Eugene weekly., November 30, 2017, Page 10, Image 10

IDA SHORT AND HEATHER HALPERN,
PULLING HALPERN'S MONOTYPE
ON WHITPRINT'S FAMOUS 4'X8'
RAY TRAYLE ETCHING PRESS
PRINTMAKING
EXPLODES IN OREGON
FROM GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS TO ARTIST STUDIOS,
PRINTMAKING MAKES GENUINE ART ACCESSIBLE
Words by Bob Keefer ◆ Photos by Todd Cooper
S
ay the word “art” and most people
imagine a painting — an original,
unique work, done with oil paints on
canvas, usually by an artist standing at
an easel.
But it’s possible that more artists
in Eugene produce fine-art prints than
make easel paintings. Printmaking is
flourishing here in Eugene and around
the state. It’s hard to visit an art gallery
in Oregon without seeing examples of
contemporary printmakers’ work.
For the uninitiated, “printmaking”
in the art world refers to making re-
productions of images using traditional
hand-crafted processes such as wood-
cut, etching or stone lithography, all of
which require substantial hand work
and artistic skill.
“There are so many people in the
world of printmaking,” says Eugene printmaker Tallmadge
Doyle, whose delicate, nature-inspired etchings have
been shown here and around the world. “If you go to the
Portland galleries you see a lot of prints.”
The Portland galleries that show the most prints are
probably Augen and Froelick galleries, which happen to be
next door to each other in the Pearl District.
Printmaking's deep hold on Oregon goes back nearly
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November 30, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
a century. The godfather of printmaking here is Gordon
Gilkey, an Oregon native born in Scio who received
the very first master of fine arts degree awarded at the
University of Oregon, in 1936. It was in printmaking.
Gilkey taught art at Albany College, now Lewis &
Clark College, before going to New York to make 35
official architectural etchings for the New York World’s
Fair of 1939.
With the arrival of World War II he joined the Army Air
Corps, where his job was to identify landmarks in Europe
that should be spared from Allied bombing.
At war’s end, Gilkey served as head of the War
Department’s German War Art Program, sleuthing out and
seizing troves of Nazi propaganda art, working in parallel
with the more-famous Monuments Men, documented in a
2014 George Clooney movie of the same name, whose job
was to locate and rescue historic artworks that had been
looted by the Nazis in their sweep across Europe.
In the process Gilkey made friendships with
international artists that would last the rest of his life.
When Gilkey came home to Oregon after the war, he
became dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State
College, was the first chair of the Oregon Arts Commission
and later served as curator of prints and drawings at the
Portland Art Museum, where he had donated his massive
collection of prints and drawings, which eventually
numbered 25,000.
Gilkey died in 2000.
“We’re in a room that’s named for Gordon Gilkey,” Anne
Rose Kitagawa says, looking around a small study center
inside the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene. She’s
the museum’s chief curator. “He casts a broad shadow over
the rest of this institution, and in Portland, as well.”
The museum itself is named for arts patron Jordan
Schnitzer, a Portland businessman who has amassed a
large collection of contemporary American prints since he
began collecting in 1988. His personal collection and that
of the Schnitzer Family Foundation count, between them,
more than 10,000 prints and other multiples.
The UO has its own collection of prints that have influenced
artists here and elsewhere. The Schnitzer was originally built
to house 3,700 pieces in the Murray Warner Collection of
Oriental Art, which was donated to the university by Gertrude
Bass Warner. Many of those were Asian prints.
The museum also houses a separate Asian print
collection donated by the late Yoko McClain, whose
husband was a printmaker and collector.
All that background may or may not have had an impact
on the current state of printmaking in Eugene and around
Oregon. Certainly most Northwest art is highly influenced
by Asia, going back to the look of such Northwest School
mystical painters as Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, Kenneth
Callahan and Morris Graves.
“I have also noticed an uptick in printmaking in recent
years,” says Heather Halpern, a Eugene printmaker who,
with her husband Paul, runs the nonprofit Whiteaker