We've got issues.
Only a fool will tell you how to experience art. But in the interest of EW’s inaugural visual arts issue, Arts Hound, I’m willing to play the fool. You see, in the past year as arts editor, I have encountered a widespread epidemic in Eugene: artphobia. “I just don’t get art,” people tell me, avoiding galleries, museums, art walks like the plague for fear of being, or being seen as, out of their element. Continue reading
At 80 years old, the UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is one of the hippest places to see art in the city. But it’s also a cavernous place with nooks and crannies rotating thousands of pieces that can overwhelm the senses. So, where to start? Here, we asked five curators at the JSMA to pick their favorite pieces currently on view and tell us why the works are special. Continue reading
Jerry Ross Jerry Ross has always been a pioneer: first by helping to sustain the New Zone Art Collective, followed by spearheading the creation of Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts. Now the renowned Eugene oil painter has created his signature style, “American Verismo,” after discovering the Macchiaioli movement led by a group of rebellious Tuscan painters working in Florence in the mid-19th century. Continue reading
Down by the railroad tracks that carve through the Whiteaker, graffiti art colors the walls of buildings. A large piece spray painted in white advises its audience to “Read up!” but it’s the paint drippings below that inspired local artist Josh Sands. “I saw the paint under the graffiti and thought, ‘Can I take graffiti paint and make something out of it?” he says. Continue reading