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arts
SHORTS
The Makings of a Master
Though an artist’s work is the timeless stamp of his/her merit, it is the
product of a process that occurs largely behind the scenes. Notebooks,
journals, scribbling and sketches on napkins are often the genesis of the great
works we know only in fi nal form. The David McCosh exhibit at the Jordan
Schnitzer museum is taking a look inside that process with technology and
some help from the late master lithographer himself.
In the mid 1930s, the already venerated McCosh came to teach at
the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at UO. A world traveler, SAIC
alumnus and Tiffany Foundation Fellowship recipient, McCosh was an artist
who believed in the use of a limited palette — focusing on color blending
in a somewhat minimalist approach to his process. He also understood the
vitality of creating work from the bowels of his experience as an artist.
McCosh painted rooms he rented while trying to “make it” in Depression-
era Chicago, even naming such work “Furnished Room Chicago” in further
tribute to the ordinary. Deserted city scenes, aqueducts, lone street lights
overlooking dark alleys, dilapidated candy-bar factories, the gravediggers
of his father’s cemetery in Cedar Rapids — these are some of the subjects of
his work. He was perhaps, fi rst and foremost, a student of his environment.
Despite McCosh’s well-documented artistic and scholastic achievements,
not much has been archived of his personal process. But the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art is about to change that.
Danielle Knapp, McCosh Fellow curator at the Schnitzer, has combed
through a sizeable collection of McCosh’s recently donated sketchbooks.
“This exhibit is something that gives viewers an experience they can’t
get anywhere else,” she says while fl ipping through the personal journals
spread before her. With gloved fi ngers she opens to a page and points out
a small sketch in which McCosh has
intricately mapped out several city
blocks — detailing not only where
the notable art museums are
located, but also the cheapest
places to purchase beer.
The intimate look into the
process of a master artisan
will be on display via iPad,
and museumgoers can
fl ip through selected
digitally copied pages
of McCosh’s journals
at leisure. This is in
addition to the more
than 80 individual works
that will also be hung in
the show, which is aptly
titled “The Making of
David McCosh.”
“The Making of
David McCosh” runs
July 23 through Sept. 4
at the Jordan Schnitzer
Museum
of
Art.
— Dante Zuñiga-West
July 23 – September 4
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Detail of State Street Crossing, 1933. Watercolor on paper, 20 x 14 inches. David John McCosh Memorial Collection. Gift of Anne Kutka McCosh.
The Making of David McCosh is organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art,
University of Oregon, Eugene. The exhibition is made possible with major funding from
the David John McCosh and Anne Kutka McCosh Memorial Museum Endowment Fund.
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EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity
22 JULY 21, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
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