And from This Distance One Might Never Imagine That It Is Alive Grant Hottle Marsyas (Detail) 2015 Oil on Canvas 72 × 60 Inches

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And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive grant Hottle Marsyas (detail) 2015 Oil on canvas 72 × 60 inches

And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive

© 2016 The Art Gym All rights reserved. No part of this This exhibition and publication are made Marylhurst University book may be used or reproduced in any possible in great part through the generosity 17600 Pacific Highway manner without written permission of the Ford Family Foundation. Other Marylhurst, Oregon 97036 from the publisher, except in the context individuals and businesses provided addi- marylhurst.edu/theartgym of reviews. tional support.

Printed in Portland, Oregon The Art Gym is supported by the Robert by Brown Printing and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, ISBN 978-0-914435-67-9 the Oregon Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Art Gym’s publication fund is supported by the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and Linda Hutchins and John Montague. JANUARY 12— MARCH 5, 2016And from this distanceTHE ART GYM AT MARYLHURST UNIVERSITY oneAMY BERNSTEIN might PAT BOAS CALVIN ROSS CARLnever JACK FEATHERLY imagine RON GRAFF ROBERT HARDGRAVE GRANT HOTTLE MICHAEL LAZARUS MICHELLEthat ROSS AMANDA WOJICK it is alive ESSAYS BY GRAHAM W. BELL & SUE TAYLOR

CURATED BY BLAKE SHELL

THE ART GYM N º 73 jack Featherly 9 Curator’s notes 11 Graham W. Bell At the beach: Secret abstraction & the undeath of painting 20 Map of the territory Artists included in the exhibition 24 Amy Bernstein 30 Pat Boas 36 Calvin Ross Carl Contents 42 Jack Featherly 48 Ron Graff 54 Robert Hardgrave 60 Grant Hottle 66 Michael Lazarus 72 Michelle Ross 78 Amanda Wojick 85 Sue Taylor Painting’s other atemporality 93 Acknowledgments 96 Notes and colophon

jack Featherly Fax Generation 2015 Oil, enamel on canvas 72 × 45 inches

7 Michelle ross

8 From space, it seems an abstraction— a magician’s trick on a darkened stage. And from thisdis- tance one might never imagine that it is alive. It first appeared in the sea almost four billion years ago in the form of single-celled life. In an explosion of life spanning millions of years, nature’s first multicellular organisms began to multiply… Only a hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens appear—man.… Rising to a world population of over five billion people, all descended from that original single cell, that first spark of life. But for all our knowledge, what no one can say for certain is what or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose, or a reason to our existence? Will we pass, as those ebefor us, into oblivion, into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress? Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign, a symbol, a revelation? — Dana Scully The X-Files, “Biogenesis”

Abstraction isn’t easy to talk about. Counting the uncountable, naming the unnameable: these feel like futile activities. But the very ambiguity of the process is what allows artists to approach concepts difficult to touch on otherwise. In an effort to discuss this exhibition as a whole, I turned to the philosophical musings of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully. The images of our planet that she describes — zooming in until all one can see is a single cell, then zooming out until details are lost in the expanse of the universe — speaks to how scale is thrown off by abstraction: the macro and the micro are seemingly interchangeable at points. Similarly, the question of whether a sign, a symbol, or a revelation will BLAKE SHELL explain the unexplainable, the cause of humanity, acknowledges our

The Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Director & Curator ongoing search for truth. Abstraction gives artists a way into the unknown The Art Gym and Belluschi Pavilion and unnamed. Freed from the demands of representation, they’re able to explore process more purely or engage with the ephemeral, the sacred, or other intangibles. Furthermore, the duality in The X-Files between belief (represented by Fox Mulder) and scientific examination (Dana Scully) is echoed in the variety of projects found throughout this exhibition. Some hinge upon intuitive choices, while others are executed according to a more Curator’scerebral, conceptual plan. A friend told me about a couple, a musician and a visual artist, who often find their creative impulses to be at odds. The artist works from the head; the musician works from the gut. It seems that abstract painting can come from either place. Artists’ reasons, methods, and results may vary, but there is a growing, unifying energy within the world of abstract notes painting at this moment. It feels irreverent, exciting, freeing. It is Right Now. It’s fun. There’s no simple way to sum up the impulses of those artists working in abstraction, except to say that theirs is a great impulse. And

Michelle perhaps we shouldn’t try to explain that which defies explanation. Artists ross A moon moth moved 2014–15 are drawn to abstraction — it allows for both a loose structure and a Oil, paper, plaster, graphite way of breaking the rules. As much as the genre is accepted and revered, on birch panel 39 × 30 inches there is still something pretty punk about it.

9 jack featherly GRAHAM W. BELL At the beach:

Take a drive out to the coast. Then, looking for the curve of the earth on the horizon, feel yourself come into contact with the infinite and abstract nature of our reality. This may all sound very New Age, but within this broader questioning is harbored a very personal experience. Secret We try constantly to connect our singular lives to the communal web, whether for understanding or approval or companionship, but too often get wrapped up in the ideas of others even as our own thoughts are crowded out by the newest and boldest. Abstract painting and our ideas about it have suffered this same fate. An abstraction is something at once universal and personal, having uneasy roots both in the mind of the abstractionartist and the world of the viewer. A new generation of painters is syn- thesizing this precarity not into large, brash compositions, but into an intimate processing of their daily lives. As a branching discipline with constant growth, abstract painting has an expansive family tree. The seasonal leaves that are Sunday painters and first-time students fall away and are renewed each year in a similar & the undeathpattern. The roots grasp firmly at the past 150 years (and beyond), unfazed by the herbicide of late twentieth-century critics and theorists who foretold the death of painting. But what of the new growth? How do we talk about the future of abstract painting in a time so fraught with over- theorization and an unending supply of new artists? What is it that sets jack featherly Unpattern12 (detail ) one abstraction (or abstractionist) out from its contemporaries? 2015 The new generation of abstract painters, focused on their personal Oil, enamel on canvasof painting 53 × 46 1/2 inches inquiry into life through painting, are secret abstractionists. This is not

11 “secret” as in “covert” or “privileged,” but as in something not immediately knowable without investigation or the state of being secluded or with- drawn.1 These are artists who straddle the line between deep aesthetic rumination and common social interaction, at home in both. There is no mystery here, only an individual language that traces each artist’s path to understanding both the practice of painting and how best to filter their existence through the medium. Perhaps now it is the painter’s job to coalesce the surrounding world into a solid canvas (not that this hasn’t been claimed before). Given the inescapable mix of visual and conceptual stimuli we are exposed to on a minute-by-minute basis, abstraction serves more to make sense of and to get a handle on the day to day. Rather than exploring some intricate personal moment about the theoretical, an abstract painting serves as a sounding board for nonverbal coagulations that result from simply living life. Grant Hottle’s canvases echo comics and metal bands, but are neither. They are not a concrete reference, but a musing on influence and the inescapable media culture in which we all flail. In a similar vein, Michael Lazarus and Calvin Ross Carl pull from innocuous language and everyday design to create vaguely confrontational slogans and compositions that are at once familiar and alien. They sit in that subcon- scious area of our minds before we bring words to our thoughts, before we let an idea take shape fully and linger in a zone of semirecognition. It is this mode of simultaneous familiarity and discovery that keeps secret abstraction on the edge of a knife. We think we know something, but upon further questioning and assessment we are reminded that our minds get lazy and fill in the gaps with logical conclusions or popular notions.2 Our memories recall the most prominent ideas and the images we see repeated most often. To this end, the typical reader, when asked what abstract painting looks like, will have an answer that may span from Modernism to “things I don’t get.” The culture at large has decided that abstraction is a style (most often Pollock- or Rothkoesque). It is not. Philip Guston, in conversation with Joseph Ablow in 1966, asserted that style is easily dismissed or debunked by the next generation, and that Abstract Expressionism (and abstraction in general, if we are to broaden the take) is a way of questioning how we can continue to make art.3 One must think of abstraction as a mode or process, and not as a visual

1. Or even something akin to an alter ego. 2. It is here that I think of the Berenstain/Berenstein conundrum. For many people alive in the 1990s, the popular children’s books The Berenstain Bears were an everyday occurrence and definitely part of the popular image unconscious. Yet, asked today about the spelling of the titular ursines’ name, many will remember the correct spelling as “Berenstein” rather than “Berenstain.” It is this common knowledge in the periphery that is most interesting to me in this instance, although the parallel universe theory does intrigue. Caroline Siede, “How you spell ‘The Berenstain grant Michael Bears’ could be proof of parallel universes,” , August 10, 2015, http://www.avclub. hottle X-Ray Vision The A.V. Club Lazarus 2015 com/article/how-you-spell-berenstain-bears-could-be-proof-para-223615. Oil, spray paint on canvas 3. Philip Guston, “Public Forum with Joseph Ablow, 1966,” in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and 30 × 24 inches Critics, ed. Clifford Ross (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 63–75.

12 Michael Lazarus no title (detail ) 2014 Paint, found material on wood 401/4 × 121/2 inches calvin Ross carl Was It Good As (Your Last Time) 2015 Acrylic, enamel on canvas 24 × 30 inches

14 end point. It is here that we see the break. There are those who paint a prescribed version of “abstract art,” and there are those who are active abstractionists. The former dives into the rich pool of source material filled by the long tenure of Modernism, while the latter extrapolates or condenses the world around them into varied styles of work. This second type is not (as) concerned with artistic lineage or with painting what they think should logically come next. Instead, they are people submersed in the Internet age, trying desperately to make visual sense of it all. Being active as an abstractionist today involves parsing a lot of information. Taking in the world and spitting it back out in a way that makes sense, active abstractionists can’t help but evolve in their practice as their surroundings do. This is more true for those artists affected by the digital realm, and I would argue that some of the most successful abstractionists at this moment are those who do not eschew Internet culture, but are immersed in it. Instead of separating their (seemingly) traditional practice from the everyday, these artists find form in the digital void and translate that impetuous, fickle stream of information into two things: the artistic equivalent of scratch paper for long division, or a simple couplet from a larger translation. Either the work is all there for us to see (although with no final answer), or we are left questioning the nature of the full text. Critic Raphael Rubinstein says that “provisional painting” looks like it’s on the way to something, like the painter aban- doned the work or simply tired midcomposition.4 It is not enough to think about new abstractions simply in terms of a traditional composition. We need to ask what these new artists are trying to work through, not what they want to end up with. What is at risk here is a cooling-off period. When formalist abstraction was called critically null toward the end of the twentieth century, the long and esteemed journey of painting seemed to be at an end, or at least seeking retirement. But a new generation of painters would not give in.5 Cropping up as the twenty-first century loomed, these abstractionists decided to bring their practice back to earth from its lofty position in the Modernist ether. Invigorated by the language-based investigations of Conceptual art and the conversation with the everyday spreading from Pop Art, Minimalism, and the historical avant-garde, these artists grabbed plates and dung, threw them at the canvas, and beckoned to their forefathers with vigor. But as that initial combustion

4. “It’s the finished product disguised as a preliminary stage, or a body double standing in for a star/masterpiece whose value would put a stop to artistic risk. To put it another way: provisional painting is major painting masquerading as minor painting.” Raphael Rubinstein, “Provisional Painting,” Art in America, May 4, 2009, http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/ news-features/magazine/provisional-painting-raphael-rubinstein/. 5. “And something else greatly reduces the chances of the death of painting: too many people— most obviously women—are just beginning to make their mark with the medium and are becoming active in its public dialogue.” Roberta Smith, “It’s Not Dry Yet,” The New York Times, March 26, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/arts/design/28painting.html.

15 faltered (or perhaps became too expected), and really as the idea of a college-educated career artist blossomed, there came to be too many new painters doing too much of the same thing. And with the constant fluctuation between the death and return of abstraction, the lull and the rush, the contemporary painters knew there needed to be something that established their practice outside of that of their formalist predecessors.6 And in that desperate search, it seems a smattering of painters have retreated into themselves to question not what abstraction means in general, but what abstraction means to them. Perhaps what is needed now is not a brand-new explosion. The cata- lyst was set in motion by those early postmodern painters, and it has worked its way through the husk of the art world to its somewhat nebu- lous kernel. We can feel the growth and see the slowly multiplying cadre of painters. But instead of loud brashness and expressive exposi- tion, we need to embrace the small, the private, the quiet practice of those abstractionists working toward a more personal understanding of the method. In his essay “Provisional Painting,” Rubinstein asks, “What makes painting ‘impossible’? What makes ‘great’ painting impossible? Perhaps it is a sense of belatedness, a conviction that an earlier generation or artist has left only a few scraps to be cleaned up. Or maybe, at a particular moment, in a particular life and history, nothing could seem more presumptuous or inappropriate—maybe even obscene—than to set out to create a masterpiece.”7 This generation of painter is one well- versed in the aloof eye-roll and the descriptors “trying too hard” and “a little heavy-handed.” For fear of recycling, or making too much of too ron graff Tidal Shift little, they retreat into nonchalance so as not to be singled out. And with 2015 the instant knowledge of new exhibitions and styles from around the Chalk, ink on paper 261/2 × 24 inches world provided by the online community, the art world becomes ever smaller and more cliquish. It is this idea of the clique, or the movement/school (because that is the equivalent of an art historical clique, after all), that needs freshening up. Too often we art historians (and the general public by proxy) lump artists together in a last effort to organize the fading trail of the zeitgeist. But what if there is no orderly mode in which to understand these new offerings? What if, as Michael Fried feared, everything has become admissible?8 Maybe it is this working outside of the expected that is the greatest strength of the rising abstractionists. There needs to be a greater awareness of strong abstraction that is amy Bernstein not easily pigeonholed. More distinction should be given to those works

6. Every so often a new critic will reannounce the demise of painting or abstraction, or art all together. And then, soon enough, another will announce its rebirth. For example, see: Barbara A. MacAdam, “The New Abstraction,” ARTnews, April 1, 2007, http://www.artnews. com/2007/04/01/the-new-abstraction/. 7. Rubinstein, “Provisional Painting.” 8. Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum 5, no. 10 ( June 1967): 12–23.

16 influenced by Internet life and middle age, but not drawing from one-off references or leaning on representational certainty. Anyone can paint an abstracted apple, or a slipshod version of Homer Simpson. The real power lies with those who paint about the daily intricacies that one by one take over our waking lives. How do you express the humdrum of buy- ing too much produce and forgetting to cook at home, only to find out later your food has spoiled? How do you work around the fact that your career focuses on all of the parts of art you find distasteful and repetitive, and that when you get home you just want to read comic books? How do you paint a masterpiece about the dark depths of 401(k) paperwork? These are all ideas that are abstracted before they even hit the canvas. Daily life is no longer about strolling the boulevards and sipping absinthe.9 It is wound tight. It is pervasive. There are no breaks, no cutoff points between living and working. But where does this end up? Do today’s abstractionists flit into representation to keep themselves sharp? Or do they continue down a more and more pure path that teeters dangerously close to being retrograde? No, rather it is this in-the-middle-ness that is so provocative. Taking that idea of abstraction as the starting point and not the abstract formal language of their predecessors, the secret abstractionists find themselves in conversation with conceptual abstraction. As defined by Joachim Pissarro and Pepe Karmel, “It is painting that exchanges the hermetic Modernist ideal of pure form for a different ideal, or anti-ideal: the real world, with its bodies and buildings, movies and messes, politics and pop culture.”10 They are not melting and crystallizing the faces of Picasso’s demoiselles; instead they are slyly, and quietly, putting their very lives on display in a medium that has at times been mired in the muck of grandi- ose expression. Secret abstraction—and its bedfellow, conceptual abstraction—is the very antithesis of the abstract sublime, that powerful link between the drama of the Romantic landscape and the dynamism of the Modernist canvas.11 Where the sublime deals with awe and power, the secret and conceptual take hold of the small, personal aspects of the world and strive to understand rather than overwhelm. Karmel notes in a 2013 article that “abstraction is how we think about the future.”12 This assertion is a powerful one, and can be relevant no matter where our loyalties lie. In the case of these private, conceptualab- amy stractions, it may be more fruitful to shift from the universal ideal to Bernstein Big Boy 2015 the personal understanding. Abstraction is still how these painters parse Oil on canvas 24 × 30 inches 9. Boulevards have become basements, and absinthe has been superseded by rye whiskey. 10. Holland Cotter, “Conceptual Abstraction,”The New York Times, November 1, 2012, http:// www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/arts/design/conceptual-abstraction.html. 11. Pepe Karmel, “The Golden Age of Abstraction: Right Now,” ARTnews, April 24, 2013, http:// www.artnews.com/2013/04/24/contemporary-abstraction/. 12. Ibid.

17 the world, but it has taken on a wholly Humean bent.13 Pulling from each interaction, each conversation, each experience, these new abstractionists are more introspective than ever before. And yet the result is often less obtuse than the Freudian narratives in those macho men of Abstract Expressionism. Perhaps this is because we, the audience, are all dealing with these same things. We all fuss over job-related stresses and wish that we could just relax on the beach. But the real truth of it is that we can never shut off and just give in to a good old-fashioned Sunday painting. We cannot go to that promised shore and simply unplug and disconnect if we ever hope to return and be relevant. Today’s painters are overrun with stimulus. Some show it in the layered strata of repeated and reworked forms, while others only hint at it as a fidget in an otherwise crisp and clean geometry. Perhaps the heart of all this is something beyond a new way of making and reading paintings. Maybe it has more to do with not shutting out the world in order to focus, but organizing and making sense of what we can. Secret abstractionists exist on a plane that dips below the horizon of historical formalism into a space of daily distractions and a continuous questioning of how we exist in this world. The real trick is to filter these ideas through our overworked, ever-processing minds. Clarity should not come as an empty slate, but as a meditative state in which all is flowing in connecting streams of understanding. We are not standing at the shore in an effort to escape, but instead to simplify our visual stimulus to just sky and sea.

13. Referenced here is Scottish philosopher David Hume’s bundle theory of the self. In it, an object is taken to be no more than the sum (or bundle) of its parts and properties. This concludes that you cannot think of an object without its properties, nor can you have an object with no properties. Applied here, the painter’s world, seen through abstraction and otherwise, is no more than a bundle of stimuli and properties used for understanding how the world exists. Since each artist’s experience of the world is different, the idea changes from painter to painter.

Robert Hardgrave Carols and Nips 2015 Collage, toner transfer on canvas 24 × 24 inches

18 19 PACIFIC COAST MOUNTAIN

Arvie Tom Smith Prochka Bob Rhode Island Hanson School Lucinda Bard of Design Parker Judy Whington Coege Pacic Cooke State Bobbie Northwest Thom Oliver Portland University Lanigan- Yale Coege Schmidt State Victor University Deborah of Art Maldonado Gregory Ks University Esther Ameno School of Podemski Lester Goldman Vual Arts Al Held Elena Stuart Bernard Kans City Sto Horodner Chaet Art Institute Carla University Wiiam Bengtson Kartz Bailey Ucci of Oregon

Laura Jenny Judy Je Mike H.C. Joseph Vanden- Holzer Baca Dan Koons Keey Westermann Yoakum burgh Powe John Barbara Baldessari Kruger Sigmar Lari Polke Piman Robert Bechtle

Calvin Ross Carl Robert Hardgrave Michelle Ross Ron Gra Pat Boas Grant Hole Jack Featherly Amy Bernstein Michael Lazarus Amanda Wojick

Neo Dana Mary Agnes Rauch Schutz Heilmann Martin Lynda Blinky Elizabeth Edward Kerry Eva Bengl Palermo Murray Hopper James Hesse Marsha

André Pierre Derain Bonnard John Carpenter Vincent van Gogh Tibetan Tomma Édouard Paul Abts Fleetwood Cormac thangka Gioo Post- Fleetwood Cara- Manet Cézanne Mac McCarthy painting impressionm Giorgio Mac vaggio Steve Morandi Pai Comics Henri Sol Reich Poetry Matse Smith Fog on LeWi Anne Richard Paula Trui Tule evergreensevergreens Modersohn- Impressionm Becker Hilma TRADITIONAL af Klint John Synesthesia RENAISSANCE BAROQUE MODERNISM MUSIC LITERATURE Gertrude ARTS Donald Cage Metal Minimalm Judd Stein Expressionm Philip Gton Living s Dave inin anan Hans colorcolor photo-photo- Navajo Vermeer Hickey adobe hoe Holbein Titian graphy Ursula K. inin NewNew weaving Yob Mexico Yr.) Joan Helen Le Guin Fra Wiem Mitche Franken- Cy Luce Half/Dozen Angelico Rembrandt de Kooning thalerthaler Twombly Irigaray Gaery

Goya

Mark Richard Rothko Diebenkorn

20 CENTRALLegend

Arvie Tom Smith Prochka Rhode Island Bob Influence/interest Hanson School Lucinda Academic relationship Bard of Design Parker Judy Whington Coege Pacic Cooke State Bobbie Northwest Thom Oliver Portland University Lanigan- Yale Coege Schmidt State Victor University Deborah of Art Maldonado Gregory Ks University Esther Ameno School of Podemski Lester Goldman Vual Arts Al Held Elena Stuart Bernard Kans City Sto Horodner Chaet Art Institute Carla University Wiiam Bengtson Kartz Bailey Ucci of Oregon

Laura Jenny Judy Je Mike H.C. Joseph Vanden- Holzer Baca Dan Koons Keey Westermann Yoakum burgh Powe John Barbara Baldessari Kruger Sigmar Lari Polke Piman Robert Bechtle Map of

Ag s a rOUP, those artists included in the show And from this distance one Calvin Ross Carl Robert Hardgrave Michelle Ross Ron Gra Pat Boas Grant Hole Jack Featherly Amy Bernstein Michael Lazarus Amanda Wojick might never imagine that it is alive are a diverse and varied crew. Hailing from all over the United States, they each gradually put down roots in the Pacific Northwest and stitched themselves into its creative fabric. They work in variousthe media and draw on wide-ranging territory sources of inspira- tion—from experimental music to evergreen forests to the chiaroscuro Neo Dana Mary Agnes Rauch Schutz Heilmann Martin Lynda Blinky Elizabeth Edwardof Caravaggio. It might initially seem difficult to bringKerry them all together Eva Bengl Palermo Murray Hopper James Hesse in one’s mind. Marsha To make things clearer, we’ve rooted through a dense web of select connections and logical inferences to create the accompanying map. André Each artist supplied data about theirPierre originsDerain (both geographic and artist- Bonnard ic) and influences; this has been analyzed and arranged into a visual aid John Carpenter Vincent designed to allow the viewer/reader to traverse the spanvan Gogh of time and more Tibetan Tomma thoughtfully Édouardconsider the pieces,Paul the painters, and how they relate to Abts Fleetwood Cormac thangka Gioo Post- Fleetwood Cara- Manet Cézanne Mac McCarthy painting one another. impressionm Giorgio Mac vaggio Steve Morandi Pai Comics The names of the artists serve as starting points; linesHenri then link them Sol Reich Poetry Matse Smith Fog on LeWi Anne Richard to schools, advisors, peers, interests, and origins. By following thePaula path Trui Tule evergreensevergreens Modersohn- of each painter, weImpressionm can bridge generations and find like-mindedBecker individ- Hilma TRADITIONAL uals. For example, Grant Hottle worked under Amanda Wojick and af Klint John Synesthesia RENAISSANCE BAROQUE MODERNISM MUSIC LITERATURE Gertrude ARTS Donald Cage Metal was represented by the same gallery as Calvin Ross Carl. Pat Boas and Minimalm Judd Stein Expressionm Philip Robert Hardgrave both consider music to be an important influence,Gton Living s Dave inin anan Hans but Boas resonates more with John Cage, while Hardgrave prefers heavy colorcolor photo-photo- Navajo Vermeer Hickey adobe hoe Holbein Titian graphy Ursula K. inin NewNew weaving metal. Although these facts may seem insignificant on their own, when Yob Mexico Yr.) Joan Helen Le Guin Cy Luce Fra mapped together, patterns emerge, and a networkWiem of overlappingMitche socialFranken- Half/Dozen Angelico Rembrandt de Kooning thalerthaler Twombly Irigaray Gaery spheres and interactions can be seen. With some time and research, the reader Goyacan make more meaningful associations among the members of Mark Richard the exhibition and come to a better understanding of abstractionRothko in the Diebenkorn Northwest today.

21 PACIFIC COAST MOUNTAIN

Laura Jenny Judy Je Mike H.C. Joseph Vanden- Holzer Baca Dan Koons Keey Westermann Yoakum burgh Powe John Barbara Baldessari Kruger Sigmar Lari Polke Piman Robert Bechtle

Calvin Ross Carl Robert Hardgrave Michelle Ross Ron Gra Pat Boas Grant Hole Jack Featherly Amy Bernstein Michael Lazarus Amanda Wojick

Neo Dana Mary Agnes Rauch Schutz Heilmann Martin Lynda Blinky Elizabeth Edward Kerry Eva Bengl Palermo Murray Hopper James Hesse Marsha

Goya

Mark Richard Rothko Diebenkorn

20 PACIFIC COAST MOUNTAIN CENTRAL eastern ATLANTIC COAST

Laura Jenny Judy Je Mike H.C. Joseph Vanden- Holzer Baca Dan Koons Keey Westermann Yoakum burgh Powe John Barbara Baldessari Kruger Sigmar Lari Polke Piman Robert Bechtle

Calvin Ross Carl Robert Hardgrave Michelle Ross Ron Gra Pat Boas Grant Hole Jack Featherly Amy Bernstein Michael Lazarus Amanda Wojick

Neo Dana Mary Agnes Rauch Schutz Heilmann Martin Lynda Blinky Elizabeth Edward Kerry Eva Bengl Palermo Murray Hopper James Hesse Marsha

André Pierre Derain Bonnard John Carpenter Vincent van Gogh Tibetan Tomma Édouard Paul Abts Fleetwood Cormac thangka Gioo Post- Fleetwood Cara- Manet Cézanne Mac McCarthy painting impressionm Giorgio Mac vaggio Steve Morandi Pai Comics Henri Sol Reich Poetry Matse Smith Fog on LeWi Anne Richard Paula Trui Tule evergreensevergreens Modersohn- Impressionm Becker Hilma TRADITIONAL af Klint John Synesthesia RENAISSANCE BAROQUE MODERNISM MUSIC LITERATURE Gertrude ARTS Donald Cage Metal Minimalm Judd Stein Expressionm Philip Gton Living s Dave inin an an Hans colorcolor photo- Navajo Vermeer Hickey adobe hoe Holbein Titian graphy Ursula K. inin New New weaving Yob Mexico Yr.) Joan Helen Le Guin Fra Wiem Mitche Franken- Cy Luce Half/Dozen Angelico Rembrandt de Kooning thalerthaler Twombly Irigaray Gaery

Goya

Mark Richard Rothko Diebenkorn

20 21 And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive And from this distance one might never imagine that it is aliveARTISTS INCLUDED IN THE EXHIBITION Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, Portland-based artist and writer Amy Bernstein received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Her work has been exhibited in Portland at Nationale, the Littman Gallery, Portland State University, Car My work delves into the nature of form and symbol as seen through Hole Gallery, Worksound, and Carl & Sloan Contemporary. She the upending of our visual assumptions about the use of color and the has received grants from repercussions of composition. Color and shape are powerful manipulators Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation (2010) and from the as they create our associations of geography, time, mood, and culture. Regional Arts & Culture Council (2012). She joined Nationale as a The use of color or the lack thereof has come to represent quality, sophis- represented artist in the summer tication, subcultures, and religion. Muted tones are often used in of 2015. environments such as hospitals or hotels to suggest tranquility or calm, or in items like beach furniture that are meant to inhabit a nonthreatening landscape, while primary colors seem appropriate in situations as far- flung as children’s toys or the most sophisticated industrial design. What is the determining factor that infuses these colors with their respective connotations? Is it context, or is it the way in which they are used, com- bined, and contrasted against one another in certain recipes that determine their meaning and influence? My work attempts to question these habits of visual language in order to better understand the influence of cultural norms on perception. These questions intrigue me endlessly. I keep countless color note- books where I document combinations that pique a certain discomfort or calm to remember for later use. My desire is that the composition will exacerbate the oddity or electricity of the color choice, and that the result is a designed tension meant to look haphazard as opposed to being orchestrated, a random and candid snapshot of an abstract universe. At times the outcome is joyful, at others strained. The surfaces of the work must be so smooth as to be almost invisible, while the paint itself retains its qualities of viscosity and volatility. This disappearing surface allows these colored bundles to seem as if they are floating in their own Amy universe, pushing against the ideas of painting as illusion and object. This is the ontological argument embodied by the figure-ground relationship in my work and the subsequent commentary on the now (ironically) age-old argument about the “death” of painting. I struggle with elements of restraint and freedom, the traits required to be good in the world, to know when to speak and when to celebrate Bernsteinsilence. I believe these minimal paintings to be compiled of small moments, to embody notes on existence. My fleshy, reactionary piles of vibrant color in white space become frail and faulted characters, occa- sionally talking to one another, interdependent but existing as entities in their own right. As whole works, they vacillate among the histories of philosophy, art, and design, searching for the space in which they will take questions further. They hope for beauty, but are often simply attempts at depicting the unexamined.

24 Baobab 2014 Oil on canvas 28 × 30 inches

25 Untitled 2014 Oil on canvas 48 × 44 inches

26 The Gun on the Table Isn’t Mine 2015 Oil on canvas 12 × 12 inches

27 My Pony 2015 Oil on canvas 32 × 34 inches

28 Namaste, de Chirico 2015 Oil on canvas 18 × 16 inches

Soft Mechanics 2015 Oil on canvas 26 × 30 inches

29 Pat Boas makes drawings, paint- Foundation, Oregon College of ings, prints, and digital projects Art and Craft, the Pollock-Krasner about the common and complex Foundation, the Portland Art activity of reading. Her work has Museum, and Oregon’s Regional been shown at the Portland Art Arts & Culture Council, among Museum, the Art Gym, PDX Con- others. Reviews of Boas’s work temporary Art, and Elizabeth have appeared in Art in America Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon; and Art Papers. Boas is an asso- the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in ciate professor and director of Salem, Oregon; the Center for the School of Art+Design at Port- Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, land State University. New Mexico; the Boise Art Museum; the Salt Lake Art Center; the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming; the Center on Contem- porary Art in Seattle; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She is the recipient of honors, fellowships, grants, and residencies from the Bonnie Bronson Fund, Caldera Arts Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel

In drawings, paintings, prints, and digital projects, I use images of words, images as words, pictures meant to accompany words as the main event, and, increasingly, letterforms themselves. Often these are filtered through grammar-like structures. Though the core of my concern is constant, my work has shifted along a matrix that represents varying commitments to the formal, the conceptual, and the social. On the one hand lie precisely detailed representational paintings meant to serve as an absurdly distended code system ( Abstraction Machine), and on the other, my current drawings and prints that investigate the activity of reading in a different but no less illogical way (Unalphabetic). In between lie system-based drawings extracted from news media (The New York Times Drawings), visual text-poems found in private and public spaces (What Our Homes Can Tell Us), and a collaborative drawing project that explores mark-making as rhythm and performance (The Word Hand ). Recent work includes paintings and drawings built by piling up letter- Patforms—repeating, reversing, fragmenting, opening them up, or filling them in. Words or phrases read or heard provide me with a program or a map. The form that follows is meant to confuse the acts of looking and reading, and possibly to gesture toward sound. I look for verbal and visual Unalphabetic #3 (uncrushable) (detail ) resonance while trying to provoke a productive discord. There is the 2012 Lithograph pull of plastic coherence set against semantic wholeness as the intimacy AP 1/2, ed. of 12 of handwriting and the exuberance of graffiti jostle the strange act of Boas30 × 22 inches silent reading with the noise of color and form.

Logo # 4 Logo # 5 Logo # 9 2014 2014 2014 Handmade cotton rag, Handmade cotton rag, Handmade cotton rag, abaca paper, gouache abaca paper, gouache abaca paper, gouache 12 × 9 inches 12 × 9 inches 12 × 9 inches

32 “…we, we, waves” (LG) “dries her eyes” (LG) 2014 2014 Gouache, watercolor, Gouache, watercolor, sumi ink on paper sumi ink on paper 22 × 15 inches 30 × 22 inches

33 Untitled ( Yellow) Untitled (Blue) 2015 2015 Gouache, ink, Flashe Gouache, ink, Flashe on Indian handmade paper on Indian handmade paper 30 × 22 inches 30 × 22 inches

34 Titles (Green Diamond with Pencil Line) 2015 Sumi ink on paper 30 × 22 inches

35 Calvin Ross Carl is an artist and co-director of Carl & Sloan Con- temporary in Portland, Oregon. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Intermedia in 2008 from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Carl has recently exhibited at LVL3 Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; Ditch Projects in Spring- field, Oregon; Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas; NEPO House in Seattle, Washington; and Clark College’s Archer Gallery in Van- couver, Washington. He has also exhibited in Portland, Oregon, at HQHQ, Half/Dozen Gallery, Gallery Homeland, New American Art Union, Blackfish Gallery, and Tractor Gallery. Calvin Ross

My paintings and objects are exercises in balancing the humble realities of the American home and work environments with the utopian ideals of geometry and design. The process is methodical and Carlexacting, which alludes to the digital and mass-marketed. However, closer inspection brings levity to the design, with the hand being very evident in the making. The chosen words and images read concurrently as provocations, ambiguous slogans, and disillusioned statements about one’s self and the surrounding world. This creates a confusion between one’s blind optimism for an ideal future and one’s willingness to succumb to the idea that this may be as good as it gets.

The Richest Man in the Cemetery (401k) (detail) 2014 Acrylic on canvas 20 × 24 inches

Red Fanged Maw Fleet Week Boys A Cautionary Tale, A Humble Brag 2013 2014 2014 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 12 × 12 inches 12 × 16 inches 20 × 24 inches

38 Stop Believing (Things You Can’t See) 2014 Acrylic on canvas 20 × 24 inches

39 Give Me Your Answer Do Kiss Goodnight (No Lite) (Kiss Her Goodbye) 2015 2014 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 16 × 20 inches 16 × 20 inches

40 That’s No Way to React (Cruelty, Sadness and Endless Silence) 2015 Acrylic on canvas 30 × 40 inches

41 Jack Featherly (b. 1966, Rolla, in France, Germany, South Korea, Missouri) makes paintings that are and Japan. Recent art fair presen- stylistically diverse and that avoid tations include Texas Contempo- presenting an “easy read.” His rary (Houston) and VOLTA NY (New imagery begins in traditions of ges- York). His work is in the corporate tural abstraction, product packag- collections of Progressive and ing, TV graphics, and ukiyo-e, but Chase Bank and in various private ends somewhere completely new. collections. Featherly completed His meticulous craft and lack of a BFA at the Pacific Northwest obvious conceptual basis make for College of Art in Portland, Oregon. magnetic works. Featherly’s solo exhibitions include Upfor (Port- land); Mesler/Feuer, Team Gallery/ José Freire, and Christopher Henry Gallery (New York); and Rena Bransten Projects (San Francisco). Additionally, he has shown in two-artist and group exhibitions throughout the United States and

The Unpattern paintings use an archaic visual language as a univer- Jack sal filter for redistributing meaning. TheA SCII code on the paintings functions as literal op art and is hand-painted, which incorporates the likelihood of human error with various types of background. The title, Unpattern, references the way our eyes sort information and look for pattern. In this case, it is a variable series of keystrokes that represent dark and light, but the distribution is uneven in its repetition since it is Featherlyapplied to a representation of an object. Other paintings in my practice employ different strategies, and I’d rather address them by offering some quotes that offer more concise insights into my thinking:

Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic. — ITALO CALVINO From Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. —WERNHER VON BRAUN From Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

I kill where I please because it is all mine. —TED HUGHES From The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

42 Unpattern6 2014 Oil, enamel on canvas 67 × 42 inches

43 4126 Unpattern11 2014 2015 Oil, ink on canvas Oil, enamel on canvas 66 × 42 inches 78 × 56 inches

44 45 Unpattern10 Fracking3 2015 2015 Oil, enamel on canvas Oil, enamel on canvas 46 × 36 inches 39 × 34 inches

46 47 Ron Graff was born in Hot Springs, Held. He has since held teaching South Dakota, in 1947 and lived positions at the University of Iowa in Rapid City, South Dakota, until (1975–81) and is now retired 1965. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in associate professor emeritus at 1965 and served in Vietnam as an the University of Oregon after illustrator draftsman and carto- teaching painting and drawing grapher. After his discharge from there from 1981 to 2014. He the navy, he attended Weed Com- currently lives and has a studio munity College in Weed, California, practice in Eugene, Oregon. He has and received his BFA from the exhibited his work nationally in Kansas City Art Institute in 1973. museums and galleries, has had In 1975 he received his MFA in paint- several solo and group shows, ing from Yale University, where he and has work in private and public studied with William Bailey, Ber- collections. He has received nard Chaet, Lester Johnson, and Al grants and awards from organiza- tions including the Oregon Arts Commission and the Ford Founda- tion, and has lectured on his work at numerous colleges, universities, and art institutes.

I have worked representationally for more than forty years. The work in this show represents a radical change in direction. For Ron the past six years my work has been abstract, dealing with elements of compression, absorption, light, space, presence and the lack of it, as well as images that are socially, politically, and personally felt. The paintings are about transitory subjects: memory relating to perception and time, patterns relating to communication and mapping, entropy, chaos, and how the work positions itself in relation to painting in the Graffexpanded field of art.

Balancing Act (detail ) 2015 Oil on canvas 38 × 35 inches

48 49 50 Light Yellow Interference Orbs 2013 2013 Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 48 × 58 inches 33 × 38 inches

51 Body Systems Overlap 2015 2015 Chalk on paper Chalk, ink on paper 12 × 13 inches 36 × 24 inches

52 Irish Harp 2015 Oil on canvas 38 × 33 inches

53 Born in Oxnard, California, Robert Hardgrave has made a significant contribution to visual arts in the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade. He was a finalist for the 2014 Cornish College of the Arts Neddy Award in Painting and a nominee for the Portland Art Muse- um’s 2014 Contemporary North- west Art Awards, and has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Fran- cisco, Denver, Chicago, New York, and Hamburg. Locally, Hardgrave is a member of the Duwamish Artist Residency, and his work is part of the permanent collection of Microsoft and the Public Art 4Culture Collection. In December 2015, Hardgrave was featured in his first solo European exhibit. Since 2013, he has been represented by Cullom Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Robert

I am constantly in search of those ideas that can be pushed in mul- tiple directions and still push back. I want to be challenged in such a way where the evolution of ideas flows, keeping me excited to stay in the studio day after day. HardgraveI change media regularly and process each to a point where I feel pro- ficient. This helps ideas feel fresh and uncharted. Each new material requires unique allowances; I want materials to guide the work toward what it is going to be, while maintaining a consistent language across media. I believe that by allowing only a few variables to exist, the materials are forced to reveal their nuances. This permits my personal vocabulary to speak louder, conducing cross-pollination among media, where ideas, discovery, and surprise reign supreme.

54 Buoy 2014 Collage, toner transfer on Yupo 44 × 32 inches

55 Façade 1 Hothouse 2014 2014 Collage, toner transfer on paper Collage, toner transfer on panel 14 × 11 inches 30 × 72 inches

56 57 Boa Oxbow 2014 2014 Collage, toner transfer Collage, toner transfer on paper on canvas over panel 40 × 30 inches 20 × 16 inches

58 59 Grant Hottle earned his MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Oregon in 2007 and his BFA in painting from the University of Oklahoma in 2003. He also studied at the Utrecht School of the Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) in the Netherlands in 2002. Hottle’s work has been shown in solo shows, two-person col- laborations, and group exhibits across the country, at venues including the Galleries of Contem- porary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, California; the Seattle Art Muse- um Gallery; Southern Oregon Uni- versity; the University of Arkansas; Swarm Gallery in Oakland, Cali- fornia; Samson Projects in Boston; Writing artist statements is just the worst. Distilling the and Disjecta’s 2012 Portland painting process into 250 words makes so much of what I do feel formu- Biennial. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the laic and uninteresting. When I spend a month on a painting, stare at it, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the Uni- versity of Oregon, and Portland and have almost no idea of how it came into being, writing about each Community College – Rock Creek. step feels like pasting over the joy with a dull layer of instruction. I make Hottle has received support from the Oregon Arts Commission paintings because through layers of color and mark, I lose myself in the and the Ford Family Foundation, the Regional Arts & Culture Coun- paint. Illusions of depth and bizarre flatness push against the constraints cil, and the Clark College Faculty of the rectangle, and I am frustrated and stimulated by that conflict. GrantDevelopment Fund. He lives and works in Portland. The first art I knew was in comics and horror movies and heavy metal bands and album art. Frank Frazetta and Simon Bisley. Flames on Nikki Sixx’s leather pants. But then came art history and the titans of baroque and modern painting. Now, I think about all of those images and they filter into my work in the form of color palette, title, humor, and attitude. Hottle But at the heart of it all, my paintings are about space and materiality— about perception and color. Formal concerns built from lines of inquiry that come from a regular and consistent studio practice. When I choose to screw something up, is it a mistake? When I fix it in a completely methodical fashion, but reference automatic drawing and the splatter of gesture, is it intentional? Painting is hard, but it is thrilling. Inside of all its pretentiousness and old-fashioned notions of grandiosity and form is dedication and mastery and also laughter and play. Don’t look for straightforward narratives or answers in my work. In- stead, you’ll find the results of all the times I followed a thread of thought into the woods just before sundown, and then the tracks I stum- bled across that only took me deeper into the gloom. Like good horror movies and metal bands, my paintings are as serious as possible without being real.

60 Once So High, Now Below 2015 Oil, spray paint on canvas 60 × 48 inches

61 Super Villain 2014 Oil, spray paint on canvas 60 × 48 inches

62 Another Daring Escape Obsidian 2014 2015 Oil, spray paint on canvas Oil on canvas 48 × 36 inches 23 × 18 inches

Answerable to No One (Red) Answerable to No One (Blue) 2015 2015 Oil on canvas Oil, spray paint on canvas 48 × 36 inches 48 × 36 inches

65 Michael Lazarus works with a vari- Lazarus received a BFA from the ety of materials, using carefully Rhode Island School of Design in crafted color choices, pattern, and 1992, and an MFA from the School a vocabulary of pared-down imag- of Visual Arts in 1994. His work ery to create paintings with a dy- has been shown nationally and namic and powerful presence. In internationally at such galleries the Los Angeles Times, David Pagel as Feature, Andrea Rosen Gallery, wrote that Lazarus’s works “don’t and PS1 in New York, New York; reassure viewers that life is rosy. Marc Foxx Gallery, Acme, and They stare into the void and find Sister in Los Angeles, California; it filled with inhuman beauty both and Elizabeth Leach Gallery and frightening and fascinating.” Adams and Ollman in Portland, Oregon. His work has been written about in Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among others.

MichaelThis space left intentionally blank.

Away (detail) 2011 Acrylic paint, mirror, found objects, wood Lazarus 27 × 131/2 inches

66 67 68 ON NO Sorry 2013 2013 Acrylic paint on wall, metal hooks, Paint, vinyl, found material on wood wood, wood panel 22 3/4 × 27 1/4 inches 34 1/2 × 26 inches

69 Open Only no title ( blue) 2014 2014 Found signage, contact paper, wood Paint, indigo pigment, wood, and 29 × 19 inches reflectors 291/2 × 151/2 inches

70 no title (arrows) 2014 Found signage and wood 30 × 32 inches

71 Michelle Ross received her BFA Award (Washington). She has been from the Pacific Northwest College a visiting artist at the American of Art in Portland, Oregon, and Academy in Rome (Rome, Italy) and her MFA from Washington State has participated in residencies at University in Pullman, Washington. the Vermont Studio Center (Ver- Her work has been shown in solo mont), the Scuola Internazionale and group exhibitions at such insti- di Grafica (Venice, Italy), and Crow’s tutions as Sheppard Contempo- Shadow Institute of the Arts rary Gallery (University of Nevada, (Oregon), where she was a recipient Reno); The Art Gym at Marylhurst of the Ford Family Foundation’s University (Marylhurst, Oregon); Golden Spot Award. Portland Art Museum (Portland, Her work is held by a number of Oregon); and Rome International collections, including the Rhode University (Rome, Italy). Island School of Design Special Col- Ross has received numerous lections (Providence, Rhode Island), grants, awards, and fellowships, Willamette University (Salem, including a Hallie Ford Fellowship Oregon), and the Portland Art Mu- (Oregon), a MacDowell Fellowship seum (Portland, Oregon). Ross (New Hampshire), a Portland Art is represented by Elizabeth Leach Museum Contemporary North- Gallery. west Art Award (Oregon), and an Oregon Arts Commission Indi- vidual Artist Fellowship. She also has been short-listed for the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen

A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Michelle—Vladimir Nabokov

My new work is influenced by a desire to embrace immediacy and improvisation by employing a combination of graphic forms sourced Ross from print media, personal history, and studio ephemera. I cultivate an awareness of surface as an engagement with what is most immediately present. Upon this tension film the recognizable will flux. With the new work there is a turn toward sign, symbol, or icon, while the image remains ultimately nonobjective. The title of my recent exhibition, Trust Falls and Transparent Things, refers to a leap of faith: staying in, with, and on the transparency of the “now,” and how this is akin to navigating the unfolding topography of painting, both in the making and the viewing.

72 The inexperienced miracle worker 2015 Oil, paper, plaster, chalk on birch panel 65 × 62 inches

73 As is, so there (2, 3, 4) 2014–15 Oil, graphite on birch panel 12 1/2 × 10 inches each

74 Upend Narcissus ( for D. J.) 2015 2015 Oil, spray paint, house paint, Oil, spray paint, house paint, plaster, linen, chalk, graphite on plaster, linen, chalk, graphite on birch panel birch panel 39 × 30 inches 39 × 30 inches

75 Night is always a giant 2015 Oil, Flashe, house paint, paper, plaster, recycled cotton duck, chalk, graphite on birch panel 42 × 45 inches

76 Winter Bloom (2 ) 2015 Oil, spray paint, house paint, paper, plaster, chalk, graphite on birch panel 45 × 42 inches

77 Amanda Wojick (b. 1974, Roches- ter, New York) is an artist and educator based in Eugene, Oregon. She locates her ongoing creative work at the intersections of abstract sculpture and drawing, the hand and the machine, and material and visual culture. Using everyday materials such as paper, glue, and tape, Wojick creates brightly colored dimensional fields of irregular lines, circles, and rectangles. Her projects have engaged subjects such as landscape, routine, history, and trauma. Wojick’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Port- land Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum, and she is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Awards and grants from the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Arts Commis- Over time, my work has engaged relationships among landscape, sion, the Ford Family Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, Sculpture abstraction, history, and the everyday. Using small and large quantities Space, the Ragdale Foundation, of brightly colored ordinary materials, I cut, arrange, organize, and the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, and grow abstract forms and fields. I make sculpture, drawings, paintings, the University of Oregon Humani- ties Center have supported her and works in between, with materials ranging from paint chips, work. She has shown in solo and Band-Aids, and linoleum to paper, tape, steel, and wood. Regardless group exhibitions across the country, in museums and galleries of method or medium, my projects attentively reposition material and as well as commissioned venues. Wojick holds two MFA degrees action into spaces of private speculation and collective possibility. in sculpture: one from the Milton My previous work with landscape was a productive site for me to Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College; and one from explore frictions of distance and to explore my own psychology of the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She (dis)location. As I gradually developed a more stable base in the North- received her BA in art and art west, my work has shifted in focus and form. While my earlier work history from Colgate University. In 2001 she moved from New York took imaginary and distant places as departure points, my current work State to take a position in the Art Department at the University of uses specific existing and local sites in my immediate surroundings as Oregon, where she is currently an beginning points. Situated now in terms of permanence and connection, associate professor and co-chair of the sculpture program. She lives rather than transience and displacement, the work has visually evolved in Eugene with her husband and two sons. from dense, solid, and closed forms to light and open structures. As well, I have intentionally left the representational framework that my work had long employed, including natural forms such as rocks, cliffs, trees, and waterfalls. I began to work on these paintings and other wall compositions after the birth of my second son, during a period in which my relationship to time had become anything but predictable, and the practicalities of daily Amandalife began to eclipse all else. Working on shaped canvases that resemble a torn sheet of paper, I am covering the surfaces with tiny cut rectangles of painted mulberry paper, applied to the canvas one at a time. Using irregular dashes, lines, and semicircles, I am slowly creating surfaces that Costume (detail) focus my attention and labor into fields that hold visual, tactile, and 2015 Paint, mulberry paper on canvas temporal space together. It is important to me that the space of the paint- 38 × 27 inches Wojicking is not an image that refers to somewhere else, but rather an embodi- ment of locations and positions that I presently occupy.

Small Sparkle Keeping Blue Impatiens 2014 2014 2014 Paint, mulberry paper on linen Paint, paper on linen Paint, mulberry paper on linen 81/2 × 8 inches 6 × 6 inches 24 × 22 inches

80 Costume 2015 Paint, mulberry paper on canvas 38 × 27 inches

81 Night Owl 2015 Paint, mulberry paper on canvas 37 × 33 inches

82 Daynight, Daynight 2015 Paint on canvas, papier-mâché, wood 40 × 24 inches

83 grant Hottle “Paintings are masters of their moments,” declared critic Douglas Davis in his poignant meditations on photography’s contrasting servi- tude,1 and recent claims would extend painting’s mastery to history itself. Since painters are among the many artists who exploit the Web for ideas and styles from all periods and places, available at an instant for emulat- ing, quoting, or remixing, history is said to be subsumed in the “forever now” and we are faced with the atemporality of current painting.2 This includes various forms of abstraction, once justified as a spiritual project. Framed in mystical theories at its inception a century ago, abstract painting had to be distinguished from decoration by virtue of an other- worldly purpose: Kandinsky pronounced the artist a priest and painting’s mission to set off “vibrations in the soul.” 3 As decades passed, abstract painting remained a vehicle for the ineffable; the “other world” engaged by its practitioners in the New York School was that of the unconscious, though what was revealed about the unconscious by poured skeins of SUE TAYLOR paint or expansive color fields was never clear. Formalism then jettisoned both the numinous and the irrational in favor of a reductionist account in which purity and self-referentiality became modernist end points in painting’s historical trajectory. Painting’sWhile the fact of abstract painting’s ongoing viability in the twenty- first century is clear, the reason for its seemingly inherent, sometimes profound significance remains elusive. Confronted by a nonrepresenta- tional work of art and seeking a rational materialist explanation for its effects, we may find ourselves in Freud’s bewildered position before the Moses of Michelangelo: Freud rebelled against something that moved other him deeply without his knowing why. Although he himself did not provide a useful theory of visual art beyond its subject matter, psychoanalysis does have something to contribute toward our understanding of the power of abstract painting to arouse difficult feelings that are also difficult to put into words. The process of making a painting may be infused atemporalitywith anxiety, frustration, anger, satisfaction, elation—emotions appar- 1. Douglas Davis, “Photography as Culture,” in Artculture: Essays on the Post-Modern (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 75. 2. See Laura Hoptman, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015), 13, 24. 3. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. M. T. H. Sadler (New York: Dover Publi- cations, 1977), 25, 32. While Kandinsky was nervous to differentiate abstract painting from “mere” decoration “suitable to neckties and carpets,” 47, today it is design that painting’s exalted status needs to be defended against. Thus Charline von Heyl strives to create paintings that are “more difficult than design and will not convey a meaning.” See Mark Godfrey, “Statements of Intent,” Artforum 52, no. 9 (May 2014): 300.

grant Hottle Pink Flamingo (detail) 2014 Oil, spray paint on canvas 48 × 36 inches

85 ently so compelling and so inexplicable relative to what’s actually at stake that even the most sophisticated artists are at a loss to account for their experience. The clichés they resort to often register as exasperating obfus- cations, typically suggesting magical thinking and anthropomorphizing the work of art. We hear how in the studio the painting “begins to talk back to you,” or “the painting is coming out at you and asking you to put these things together.”4 Critics similarly resort to a kind of animism in which “the painting asserts itself” or “the object stares back.” Remarkable, too, is the hostility implicit in familiar “assaults” on the canvas, sometimes made literal, and the painting’s imaginary revenge, as when “it comes out into the room, almost punches you in the face.”5 Alternatively, finishing a painting “is like falling in love”: the artist reaches a blissful state and to do anything more to the object would risk disaster.6 All these similes and metaphors posit solitary creative activity as a fraught interpersonal encounter. There is a model for this intensely ambivalent relationship, one we can all reference, albeit unconsciously, and that is the primal infant-mother dyad. Freud neglected this bond in his preoccupation with Oedipal struggles, but for Melanie Klein and her followers in the British object-relations school of psychoanalysis, the early relationship to mother formed the very centerpiece in a theory of normal growth and creativity. From her clinical work with small children, Klein postulated in the neonate a realm of unconscious phantasy made up of mental representations acquired through a series of identifications and introjections, first of part-objects (mother’s breast, hands, arms) and eventually of whole persons. These objects, perceived by the child either as good and nurturing or as threatening and totally bad, inspire love on the one hand, hatred on the other, and, gripped by rage or fear, the needy infant imagines biting, tearing, destroying the bad objects. Such hostile omnipotent phantasies, according to Klein, lead to overwhelming remorse when the child ultimately realizes that the michelle good/bad objects are one and the same. ross As invisible as possible unfolds in a twinkle Feelings of loss give rise in infantile phantasy to a desire to repair the 2015 Oil, Flashe, paper, plaster, chalk damaged object (s) and the ruined inner world. Klein referred to this on birch panel state as the “depressive position.”7 Overcoming it, imaginatively reestab- 65 × 62 inches lishing the internal good objects, leads to integration and an increasing reconciliation of inner and outer realities. In later life, the reparative impulse reemerges, especially in times of loss or change. The destructive- reparative dynamic that originates in relation to the maternal body and the child’s inner world, in a period before language and even before

4. Laura Owens, quoted in Godfrey, “Statements,” 300. 5. Ibid. 6. Michelle Ross, artist’s talk (Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, September 26, 2015). 7. See Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation & Other Works 1921–1945 (New York: Delta, 1977), 347–48 passim.

86 jack featherly Trash Cube 2015 Oil, enamel on canvas 66 × 60 inches

87 PAT BOAS

88 conscious remembering, may be symbolically reenacted in the artistic process in fascinating ways: tearing and cutting elements that are then reassembled into a new totality in collage, or scraping, scratching, abrading, and then restoring surfaces in painting. Aggressive urges may play a role in a formal conflict between figure and ground; shapes are delineated within the pictorial field, sometimes obliterated and recon- stituted, colors applied, occluded, applied anew. Hence Picasso’s definition of the picture as “a sum of destructions,” reformulated today in otherwise baffling assertions about process: “I have to destroy the painting I know,” says Jacqueline Humphries, “to make the one I don’t know yet.”8 At issue seem to be rhythmically recurring, alternating compulsions to do damage to one’s internal objects and to rebuild a dil- apidated inner world—what Kandinsky must have meant by the artist’s “inner necessity.” Just as authors commonly relate how at a certain point in the writing process their fictional characters seize control of the narrative, artists ascribe to paintings unanticipated behaviors. Thus for Charline von Heyl, the ideal painting “invents itself” and surprises her.9 This notion of the artwork as a living thing independent of the artist’s will, absurd as it is in actuality, appears nevertheless to be very strongly felt. Importantly, it rehearses from a Kleinian perspective the infant’s dawning recognition of mother as a separate being with a life of her own, apart from the infant self. The child’s crucial achievement in overcoming the depressive position lies in accepting this reality and surrendering phantasies of omnipotent control.10 An unconscious recollection of the experience of separation from mother and of letting go may explain the seemingly uncanny affects informing the relationship of the painter to the painting, wherein the latter begins to operate as if of its own volition. While under the spell, so to speak, of these archaic psychological dynamics, the artist simultaneously engages his or her conscious intellectual preoccupations, life experiences, education, and skills and responds in one way or another to the particular cultural moment and to the history of the medium. If abstract painting can be considered “atemporal,” it is in the sense that it demands of the artist “affective contributions from all develop- mental levels,” including, as psychoanalyst John Gedo has observed, “the more advanced sectors of the personality” as well as “levels of affectivity related to the era before the unification of the self as a psychic entity.”11 This helps us understand preposterous yet common claims about how

PAT 8. Jacqueline Humphries, interviewed by Cecily Brown, Bomb 107 (Spring 2009): 25. BOAS Titles (Blue Spiral Drawing) 9. Charline von Heyl, quoted in Godfrey, “Statements,” 299. 2015 Sumi ink on paper 10. Hanna Segal, “Art and the Inner World,” Times Literary Supplement, no. 3827 ( July 18, 1975): 800. 30 × 22 inches 11. John Gedo, “Thoughts on Art in the Age of Freud,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 18 (1970): 238.

89 the artist or viewer becomes one with the painting. The sense of merging with the object recalls that remote condition in which the discrete ego was still in formation, when the infant self oscillated between an initial feeling of fusion with mother—and, by extension, the whole world of objects—and the gradual discovery of a separate existence. It is a para- doxical state, which flows from an original material biological reality and for which Klein’s disciple D.W. Winnicott theorized the idea of “potential space.” It is related to imagination and creativity because in its throes the child, disavowing the inevitable disconnection, takes the potentially differentiated object(s) into itself in phantasy, establishing the inner world of mental representations described above. This introjection finds a parallel in aesthetic contemplation, as we “take in” the work of art. The British artist Adrian Stokes, an analysand of Klein’s, proposed that painting’s formal presentation induces our contemplative engagement precisely because it evokes the primal relationship to mother, “the breast situation,”12 in which the nursing infant gazes at mother and recognizes there the me and the not-me—another body, another being in intimate connection with the developing self yet with her own ani- mating inner life, mysterious and unknowable. The viewer’s encounter with abstract painting may conjure feelings attendant on this erstwhile, entangled moment of oneness, alienation, and incipient autonomy. The difficulty of abstract painting is therefore not only a function of an absent identifiable subject matter but has to do with the complex and contradictory nature of the affects it can arouse, at once forgotten and familiar. In this sense, painting’s atemporality, in which the historical past has become ever available, resembles the timelessness of the unconscious, where nothing, according to Freud, is ever really forgotten, merely repressed. This includes destructive phantasies toward one’s bad/ good objects and the awful guilt that inspires reparation. Abstract painting is different from decoration or design because it demands effort from the viewer, namely, the psychic work of participating vicariously in the artist’s unconscious attempt to transcend the depressive position, to create a new symbolic reality, whole and integrated, from fragments of an inner world in (temporary) disarray.

12. Adrian Stokes, Painting and the Inner World (London: Tavistock Publications, 1963), 33–34.

Michael lazarus no title (detail ) 2014 Found signage, wood 30 × 32 inches

90 91 Jack FEATHERLY Acknow-

This publication adds to The Art Gym’s collection of catalogues of contemporary art of the Pacific Northwest and is available in print and online. The Ford Family Foundation provided crucial support for this book and project, and this publication would not have been possible ledgmentswithout the generosity of the donors to The Art Gym Art Production and Publication Fund, including the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and Linda Hutchins and John Montague. Thank you to everyone for your support. We would like to thank Graham W. Bell and Sue Taylor for their incisive and inspired writing on abstraction and painting, and Adam McIsaac of Sibley House for his thoughtful design of the catalogue. The Art Gym and Marylhurst University also deeply thank the artists: Amy Bernstein, Pat Boas, Calvin Ross Carl, Jack Featherly, Ron Graff, Robert Hardgrave, Grant Hottle, Michael Lazarus, Michelle Ross, and Amanda Wojick.

Jack FEATHERLY Wrath (detail) 2015 Oil, enamel on canvas 60 × 45 inches

Since 1980, The Art Gym has been recognized as a venue that exhibits some of the most significant and timely art of this region. The mission of the gallery is to increase public understanding of the contemporary art of the Pacific Northwest through exhibitions, artists’ projects, publications, and public engagement. The Art Gym is a noncollecting, noncommercial gallery that supports artists in creating ambitious, risk-taking projects at various stages in their careers. As an art space working within an academic venue, we are committed to providing artistic and intellectual freedom. The Art Gym’s catalogues continue to be among the greatest records of the contemporary art history of the Pacific Northwest, contributing to the discourse on contemporary art and representing the region. We are dedicated to making knowledge accessible and connecting artists and community.

Blake Shell is the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Director and Curator of The Art Gym and Belluschi Pavilion at Marylhurst University, providing the artistic direction and leadership of the organization. Shell is a contemporary art curator and artist with over twelve years of experience in directing nonprofit and educational galleries. She received a BA in art from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and an MFA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. Her curatorial work has gained regional attention and press in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a national review on Artforum.com’s Critic’s Picks. Shell is currently a panelist for the Visual Chronicle of Portland, managed by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

Graham W. Bell is a Portland-based art historian and writer whose focus is on contemporary theory and practice. He is a frequent contributor to various art publications, including Oregon Arts Watch and Noise & ColorPDX , and has contributed catalogue essays to exhibitions at Southern Oregon University’s Schneider Museum of Art, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, andPDX Contemporary Art, among others. Bell’s research centers around the confluence of the cinematic and the everyday, as well as the conditions of memory and ritual in photography and new media. He is an adjunct instructor of art history at Portland State University, Portland Com- munity College, and the University of Oregon.

Sue Taylor earned her BA in art history from Roosevelt University and her MA and PhD, also in art history, from the University of Chicago. A former museum curator and newspaper critic, she is currently associate dean of the College of the Arts and professor of art history at Portland State University. Her publications include Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety (MIT Press) and numerous essays and exhibition and book reviews in American Art, American Craft, Art Journal, ARTnews, ArtUS, Dialogue, Notes Fiberarts, and New Art Examiner, among others. She is a longtime corresponding editor for Art in America.

And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive is The Art Gym’s 73rd publication. It was edited by Allison Dubinsky and designed by Adam McIsaac at Sibley & colophonHouse in Portland, Oregon. It is set principally in ATF Garamond, a revival of (this gets complicated ) Morris Fuller Benton’s 1918 interpretation of Jean Jannon’s 17th- century types, which were in turn inspired by the work of Claude Garamond in the 16th century. Benton was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and died in Morristown, New Jersey, so this “classical” type could be seen as an American riff on an older European CALVIN idea, in much the same way as American painting in the 1940s picked up where the ROSS CARL Enough (detail) Europeans left off (see Mark Tansey’s 1984 paintingTriumph of the New York School ). 2015 Acrylic on canvas Photography credits are as follows: Jonathan Bagby ( 79–83), T. Harrison ( 31–35, 18 × 18 inches 88), Dan Kvitka ( 2–3, 61–65, 84, 94–95), Evan La Londe ( 8, 73–77, 86), Christine Taylor ( 13, 67–71, 91), and Worksighted ( 6, 10, 37, 39–40, 43–47, 87, 92).