child figure. The figures are highly stylized with thick, truncated bodies. Each has their head turned to the side showing a prominent jawline and flat eyes placed high on and close to the bridge of the nose. At center is the mother figure, she reaches out her arms grasping the child’s arm who stands on the right. The mother wears a yellow top, red skirt and an orange-red head covering. The child wears blue overalls and stretches his arms out to its mother. His head is tilted up, he has short curly hair with scalp peeking through. On the left the father figure stands slightly behind the mother in an opened neck pink shirt and blue pants. All three figures are barefoot. Brushwork appears thick, layered and rough. The family stands in a surreal setting: the brown floor they stand on almost appears to be a raft on which they float, the interior wall behind suggests a plaster wall with exposed wood lathe. A window with yellow curtains appears at right. The background is depicted as a deep blue sky with several white clouds. On either side of the family appear the outlines of bunches of green leaves. The painting is in a white square frame that shows exposed wood, looking scraped and worn.

Ralph Chessé experimented with a variety of styles from cubism to expressionism throughout his career, and the form of his work ranged from murals to puppetry, though painting took precedence. Much of his work prior to 1956 addresses African American themes or concerns, including his boyhood in New Orleans. In his retirement, he relocated to…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Jonathan Calm

Double Vision, Jonathan Calm, pigment print. A vertical rectangular photograph of man using a camera on a tripod near an oceanside cliff. The man is seen from the side, his camera pointed to the left. The camera has a large black bellows attached to a lens and stands on light colored wooden tripod legs. The man is mostly concealed under a dark cloth with only his bare legs and the fingers of one hand visible. He is dark skinned and barefoot. He stands on rough, brown ground with cliffs and the ocean behind his. The upper half of the photo contains a pale blue sky.

In the self-portrait Double Vision (Record), artist Jonathan Calm assumes the position of past and present-day landscape photographers—standing under a dark cloth, using a large-format view camera. He poses in the act of creating an image of the California coastline, a site long favored by revered “masters” of photography like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Neil Meitzler

“Winter Rain” by Neil Meitzler 1972. Acrylic on Masonite. 22 7/8 in x 23 1/8 in. Square painting with strong contrasting colors and textures that give an illusion of 3-D space. A tan snow-covered mountain with a flat top and sharp edges extends from the bottom of the painting to the middle of the painting. Wispy white strokes cover the mountain. Sharp, thin gray clouds extend at an angle past the top left side of the mountain and drift into the thick band of solid white clouds above. A thinner band of bright white clouds surrounded by patches of dark gray clouds float just below the large white cloud. The rest of the horizon is filled with a dark orange glow as if the sun has just set against a solid gray plane. A smaller snow-covered mountain is barely visible in the distance.

Both visual art and creative writing can invite us into abstract thoughts, a chance to step away from the traditional narrative and into a different way of thinking, seeing, speaking. We invite you to spend some time in the abstract today, using this piece by Northwest painter Neil Meitzler as inspiration. “While our existence momentarily…  Read more

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Podcast—Working Outside Your Walls: Navigating Museum Learning & Community During a Pandemic

Portland Art Museum’s Director of Learning & Community Partnerships, Stephanie Parrish, is joined by her counterpart at the Denver Art Museum, Heather Nielsen, to discuss the ins and outs of museum learning and how they’ve had to shift all that they do in response to a world where in-person programming is on hold. This episode is part…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Fern Coppedge

“Little House Next Door” by Fern Coppedge. Oil on board, 11 ¾ in x 9 ¾ in. Vertical oil painting with thick broad brushstrokes with layers of color framed in a thick gold frame with two small gold lines near the corners on each side. A brown two-story house with a one-story addition to the right sits in the middle of the painting surrounded by five trees with long, bare, bending branches, and landscape covered in snow. A small snow-covered stoop extends past the blue front door which is flanked by blue windows on each side on both stories. The A-frame roof is covered in snow and has a chimney extending at the top on the right. The one-story addition on the right has a blue front door with a window to the right. On the right side of the building a large stone chimney extends past the roof and is flanked by two thin tall windows. Snow covers the yard which is bordered by a gray stone wall. A small bush stands in the corner of the yard. The gray and white sky is visible beyond the trees and a swath of dark vertical strokes resembles mountain landscapes in the background.

Many of us have likely gotten to know the streets we live on a bit better this year as we take walks in the neighborhood or spend time looking out our windows while we try to stay close to home and maintain social distancing. Or maybe life has shifted in a way that means our…  Read more

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Portland Fine Print Fair 2021 Goes Digital

January 22–February 8 Buy and browse online at westcoastprintfair.com By Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings As with so many things this past year, the Portland Fine Print Fair (PFPF) is pivoting online. I am thrilled that we’re able to play a part in keeping this event going. For me, the Museum, and…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Larry Rivers

An Outline of History, from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence, color lithograph and screen print on paper, 41 x 32 inches. A horizontal rectangular depiction of our country’s Founding Fathers, seen outlined in brightly colored silhouettes on a cream ground. The figures are grouped, seated and standing, in familiar poses seen in illustrations of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Each figure has a line radiating outward from it with some of the figures having a name in addition to the line. At left is the first grouping showing some figures seated in the foreground and others seated in the background. They are made up of outlines in green, blue, yellow, bright pink, brown and dark grey. The lines are smudged within the outlines to give the figures a shadow of color. Names attached to some of these figures are: Rob Morris, Benjamin Harrison, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, Thomas, Lynch and Benjamin Rush. The center group features several standing figures and one seated figure. They are Sam Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. The figures are outlined in burnt orange, green, pink, blue and brown. The last grouping at right, shows seated and standing figures in gray, purple and blue in front of a green figure seated at desk in the background near other figures in yellow and brown. These are labeled William Paca, Stephen Hopkins and Lewis Morris. The lower quarter of the print is a very pale green providing a base for the figures. The artist’s signature is at lower right.

Something about the diagrammatic silhouettes and obscured labels in Larry Rivers’s An Outline of History hit differently when I came across it in PAM’s Online Collections today. The shapes and composition are so familiar that I instantly recognized the moment in American history. Yet I still imagined a multitude of alternative narratives filling the negative…  Read more

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Reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr. , resources & an equity update

On the left is a black and white photo of five dark-skinned individuals and one light-skinned individual, dressed mostly in black, holding hands in a line on a white and gray marble courtyard with bushes and the glass wall of a banquet room behind them. Large red and black letters on the top right read “Don’t worry, we’ll hold hands again.” A logo on the bottom right includes a red round COVID-19 cell consisting of a center circle with lines that have bulbous ends radiating out from it. Black letters read “Resist COVID. Take 6! A social studies 101 project. resistcovidtake6.org”
Resist COVID/ Take 6! a public art project by Carrie Mae Weems in partnership with the Portland Art Museum, City of Portland, and Multnomah County Health.

Approaching this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I am called to gather my thoughts more intentionally on what this day offers us in this particular moment in time. As one of the few Black stories acknowledged in US history books throughout childhood, the work of Dr. King cements him as a fixture in political…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Mary Adams

Strawberry Basket by Mary Adams (Mohawk, Canadian), 2 inches x 2 inches, ash splints and commercial die. This tiny basket with a lid is a natural golden color overall and topped with a decorative loop handle that is dyed green to imitate leaves and a stem. The whole basket has a bumpy texture due to the weave of the materials. The weave creates rows of small looping circles that hug the surface with the open ends of the loops facing outward. They are tilted slightly downward on the body of the basket and more upward on the lid. Around the edge of the lid, where it meets the body of the basket, the weaving materials are bound together with a splint spiralling around the edge. It looks very much like an unripe strawberry with the dark shadowy centers of each of the loops resembling rows of seeds.

At two inches by two inches in diameter, this piece by Mary Adams (Mohawk, Canadian) feels quintessentially “small but mighty” and so full of intricate beauty. In these fraught days, we invite you to spend some time writing in this spirit of “small but mighty,” knowing that each of us has a mighty role to…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Hank Willis Thomas

Keep the Faith Baby, Hank Willis Thomas, 16 x 16 inches, letterpress on Coventry rag paper. A square print featuring the words “Keep the Faith Baby” surrounded by a black outline on a white background. All letters are capitalized with “Baby” in red, bold font and the rest in gray font. “Keep” appears on the first line, “the faith” on the middle line and “Baby” on the bottom line.

Back in November, we closed the national tour of the PAM-organized exhibition, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… The works in the exhibition stick with me and I continue to be moved by Thomas’s art that tells us so much about the history and the present in our country. Throughout the last year, I’ve…  Read more