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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 16, 2017)
VISUAL ARTS BY ESTER BARKAI ‘DON’T DRAW A TREE. DRAW A PARTICULAR TREE.’ David McCosh at Karin Clarke Gallery S EUGENE tanding in front of Fall Creek, a watercolor paint- ing by David McCosh (1902–1981), I was aware there was someone else looking, too. Viewing the same artwork as someone else in a gallery or a mu- seum can be awkward. Often one person will walk away to give the other their time with the piece. But not at the Karin Clarke Gallery on the day of curator Roger Saydack’s talk about the Eugene artist. The atmosphere in the gallery was social. “You can tell this art is McCosh’s work,” the person said. He was already familiar with the artist’s work, as were so many others. The lively buzz that filled the gallery re- volved around the more than 30 artworks on the walls by an artist some had known and others had studied under while he was art professor at the University of Oregon. Fall Creek has a transparent stained glass feel to it. The design is an all-over pattern similar to others of McCosh’s abstract landscapes. It is composed of fluid lines and wash laid down in splashes of color. There aren’t details in it that you would associate with realism, but you can tell there is water, as well as green, yellow and orange leaves the color of fall. The painting is both abstract and relatable to what you might see if you were at the place the artist stood at the time of year he painted it. Like a lot of other artists who moved out West from the eastern United States, McCosh was inspired by his new en- vironment. Before he moved here his subjects were mostly human, like those in the drawing Man and Woman at a Restaurant. After he moved to Eugene he began to paint nature. He depicted landscapes at first and then evolved toward abstraction, though he did not think of himself as an abstract artist. He was grounded in reality, always begin- ning with observation. The exhibit Learning to Paint is Learning to See re- minds us of this by hanging photographs of correspond- ART TALK BY BOB KEEFER What’s up with the city, the Hult and the former Jacobs Gallery? I t’s been more than a year since the Jacobs Gallery closed its doors in downtown Eugene, another victim of — of what, exactly? The sluggish econ- omy? City Hall’s indifference to the visual arts? Poor manage- ment by the nonprofit organiza- tion that ran the Jacobs, created in 1987, on the lower floor of the Hult Center? Pressed for an answer, I’d have to choose a bit of all of the 22 DAVID MCCOSH: ‘FALL CREEK,’ 1964 ing places in nature on the walls. During his talk, Saydack pointed to a tree in a photograph and then to a column of brush strokes in the painting Tangle. A collective sound of appreciation could be heard as people in the gallery recog- nized the tree in the painting — seeing what the artist saw. “Don’t draw a tree. Draw a particular tree,” was advice McCosh gave to his drawing class, according to a former McCosh student who was at the gallery. “He detested ste- reotypes.” What’s the difference? above. What I can’t put my finger on, though, is this: Why hasn’t the city gotten around to taking down the signs at the Hult Center that say “Jacobs Gallery”? You can still read the operating hours of the now non-existent art gallery. Do they think the Jacobs is magi- cally going to resurrect itself? I got the chance recently to pose that question to a couple city officials — Theresa Size- more, the Hult Center manager, and Isaac Marquez, the public art manager. They’re both friendly and hard working, and seem quite sincere in their explana- tions. And they both indicated that things just plain take a long time to accomplish when the city does them. “The signage is part of an overall plan,” Sizemore said. “And a lot of the signs are at- tached to the building …” The 35-year-old Hult Center is showing its age. Water began leaking into the lower levels of the building even before the Jacobs closed. There was fun- gus involved. Repairs involve March 16, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com rebuilding a small commercial kitchen, and that means bringing the kitchen up to current health codes, which will make it bigger, and … Anyone who has remodeled a house will recognize this kind of mission creep. “Construction could still im- pact the Jacobs space,” Sizemore said. Bigger questions still hover around the ghost of the gallery. What’s the city’s role in promot- ing visual art? Should it replace the Jacobs Gallery with another equivalent space? Or should it focus on other ways of present- ing art, and other kinds of art be- sides paintings hung on walls? “The visual arts fall between many models,” Marquez said. “How many galleries have closed in Eugene in the last five years?” More, I’d have to admit, than survive. To its credit, the city spent some time in the past year try- ing to find another private group to operate something like the Ja- cobs, if only for the occasional You can draw a stereotype of a tree without looking at one. But in order to draw a specific tree — a real tree — you have to look. You can’t make it up. There’s no lying in art. This is why we use words like “immediate” or “truth- ful” to describe paintings done with brushstrokes that are visible, like marks made in drawing. And why no matter how abstract a painting of a landscape is, it can still be real. David McCosh: Learning to Paint is Learning to See runs through April 1 at Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette Street. Hours are noon to 5:30 pm Wednesday through Saturday. show. That never really panned out. On the other hand, I haven’t been totally convinced the city is behind the idea of another city- supported art gallery. More than a year ago, city staffers told the Cultural Services Advisory Com- mittee that “the gallery model is not doing well, nationally, inter- nationally or in our state.” The same could also be said about symphonic music, ballet and opera. Yet traditional non- profit performing groups con- tinue to operate in the Hult’s two performance halls, though, of course, the ever-ailing opera is, once again, broke and in debt, and the Oregon Bach Festival has moved most of its operations back to the University of Oregon. Sizemore says the city doesn’t subsidize performances, not even for the Hult’s six resident compa- nies. So the city wasn’t showing favoritism by cutting its $30,000 annual subsidy to the Jacobs, leading to the gallery’s demise; instead it was putting painters and printmakers and sculptors on the same neutral financial foot- ing as musicians and dancers and actors. (In fact, the Jacobs never paid rent on its space, so it came out ahead.) Bottom line is this: If the vi- sual arts world wants a visual arts center in Eugene, it’s going to be up to those artists and their sup- porters to build it. I don’t believe the city will stand in the way of a solid plan, but no one should wait around for City Hall to make the first move. After all, Eugene can’t even decide how to replace its now- demolished City Hall. Some of you may recall Eugene Art Talk, the arts blog I wrote for a couple years between working for that other newspaper in town and taking up residence in here at Eugene Weekly. I didn’t quite know what to do with the name, but I’ve grown fond of it. So here it is, on top of a new and occasional column about the arts world in and around Eugene. Send comments, ideas, complaints and suggestions to bob@eugeneweekly.com.
