Tag: Grace Kook-Anderson

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Daily Art Moment: Jess Perlitz

Image description: Burned Beast, Jess Perlitz, burned basswood, 48 x 30 x 54 inches. A sculpture of a four-legged, horse-like creature depicted standing with one front leg slightly raised, its head tilted to the left. The beast has a long neck, small upright ears, large deep-set eyes that appear almost closed, a short snout with a broad mouth. The creature’s legs appear to be jointed at the shoulder, and end in thick hooves. The animal is dark charcoal in color and the surface shows the uneven marks of carving. It stands directly on the floor next to a white wall that has dark smudges that roughly correlate to the beast’s silhouette.

Jess Perlitz’s Burned Beast is a mismatched creature, resembling an ill-fitted hobby horse with visible seams and dowels. The basswood has been hand-chiseled and sanded, and burnt in the final stage, at once creating a pragmatic and protective seal, while also signaling a kind of ritual act. The “shadow” is created by rubbing charcoal on…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Shirley Gittelsohn

Shirley Gittelsohn (American, 1925–2015), Family Portrait, 1977, oil on linen, 72 in x 144 in, Gift of the Families of Shirley Gittelsohn and Ernest Bonyhadi. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2017.49.1

Shirley Gittelsohn’s Family Portrait is featured in the current exhibition, Portraiture from the Collection of Northwest Art. The painting depicts her adult children, the family pets, her relaxed husband, herself, and their Cannon Beach gathering place. I’ve been drawn to different details of this piece over time, most recently focusing on Gittelsohn’s self-portrait. She is…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Willie Little

Image descriptions: Little’s Grocery (Shack #4), Willie Little, glazed ceramic, 9 ¾ x 7 ¾ x 10 ¾. 1. A three quarter view of a ceramic house with pentagon shaped ends, long sides and a sloped roof. The terracotta-colored roof has vertical ridges with deep gray and light beige portions creating a worn look. The broad side of the house is a dark brown with lighter shades of terracotta showing through. The words “pickled pigs feet” is painted on one broad side and “penny candy” on the other. The lettering is done in a lowercase, free hand style in a crackled, uneven, near white glaze with bits of terracotta showing through. The end of the house at right has a stairstep pattern rising from the gable, ending in a square shape at the peak. The short end of the house features lighter and darker terracotta colors that create texture and pattern.

Created during his residency at Ash Street Project (@ashstreetproject) in Portland, Willie Little worked in ceramics for the first time, creating a series of shack structures based on his father’s grocery store/juke joint, Little’s Grocery. Text on either side of the structure indicates popular store items—penny candy and pickled pigs’ feet. Little used the grain…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Steven Young Lee

Image description: Jar with Dragon and Clouds, Steven Young Lee, porcelain, white slip, glaze, epoxy, steel, 40 x 58 x 10 inches. A large, wall-mounted installation of broken porcelain shards. The shards are a pale blue green in color and are arranged overlapping, some with their decorated surfaces facing outward, some showing the interior of the jar. The pieces float on the wall without visible means of support in a gentle crescent shape with each end raising slightly. At center, the two parts of the round rim are placed one atop the other. Large portions of broken coils undulate outward. Some are placed flat; others standing on their edges. At a distance, the shards appear to be a solid blue green but are delicately decorated in deeper hues of blue green showing details of dragon scales and the crazing of the surfaces. Some shards of the vessel have rough, bubbled surface that contrast with the smoother exterior views of the shards. The work is lit from above causing shadows to be cast below it.

Steven Young Lee describes how the coils of the large vessel of Jar with Dragon and Clouds came apart and the pot imploded in the kiln. Here the shards are put together in such a way to reveal both their exterior and interior surfaces. One can imagine how impeccable this vessel must have been before…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Anne Appleby

[Image description: Requiem for a Ponderosa Pine, Anne Appleby, each panel 44 x 44 inches; overall: 90 x 90 inches, oil and wax on canvas. Four square panels, each a different color, grouped to form one larger square. The panels are arranged two over two. At top left, the first panel is a deep green and at top right the panel is reddish-purple. Bottom left contains the blackish-brown panel next to the faded orange or cantaloupe colored one at bottom right. The squares are hung so they are separated by narrow strips of the wall behind them. The panels appear to be solid blocks of color but closer inspection reveals subtle variations of shades and depth of color.]

Living in the Elkhorn Mountains in Montana, Anne Appleby has spent years closely studying the ecology, and more specifically, the trees that surround her land. Known for her “grid” paintings, Appleby paints the changing colors of trees that define their characteristics through seasons. Requiem for a Ponderosa Pine examines the variations of colors of a…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Childe Hassam

Afternoon Sky, Harney Desert. Childe Hassam. 1908. Oil on canvas. 20 ⅛ in x 30 ⅛ in. Landscape painting of the desert in Harney County, Oregon. The foreground is covered with short, sharp, yellow and white brushstrokes with orange and red highlights that make up the desert foliage resembling sage brush. Beyond the desert, near the middle of the painting, soft blue and purple lines show the distant mountains. Above them the sky fills the top two thirds of the painting. The blue sky is filled with both large banks of clouds and a few single oval-shaped clouds in the middle. The clouds appear light gray and white with soft yellow highlights along the edges. From a distance, the painting portrays a soft, warm view of the landscape. A close view reveals distinct short strokes and the blending of multiple colors.

Spring is approaching, and the clear skies and sunny days are a cheerful welcome. With the changing season, I am reminded of Childe Hassam’s two paintings and his impressions of the Oregon landscape on his second visit to the region, which was quite different from his New England hometown. In Afternoon Sky, Harney Desert, Hassam…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Diane Jacobs

A landscape-oriented work of a flat map of the world rendered in brown human hair on a cream-colored wool felt ground. The map is upside down so Antarctica is across the top, North and South America are at right, Australia is at left and Africa is in the center. The land masses are rendered in brown hues of human hair giving them a fuzzy, textured appearance. Viewing the map upside down makes it appear to be an abstract work of scattered large and small irregular shapes. Suspended in front of the map is a small, clear acrylic ball through which the continent of Africa can be seen, right side up.

Diane Jacobs is drawn to wool, hair, and paper pulp materials in much of her work. For Jacobs, hair is a material that incorporates our humanity woven into the material’s very history and genetics. It is also a material filled with social taboos and is inherently visceral, coming from one’s own body. In Global Inversion,…  Read more

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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: Adam Sorensen

Tabernacle, Adam Sorensen, 78 x 119 inches, oil on linen. A horizontal rectangular painting depicting a surreal landscape scene of mountains, waterfalls and streams. The upper half of the painting shows steep mountains and cascading waterfalls in the distance. Each mountain is composed of smaller mounds heaped upon one another to form the larger mountain. Each portion is greatly shaded and highlighted in dark charcoals, rusty reds, oranges and golden yellows. The water appears to be bright white with very pale blue. The mountains and waterfalls fill the left top of the work and slope down at the right side revealing a small bit of sky with rusty red clouds and a pale blue and bright white sky. The mountains continue off to the right creating a distant valley with a stream emanating from it. The lower half of the work shows more waterfalls and streams in the foreground with smaller mounds in the same colors as the larger mountains with the addition of greens and pink stripes. At center left a fallen log in charcoal can be seen laying across a stream.

I was deep in my love for Frederic Church when I painted Tabernacle, and the sky is a direct homage to Twilight in the Wilderness (@clevelandmuseumofart). It was the idea of the heroic painter romanticizing the American West that intrigued me, both sincerely and with a sense of humor. All the embellishing and drama really…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Kirsten Furlong

Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream, Kirsten Furlong, 60 x 60 inches, collage, ink, graphite and colored pencil on paper. A square black, white and gray work depicting a wood stork with outstretched wings and a long bill, a patterned snake and large sweet potato. The black wood stork, shown from the side and facing right, occupies the left half of the work with its wings and legs extended as if in the act of landing. It has a small smooth head with a long bill and feet and its surface is pattern in geometric and organic shapes. The stork’s form is segmented into four pieces that have been collaged together. To the lower right is a large sweet potato sprouting leaves and other partially obscured sweet potatoes. Underneath the potato is the black snake with curlicue patterned head and scaly body. The background is divided into areas of various patterns rendered in soft gray within sections that radiate from different points on the work.

“Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream” was informed by multiple visits over the last twenty years to Lowndes County, Alabama (where my partner’s parents live) and my conflicted feelings experiencing the flora and fauna of their land while also considering the violent history of Lowndes as a mixed-race (Black and white) individual. The title of…  Read more