(Golden, 2018, oil on panel by James Lavadour)
The Oregon Arts Commission announces eight grants made through The Ford Family Foundation’s Art Acquisition Fund, which supports our state’s collecting visual arts institutions, the artists whose work they are able to acquire, and the public who will be guaranteed access to these important works in perpetuity. Funds were awarded by a panel of art professionals to: the City of Halsey, Coos Art Museum, High Desert Museum, Portland Art Museum, Portland State University, Reed College, The Schneider Museum of Art and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at University of Oregon.
This is the tenth year that the Arts Commission has administered these funds for The Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Program. Since 2010, funds have been granted to 20 organizations throughout the state and advanced the careers of more than 50 artists: Robert Adams, Corey Arnold, Rick Bartow (1946–2016), Carol Benson, Christine Bourdette, Harrison Branch, Michael Brophy, Pat Courtney Gold, John Van Dreal, Gale Everett, Judith Poxson Fawkes. Betty Feves (1918–1985), Sally Finch, Stephen Hayes, Robert Hess (1935–2014), Yuji Hiratsuka, Deborah Horrell (1953–2018), Jeffrey Hull, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Malia Jensen, Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson, Mel Katz, Lee Kelly, Arnold J. Kemp, Kristan Kennedy, Michael Knutson, Cynthia Lahti, James Lavadour, Ellen Lesperance, Evan La Londe, Elizabeth Malaska, Victor Maldonado, Akihiko Miyoshi, Christiaan H. Mostert, Multiple quilt artists and Sisters Quilt Festival, Jay Stratton Noller, Whitney Nye, Geraldine Ondrizek, Andy Paiko and Ethan Rose, Henk Pander, Lucinda Parker, Don Prechtel, Wendy Red Star, Vanessa Renwick, Susan Seubert, Randall David Tipton, Samantha Wall, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt and Phyllis Yes.
2019 grants are awarded to:
City of Halsey ($1,500) to acquire Gale Everett, From the Land, 2016, aluminum, PVC, galvanized steel bolts, plywood (13 panels). Gale (b.1969. Lives and works in Albany, Oregon) is a visual artist who works and lives in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Her work connects to the forest and rivers, to native plants, farmlands and a love of animals. She moves between hand-cut paper, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture. From the Land will be a permanently installed at Halsey City Hall.
Coos Art Museum ($2,800) to acquire Christiaan H. Mostert, High Truckin’, 2017, acrylic on canvas. Christiaan (Dutch) (b. 1950. Lives and works in North Bend, Oregon) is a prominent artist on Oregon’s South Coast. He was born into an artist family in the Netherlands in 1950. The family immigrated to Southern California in 1961 where he attended art classes at the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena. He started his own design and illustration studio in 1979, doing mostly commercial art and architectural renderings. In 1990 he moved to Oregon to open his own fine art studio and gallery. Since then, Dutch has concentrated mostly on painting the maritime environment, in the studio and on location, gathering numerous awards for his work on both coasts. Dutch is the West Coast representative for the American Society of Marine Artists. He helped found the Annual Maritime Art Exhibition at Coos Art Museum 25 years ago.
High Desert Museum ($15,000) to acquire James Lavadour, Golden, 2018, oil on panel. James (b.1951. Lives and works on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Oregon) is one of Oregon’s premier artists. His work has been exhibited internationally, including recent group exhibitions at Converge 45, You in Mind, 2017, Portland, Oregon; State of the Art 2014-15, Crystal Bridges, Bentonville AR; and the 2013 Venice Biennale collateral exhibition Personal Structures, along with numerous regional one-person exhibitions. Growing up on the Umatilla Reservation, his work reflects his deep connection to the landscape of Eastern Oregon and incorporates Indigenous views of the land and sense of place. The High Desert Museum’s collection currently includes two of Lavadour’s early works. By acquiring one of his more mature works, they expand their capacity to trace his development as an artist and make his artwork accessible to broad audiences in their rural region. Lavadour is represented by PDX CONTEMPORARY ART.
Portland Art Museum ($20,000) to acquire Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson, Furniture Sculptures, 2018, wood, cotton. Chris’s (b. 1968. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) multidisciplinary art encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and music; his works touch on universal themes of spirituality, sociology and environmentalism. Johanna Jackson (b. 1972. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) transforms common objects and materials to explore the confluence of life and work, art and craft, magic and the ordinary in her handmade, functional objects and domestically-scaled installations. Both artists have exhibited internationally and are significant members of Portland’s artistic community. Working together, they created the exhibition design that transformed a gallery for the museum’s exhibition series WE.CONSTRUCT.MARVELS.BETWEEN.MONUMENTS. The artist team’s murals, furniture and spatial interventions shifted the white cube into a warm, lively environment. Acquiring these furniture pieces is an important testimony to the transformative, community-centered ambitions of the WCMBM series. Johanson is represented by Mitchell-Inness & Nash, New York.
Portland State University ($27,000) to acquire Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Woman Be Free, 2018, fused glass. Jessica (b. 1971. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) is a Hallie Ford Fellow and an important American artist. Her expressive and intuitive studio practice produces dynamic sculptures, collages, paintings and large-scale ceramics, all hybrid juxtapositions of the handmade. She has received recent solo exhibitions at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH (2016); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2014); the Hepworth Wakefield Museum (2013); and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA (2011). Significant group exhibitions include the 55th Venice Biennale, and The Whitney Biennial (2010). Her work has been incorporated into public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Hutchin’s fused glass panel Woman Be Free will complete a series of three, with Totem and 19 Years Old — each made in residence at Bullseye Glass, Portland, that will be permanently displayed at PSU’s 724 Harrison building (formerly Neuberger Hall), as part of a collection of works that explore issues of material expression of identity. Other artists represented in the grouping are Ursula von Rydingsvard, Hank Willis Thomas, Lorna Simpson, Wendy Red Star, and Saya Woolfalk. Hutchins is represented by Marianne Boesky, New York.
Reed College ($12,500) Heather Watkins, Recordings, 2018, 12 individually framed works, thread on linen. Heather (b. 1969. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) has exhibited her work regionally and beyond since earning her MFA in Typography and Design at RISD in 2000. Trained in type and graphic design, textiles, bookmaking and printmaking, Watkins’ mature work exhibits the sensitive interweaving of these mediums. As an undergrad Watkins studied Classics at Pitzer College, studying in Athens, Greece, and her art evinces this study of classical art and poetics. Watkins has held solo exhibitions at: the Portland Art Museum; The Art Gym; and PDX CONTEMPORARY; and group exhibitions at CANADA NY; the lumber room, and other spaces. Her work is in the collection of: MoMA, NY; the Miller-Meigs Collection; among others. She has installed major public artworks at PSU and PCC. Her accomplished work is critical to the region’s history of design, craft and spiritual abstraction. Watkins created the Recordings while “waiting” in various spaces, mainly medical environments. Each intricate embroidery expresses the mind and body negotiating time and space. Watkins is represented by PDX CONTEMPOARY ART.
Schneider Museum of Art, $4,562, Elizabeth Malaska, Legacy of Ruin, 2014, Oil, flashe, spray paint, & charcoal & pencil on canvas. Elizabeth (b. 1976. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) received her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and BFA from California College of the Arts. With a recent critically acclaimed solo exhibition at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland and a 2018 Hallie Ford Fellowship, Malaska is emerging as an important Oregon artist. In a recent Art Form Critic’s pick, Stephanie Snyder writes, “Elizabeth Malaska’s recent paintings celebrate the pathos and resilience of the anima, asserting its reproductive and spiritual power over millennia of oppression… Malaska’s pieces exorcise and overcome the clichéd representations of the feminine form seen throughout art history.” Malaska is represented by Russo Less Gallery.
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, $4,500, University of Oregon, Victor Maldonado, The Fallen, 2018, acrylic on canvas. Victor (b. 1976. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon) was born in Michoacán, Mexico, and raised in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley. Maldonado draws from their experiences in a family of migrant field laborers to create multidisciplinary art that explores identity, cultural symbols and perceptions… yet they call it “art about nothing,” Lucha libre is a recurring theme in the work. The iconic Luchador mask, a symbol of Mexican freestyle wrestlers, stands for the struggle between two forces. In addition to their work as a conceptual, visual, performance, and installation artist, Maldonado is also a freelance curator and writer and assistant dean of diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Pacific Northwest College of Art. This is the first work of Maldonado to enter the JSMA collection. Maldonado is represented by Froelick Gallery.