Category: Learn

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Volcano!

Photographs of two paintings of Mount St. Helens. Both are in ornate frames in differing styles. The first, by Grace Russell Fountain, depicts a peaked mountain covered in shades of white, gray, and muted pink snow at center. Smaller hills run horizontally in front of the mountain at its base, from right to left, in shades of blues and greens. Steep hills slope downward from each side towards the center of the painting. Two tall, sparse pine trees stand at the lower-left foreground. Between the sloping hills is a flat, smooth body of water reflecting the surrounding foliage and the muted gray sky. A bit of rocky shore is visible at lower right in the foreground. Bright shiny gold frame surrounds the painting. The painting at the right, by Clara Jane Stephens, shows the mountain situated left of center in the top third of the painting, its peak almost touching the top of the painting. The mountain is painted with thick, textured brushstrokes in whites and pale pinks. The bottom two-thirds of the painting suggests a landscape consisting of heavy brushstrokes in shades of blues and grays. In the foreground at right stands a telephone pole: vertical post with a bar across its top and another about halfway down. The paint is applied thickly and roughly creating a sense of texture. A thick, deep brown frame surrounds this painting.

“As we approach the 40th anniversary of the great eruption of Mount St. Helens, here are two distinct impressions of the volcano’s beautiful conical shape before its radical transformation on May 18, 1980. The paintings were created about thirty years apart by two of Oregon’s most distinguished women artists. Grace Fountain lived in Ashland and…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Write Around PAM: Brian Calvin

A horizontal, rectangular illustration of a white woman with long brown hair tucked behind her ears, positioned at the right. Viewed in profile, facing right, she leans her forehead against a bathroom mirror. Her eyes are closed. She wears a long-sleeve, light-blue top. She is reflected in the pink-framed mirror, seen with white, diagonal stripes representing the mirror’s glare. Behind her, in the center of the picture, is a window, also with glare streaks in the lower half, showing a tree with dark brown trunk and branches with foliage in various green tones. In the upper-left corner, leafy greens of a house plant are visible. The wall behind the figure is a yellow-green, the window is framed in a slightly darker yellow green. A dark blue horizontal stripe of tile runs along the back wall at chest level to the figure. A pink towel hangs on a bar at left.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the enormity of both our own and the world’s pain. It feels even more important now to take moments to pause. Writing is a great tool to reflect, de-stress, #breakforjoy, and heal. Using this piece from Brian Calvin as inspiration, here are two prompts to help you get the pen…  Read more

Categories
Community Discover Learn

Write Around PAM: Kenneth Noland

Horizontally oriented painting featuring a wide, golden-yellow band, extending from edge to edge, left to right. At the top edge, a narrow band runs across the entire width of painting. This band is composed of thin bands of various colors and widths: very narrow bands of deep burgundy, black, coral pink, pale gray, and coral pink again, top a much wider band of pale coral. Underneath are more narrow bands of pale tannish peach, pale coral, pale tannish peach again, a grayish blue and finally off white. The bottom is composed of similar bands of varying widths and colors: the first is a slightly darker gold, followed by an off white, a burnt orange, very pale peach, slightly darker peach, very pale peach again, a periwinkle blue, pale green, a sage green, pale green, a bold red, a very narrow off white, a wider grayish blue and finally a black band finishes the piece.

During this time, it is important we all take moments to pause. Writing is a great tool to reflect, de-stress, #breakforjoy, and heal. Using this work by Kenneth Noland as inspiration, here are two prompts to help you get going. You can choose one, both, or follow your own adventure. Set a timer for 5 minutes…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Dakota artist

Rectangular line drawing with no modeling on lined white ledger paper (light blue vertical lines). Two figures in profile facing one another stand to left. A large black horse faces the couple in profile, taking up the remaining two thirds of the drawing. The young woman, far left, wears a red-and-white patterned blanket over a red skirt with black leggings and white moccasins. Her black hair is in braids and she has a red circle on her cheek, a bone or shell necklace indicated by black grided lines, and hoop-style earring. The young man figure wears a black blanket with a white stripe at each side, over black leggings with red and white triangle designs, and red and white-striped moccasins. A red stripe is painted along his jawline and a black-tipped white feather is attached to the back of his hair. The horse wears a red bridle, a white double-horned saddle depicted as a rectangle with three rows of horizontal stripes, and a black-tipped feather on his mane and tail. There is no background and the edges of the paper are torn and stained.

“This tender drawing of a couple courting was created by a Dakota artist at the end of the nineteenth century, a time of great loss and conflict for Native people on the northern plains. Yet the artist chose to depict an intimate moment. We see a young man with his arms outstretched toward a young…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Bactrian Camel

Sculpture of a camel viewed in profile facing left, its head thrown back, with mouth open, teeth and tongue visible. It has a small ear and round beige colored eye opened wide. All four legs are visible from the side view; the legs behind one step ahead of those closest to the viewer. Its body, neck, and head are smooth and are glazed in medium to light brown tones. In some areas the glazing appears streaky and drippy; a band of dark brown rings the camel’s neck at its base. Deep incising creates longish, shaggy fur in a creamy beige color on the camel’s head, mane, and underside of the neck running down to its torso. A deep green blanket in the shape of a half circle covers the camel’s back. Two furry textured humps protrude through two openings of the blanket. A multitude of creamy beige dots decorate the blanket and appear runny on the green background. It is edged with a fringe alternating between dark brown, creamy beige, and deep green. The camel’s foreleg has tufts of creamy beige, shaggy fur at the top. The camel stands on sturdy looking, knobbly legs ending in large wide hooves that appear rough and unglazed and are attached to an uneven, rough, unglazed, rectangular base resting on a modern wooden platform.

“This expressive camel, with its head thrown back, makes a bellowing cry that seems relevant to these times. Bactrian camels were often part of a larger set of funerary sculptures in Tang dynasty China. As symbols of prosperity manifested through the Silk Road trade routes, camels would have been placed with other ceramic figurines in…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Open Your Own Art Museum!

We are thrilled to collaborate with Create More, Fear Less on a mini-museum project that you can do at home. Take all of those big feelings, ideas, and observations of yours and shrink them down into tiny (but mighty) works of art—because art doesn’t need to be big to be powerful! Go here for inspiration and instructions,…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Poster Project: William Cumming

Painting of three children each carrying a ox rendered abstract through flat planes of color and obscured faces.

This week’s Poster Project highlight features Seattle artist William Cumming, a survivor of the 1940s tuberculosis pandemic. Cumming is known for his bright, kinetic paintings of scenes from everyday life. His paintings are at once familiar and strange, portraying figures—often children—engaged in ordinary activities, but rendered abstract through flat planes of color and obscured faces.…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Leopoldo Méndez

Black-and-white linocut print of three figures standing over a table viewing a picture of Mexican President Benito Juárez that emanates rays of light filling the space around them. The three figures are positioned on the right side taking up roughly half of the print and are facing to the left. Heads bowed, a young boy holds a picture of a flag, a woman holds the picture of the President, and in the foreground, a young girl wears a long pale dress and holds the woman’s hand resting on her shoulder. Light appearing to come from the President’s picture highlights the children’s faces. Rays of light represented by white lines radiate outward and fill the remaining half of the print. Use of thick and thin lines, spaced densely or far apart, creates light and shadow and a sense-heavy texture.

“Today marks the anniversary of the historic Battle of Puebla of 1862, in which underequipped and outnumbered Mexican troops defeated the French army under Napoleon III, who were fighting to place Mexico under the rule of Maximilian of Austria. In Puebla, May 5 is commemorated with a reenactment of the battle and a large civic…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Chaïm Soutine

A vertical painting featuring a full-length male figure standing with his hands clasped in front. His left foot is placed in front of the other pointing to the right of the picture. He wears a cap atop a long face with a pointed chin. His ears protrude from either side of his head, bits of black hair poking out by his ears and at his forehead. Large dark eyes look off to the viewer’s left. He wears what appears to be a long-sleeve, high-collared white shirt. When examined more closely, the white shirt as well as his cap and shoes are made up of many colors in addition to white—grays, blues, green, yellows, tan, orange, and dashes of red applied in broad, rough brushstrokes. Similarly, his baggy, brownish pants are painted with strokes of brown, black, yellow, red, orange, and tan. To the left of the figure stands a brown chair with ornate slatted back. Behind the figure is a field of mottled red tones making up most of the width of the painting, suggesting a curtain. A narrow swath of reds, browns, yellows complete the right side of the painting running from top to bottom.

“Let slide the weary art-historical narratives that lock Soutine into categories of style and sequences of influence. Only look.” —Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for “The New Yorker” “I adore this painting. Full of beautiful contradictions, it seems to stand outside of time while it remains so specific. Chaïm Soutine painted from life, inviting models to…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Subok Screen

The entire composition of this screen consists of variations on the Chinese characters for longevity (壽, su) and good fortune (福, bok), arranged in alternating horizontal and vertical rows. The characters are written with astonishing variety, drawing on a repertoire of archaic scripts used in China as far back as the fifteenth century BCE. Making witty reference to the pictographic origin of Chinese writing, some of the symbols incorporate stylized drawings of fish, birds, plants, or constellations.

“Two auspicious characters, meaning longevity and good fortune, repeat in seemingly endless variation as the main design of this Korean textile screen. Across ten panels, with three columns of eleven characters each, the characters su 壽 and bok 福 are embroidered in brightly colored silk floss on a plain silk ground. The color in this…  Read more