VISUAL ARTS
BY ALEX NOTMAN
after several years of knuckle-busting work, one of her
most iconic works was born — “I Crochet Portland,” a
colorful mass of yarn that captures Hamilton’s personal
Portland. During that period, at the prodding of her
co-workers at Le Pigeon Restaurant, Hamilton completed
12 portraits of her fellow employees.
One of Hamilton’s most astounding and ambitious
portraits, on view at the Shnitz, is “Bridging Shine,” a
goliath of that classic art form the nude.
“It was quite terrifying to make at first,” she says. “I
didn’t know if I could do it.” She did and it works. This
portrait, as well as her others, has a fleshy, painterly
realism, which is a huge feat considering her materials:
thrift store yarn and, sometimes, plastic bags. And she’s
not trying to mask these materials as something they’re
not; Hamilton purposely leaves the threads dangling from
the edges of her work to show viewers “how much goes
into it,” which can be hours, weeks or even years.
“Having more experience doesn’t make it any faster,”
Hamilton says. “I’m just less hesitant now.” ■
Jo Hamilton received an Oregon Arts Commission grant to produce a catalog ,
Jo Hamilton: Selected Works 2006-2014, for this exhibit; look for it at the JSMA.
‘I DROP EVERYTHING WHEN I SEE YOU’ BY OLIVIERI
A TALE OF TWO ARTISTS
Oregon Contemporary Visions brings the exhilarating work of
Irene Hardwicke Olivieri and Jo Hamilton to the Schnitzer
I
rene Hardwicke Olivieri and Jo Hamilton may not be
native Oregonians, but their art seems to spring from
the earthy soul of this region. Both artists’ work has
strong ties to craft movements, activism and
community (whether that consists of people or
animals). Now living in Oregon, Olivieri and Hamilton
also both work in a large-scale format and display an
immaculate attention to detail. However, their work is
wildly different — Olivieri creates nature-infused oil
paintings and Hamilton constructs urban “crochet
paintings” of people and cityscapes.
Curators June Black and Jessi DiTillio brought the two
together for Oregon Contemporary Visions, one of the
most exciting contemporary exhibits to come to the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art, running through Aug. 3. Learn
more about the work and the artists when they give a joint
artist talk 5:30 pm Wednesday, April 16, in the Harold and
Arlene Schnitzer Gallery.
CLOSER TO WILDNESS
IRENE HARDWICKE OLIVIERI
“After 15 years living on the East Coast, I found myself
yearning to live in a wilder place, to be closer to nature in
a more ancient and vulnerable way,” Olivieri, a Texas
native, tells me over the phone from her “off-the-grid”
home in central Oregon. It’s clear she thrives in the natural
environment — her paintings feature a dizzying array of
flora and fauna: a reclining nude woman in a cougar’s
belly (“Valentine for a cougar”); Giuseppe Arcimboldo-
like portraits constructed from ferns, caterpillars, pea pods
and berries (“Some kind of wilderness”); and, of course,
her beloved packrats.
“When I moved to Oregon about nine years ago, I
became acquainted with a truly extraordinary creature —
the bushy-tailed woodrat,” she says (packrat is the
colloquial name). “Packrats are nature’s little folk artists,
always searching for interesting items to bring back to
their nest.” In the enormous painting “I drop everything
when I see you” (it has its own wall at the Schnitz), a nude
woman sits in a tree canopy with a human-sized packrat
whose body is covered with smaller packrats surrounded
by delicate painted text — a common tool in her work —
that describes the lives and habits of these fuzzy critters.
Animal activism is perhaps the strongest current in her
work and life. Olivieri was one of the founders of the
action arm of TrapFree Oregon, and she looks to Brooks
Fahy, director of Eugene-based Predator Defense, as
inspiration. “While some people seem to want to trap and
get rid of these beautiful creatures, there are many creative
ways to coexist with our wild friends and greatly enrich
our lives in doing so,” she says. In fact, Olivieri has done
just that — a tamed packrat that she named “Pedro” lives
under her deck. She feeds him peanuts and Pedro once
stole her paintbrush.
To learn more about Olivieri’s work, read her painting descriptions in her new
book Irene Hardwicke Olivieri: Closer to Wildness, which will be available at
the JSMA.
THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
JO HAMILTON
“My mom and my gran were both knitters and
crocheters and women who made things,” Hamilton says
in her lilting Scottish accent during a phone call from
Portland. “I learned to knit and crochet when I was
really young.” Hamilton came to Oregon by way of
Glasgow, where she grew up and attended the
Glasgow School of Arts to study oil painting.
But painting left her wanting.
“I was still kind of hunting for
something else,” she says. It wasn’t
until after she followed some friends
to Portland in the ’90s that she
found out what she was hunting
for: to combine representational
“high” art with her love of
crochet. And thus,
‘BRIDGING SHINE’ BY HAMILTON
eugeneweekly.com • April 10, 2014
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