LET TERS
NORTHWEST PALETTE
Bob Keefer’s excellent review (Cel-
ebrating Two Lives in Paint,” 12/14)
brands Margaret Coe’s and Mark Clarke’s
art practice with the DNA found in the re-
gional art of the Northwest.
Mention “landscape” and “lyrical
abstraction” in Eugene, and Northwest
painters Margaret Coe and Mark Clarke
come to mind. Their current retrospective
survey, “Our Lives in Paint,” is on ex-
hibit at the University of Oregon’s Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art through April 1,
2018. Their paintings and drawings have
a universal appeal freighted with an om-
nivorous synthesis of impressionism and
expressionism.
For many years Coe and Clarke have
worked masterfully with landscape im-
agery. Neither can deny an impressionist
device, structured ethereal surfaces with
loosely painted areas juxtaposed to archi-
tectural structures; but their intent often
suggest time and place, but also mood —
hence expressionism.
Don’t miss this important survey by
two of Eugene’s most respected painters.
Mike E. Walsh
Eugene
DIGITAL ART DEFENDED
In Bob Keefer’s article a couple of
weeks ago on printmaking (EW 11/30),
the quote attributed to me about digital art
having no soul was taken completely out
of the original context and misrepresented
my meaning. I would like to clear this up.
Within the context of printmaking, I
was referring to the digital copies of origi-
nal hand-pulled prints (or other works of
art) that are ubiquitous these days, as com-
pared to the actual handmade prints them-
selves. I have in the past used digital rep-
resentation and tools within my own work
and found the experience very satisfying.
There are contemporary artists using
digital media whose work I follow and
admire. I also believe contemporary print-
making using digital imagery in combina-
tion with traditional mediums can push the
boundaries and expand the medium in new
and exciting ways.
Karen Lee (Letter 12/7) is exactly right
when she spoke of the unfair hierarchy of
mediums within two-dimensional works
of art. This is clearly an unfortunate conse-
quence of both the traditions and the busi-
ness of art.
I believe the true test of art is in how
effective it is in encouraging us to feel,
think, and dream — not what medium or
techniques are used to create it.
Tallmadge Doyle
Eugene
SLIPPERY SLOPE
The Eugene city government prides it-
self with the rather dubious slogan, “World’s
Greatest City of the Arts and Outdoors.”
For the Eugene Airport, an entryway
into the city, to alter public artwork based
upon the moralism of its managers is a
sign of a growing cultural decadence in the
community.
DESIGN MATTERS
Editor's Note: The slogan became merely "a great
city for art and outdoors" in 2010.
GIVE YOUR TIME!
Time is money. In the last issue, Give
Guide (12/21), EW focused on where to
expend your hard-earned dollars to do the
most good locally, as well as listed some
volunteer opportunities. I commend all
of the organizations that are doing great
work stretching dollars. As the New Year
approaches, consider donating your time
throughout the year.
If your New Year’s Resolution is to
do more good for the community (what a
great resolution!) you could start strong
in January by volunteering for the annual
Point in Time Homeless Street Count. The
count takes place January 31, 2018, and
volunteers are needed to survey individu-
als experiencing homelessness.
Results from the Point in Time (aka
PIT) Count are utilized to leverage funding
and bring more dollars into our commu-
nity to help people stabilize their lives and
move out of homelessness. Donating your
time will help bring in money to many or-
ganizations that were on your Give Guide
list and is an easy, safe way to learn about
homelessness in our community.
To volunteer go to lanecounty.org/
homelesscount.
Alex Dreher
Eugene
DEFAZIO AIDS VETS
Congressman Peter DeFazio greatly as-
sisted me and solved the problem of high
rent when my vet friend moved into the VA
home at Lebanon a few months ago.
Yes, Congressman DeFazio is a great
supporter of all veterans issues!
Please, Oregon voters, continue to sup-
port him — he could use your vote!
Stace Webb
Eugene
LEFT AGENDA
It is unfortunate and misleading for
Jerry Ritter (Letters 12/21) to character-
ize Doug Jones as having a “far left agen-
da.” Jones received enough Republican
support in his very conservative state to
eke out a narrow victory in his recent Sen-
ate race in Alabama.
In fact, Jones is a moderate Demo-
crat. Anyone who actually followed the
race in Alabama knows this to be true. I
don’t know if Ritter intends to color your
thoughts with bogus rhetoric, or if it is that
he has simply lost touch with reality. In ei-
BY JERRY DIETHELM
Land Swap
ASK EUGENE SKINNER?
T
he small in statue but large in stature
bronzed man who sits on the log outside
the Eugene Public Library was a generous
man. He and pioneer partner, Charnelton
Mulligan, each donated 40 acres of land
to be used to build our county seat.
Their legal legacy was the requirement that four
acres of that land be reserved as a permanent public
square with a county courthouse at its center. Lane
County Commissioners in response set aside a 400 ft.
by 400 ft. square of land, half taken from each dona-
tion, to create our downtown public square.
Strictly speaking, 400 by 400 wasn’t quite four
acres, but Eugene Skinner was a reasonable man, rea-
sonable as well as generous, and that reasonableness
with respect to the evolution of our central downtown
square has been put to the test many times over in the
years since its origins in 1854.
Now, 163 years later, it is before us again as we
contemplate swapping city and county land to build a
new city hall and a new and much larger county court-
house.
But, you might wonder, how did our town square
turn into the Park Blocks, and what happened to the
first courthouse that was duly built at its center in 1855?
4
For the city manager to announce that
to err toward caution is the way to proceed
with the shaming and judgment of Garri-
son Keillor is to promote a philistine en-
vironment where censorship of art begins.
When the artists are silenced in such a
moral climate of witch-hunting the com-
munity as a whole will suffer. But we can
take solace that art is long and city govern-
ments are short.
Christopher Guilfoil
Eugene
December 28, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
Eugene Skinner, who died in 1864, didn’t live to
see the east-west extension of 8th Avenue and the
north-south extension of Oak Street that cut through
his square, dividing it into four public blocks, and that
moved its central courthouse off to one side. There
was never any question that the relocated courthouse
remained central to the county’s business. It was just
no longer at the geographic center of the square. And
so the new configuration remained unchanged until
1898 when the courthouse was once more enlarged
and rebuilt. A suit challenging the quartering of Skin-
ner’s original square and the requirement of a centrally
located courthouse was belatedly raised at this rebuild-
ing but defeated in court in 1899.
The 1898 Lane County Courthouse was a grand
and stately brick building and a significant piece of
our architectural history that is still sorely missed,
except perhaps by the people who could no longer fit
the county’s business into it. It was torn down and re-
placed to the north just outside the square in 1959. And
at the same time the northwest Park Block was turned
into what we now refer to as the “butterfly” parking
garage because of its uplifted ends.
It helps to comprehend how much time and change
has taken place downtown since the original Skinner-
Mulligan land donation if we can imagine asking Eu-
gene Skinner if he approved of using his park block
as a parking garage. And hear Skinner reply, “What’s
a parking garage?” Or ask whether he’d prefer our
building a new nine-story courthouse that covered the
butterfly block or getting this park block restored by
building on the whole city hall block that is now avail-
able next door? And get this response, “What’s a nine-
story building?”
For some years now, it’s been Harris Hall that
has become the nerve center of our county seat. The
Harris Hall entrance to the Public Service Building,
which still sits on the original square, connects to the
off-square courthouse to the north and until recently
connected via Otto Poticha’s Blue Bridge across Pearl
Street to the City Hall.
If we build the new courthouse on the old City Hall
block, Harris Hall would then connect to an off-square
courthouse to the east rather than to the north. The site
for a new City Hall at the north end of the butterfly ga-
rage was never a part of the Skinner Square. The coun-
ty had to reacquire a half block of property north of
the square to stretch the parking garage to 7th Avenue.
There have been so many changes to the original
Skinner project, from the dicing of the square into
blocks, to the migration off-square of the courthouse,
to the modern size and conception of a courthouse and
a county seat, that it makes one wonder why we are —
after a year of lawyering — still doing the land swap
two-step. Such hand-wringing lends itself too easily to
such bad lawyer jokes as: What is the difference be-
tween poor corporate lawyers and rich corporate law-
yers? And the answer:
Poor corporate lawyers drag these matters out for
years, whereas rich corporate lawyers drag them out
forever.
Jerry Diethelm is an architect, landscape architect and a planning
and urban design consultant as well as professor emeritus of
Landscape Architecture and Community Service at the University of
Oregon.