More from Kohler Pavilion – paintings of all sorts

Henk Pander 1983 watercolor, showing off, about 5′ by 3.2′, tucked in a hallway deep on the 7th floor of the OHSU Kohler Pavilion. Flowers, Big Pink, mirrors, perspective, sheer boisterous talent. Perhaps the most talented artist in Oregon history, his work is everywhere you turn – from Timberline Lodge, to the Visual Chronicle of Portland, to the Performing Arts Center pushing perspective with David Robboy’s giant perplexed bass, the deathbed painting of Ric Young, Perspectives of Mount Hood, New Carissa, Jacob and Arnold, Storefront Theatre, on and on.

Eva Lake’s 60s/80s pings op-art and post-art with glistening bright reds pinks and purples. Longtime Portland artist and now provocateur, Lake balances the business of art with the Chambers Gallery with the making of art, minds history, welcomes newcomers at her radio show on KPSU.

Julie Rall, oil and gold leaf on Plexiglass, bright bright colors but little control. Aside from punching the viewer in the head, I am not certain what the intended outcome is here.

David J McCoyth is listed as the maker of Green and Gold, from 1930. McCoyth may be a pseudonym for Mr. Otis – very early tho. It’s a pretty picture; peaceful, passive, purposeful, of the post “primitive-moderne” style. Donated by Mr. & Ms. Brian Booth.

 

Barbara Tetenbaum – at OHSU

In Portland, Oregon, on the top of Marquam Hill, at the Oregon Health & Sciences University, in the Peter Kohler Pavilion, on the 7th floor, in the Center for Women’s Health, behind the lobby, down the hall, around a corner is this small alter for beautiful artwork.

Four pieces by bookmaker Barbara Tetenbaum, A Visual Chronicle of Lake Oswego: 100 pairs of working hands, The View from Bealtaine, Gymnopaedia #4, and A Set of Building Blocks.

Tetenbaum has been making books by hand for twenty-five years at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts and under the imprint Triangle Press.

These are careful works by a mastercraftsperson, delicately made of paper and cloth and ink and magic, elegantly casting specific impressions.

Book arts, such as typography, binding, papermaking merges a slew of different arts and crafts together – graphic design, composition, poetry, multimedia, sculpture, a true mixed art. There are factories of the stuff with powerful patrons, like Arion Press in San Francisco, but most art books are created as individual artworks.

Book arts seem to be a welcoming art form – easy to get started, essential you make it yourself, make it your own. Two places to get started in Portland: Oregon College of Art & Craft, the Independent Publishing Resource Center,

Barbara Tetenbaum at the Triangular Press.

Barbara Tetenbaum: A Retrospective of 25 Years as a Book Artist – at the Collins Gallery of the Multnomah County Library.

Pushing the Margins: White Lotus Gallery

From an exhibition in Czeck Republic in 2003, Dedictvi = Inheritance : or, ‘Thanks’ from Usti nad Labem.

Ode to a Grand Staircase (for four hands) – Flying Fish Press

An Artist Collects: Artist-Made Books from the Collection of Barbara Tetenbaum – Contemporary Crafts Gallery

 

Peter Kohler (Art) Pavilion

A new, minor art museum has opened in Portland, revealing a permanent collection of over 100 artworks from the closets of Portland’s wealthy and generous.

It’s part of the Peter Kohler Pavilion at OHSU, a new 14 story biomedical research facility perched at the top of Marquam Hill, and the top-side of Portland’s new aerial tram. Kohler is the hospital’s longtime president. The tram is Portland’s largest, most expensive public artwork.

Soon you’ll be able to ride the tram for $5 to visit the artwork, but there’s plenty of free parking in the new lot under the building (take a left on Campus Drive as you approach the hospital campus on Sam Jackson Park, park and take the elevator to the 9th floor).

Much of the artwork comes from donations by members of the OHSU Foundation, a club of Portland’s wealthy and powerful. Members of the Foundation include

• Chairman Frank Jungers, former CEO and Chairman Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO)
• Former Chair Richard Geary President of Kiewit Pacific, a major contractor building the tram.
• Wayne Drinkward, President and CEO of Hoffman Construction Company, a major builder of the South Waterfront at OHSU
• Arlene and Mina Schnitzer – longtime philanthropists and art lovers

The full list of Foundation officers, board members and trustees is here.

The artwork is squirreled all over the 9th and and 7th floors, and perhaps elsewhere in the building. Explore hallways and even offices to seem them all, weekends are best. There are outdoor sculpture areas on both floors with fantastic views of the city and the tram, showing artwork like the kitchy Sophie Ryder Standing Lady Hare with Dog – which she’s remade and sold many times. But it really works here, strong arms and strong backside gently holding the sick dog.

Many contributions come from the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Collection – including prints and paintings from local gallery artists Sherrie Wolf, Henk Pander, Julie Rall, Karen Guzak, Lucinda Parker, Laverne Kraus, Suzanne Duryea, and Shirley Gittelsohn.

The Ryder sculpture shown here was donated by Ken Novack, who happens to be the President of Schnitzer Steel. Just one of them tho. The top one.

Over the next several days, Portland Public Art will look at these artworks, and some of the artists who made them.

OHSU has a library of the artworks; but the links are duds or lead to enormous, pointless tiff files.

Speaking of bad pics – here’s a prediction: within ten years you’ll be able to weave a Google Earth-type program with all the Flickr + Google Images to create a comprehensive picture of everything in the world.

 

Not much art at new OHSU building

Different from the new Peter Kohler Pavilion, the trophy at the top of Marquam Hill, the even newer OHSU Center for Health & Healing has almost no artwork at all.

The two buildings host the two spars of the Portland Tram (which qualifies by our conceit at Portland’s most elaborate and expensive public artwork). Still not open to the public (I hear January 25 and $5 bucks a ride) the tram’s publicly stated cost is currently at $55 million.

I can’t help it. Seventy passengers @ 17 rides per hour (seven minute journey divided by two trams) @ $5 a ride X 365 days a week = $52,122,000. Which means those freeloading OHSU employees have to make room or pay full fare.

Anyway, following the formula all public buildings need an enormous fundraising space built in, the lobby area adjacent to the Tram has comfy chairs and hand blown glass bulbs hanging from the ceiling. If you send OHSU some money, a bulb can have your name on it. Otherwise, expect lite jazz and Oregon wines with regularity.

By day at least, the bulbs are not particularly interesting.

Best thing about this building is the 16th Floor observation deck which provides an excellent view North of the building, high over the Ross Island Bridge, from Mt. Hood to the East to the top of Marquam Hill to the West. I always love a new view of the city.

A recent George Johanson in the cancer waiting room. He’s everywhere. The artwork would be much more interesting if it had been made in the 1930s.

But that’s about it for the public areas of the building

The building’s lack of artwork is a peculiar contrast from the Kohler Pavilion, which is packed with local artwork, in every hall, in every room, big pieces and small, well known and unknown. Looks like the Russo Gallery and the closets of the all the Schnitzer’s got a thorough clean out. Don’t think about the 1% or 2% for the arts – OHSU doesn’t qualify.

And, be reminded the employees of this building are, for the most part reasonably civilized, educated people.

 

OHSU – Sculptures

Just a list tonight, it’s cold out here in the darkness.

This little thing peeks out of the bushes in front of Baird. No tag, no nothing. I bet a dollar it’s a Arts & Crafts Society project a beloved Dean or Director made while in mid-life crisis. Prove me wrong. About two and a half feet high, bronze, late 1970’s by the style. Hmm. A cubist mother pushing a futurist baby stroller.

This astonishingly ugly half head sits in front of the Med Research building, on a marble dias with various icons etched into it, as if the thing were hurtling through space on an apology run to the gods, like Voyager’s gold record. It’s like a booby prize, probably selected by a committee of department heads as a perk for putting up with construction delays.

Across a small unused plaza is a long marble bench with Daniel Boorstin quippy qoute, “The obstacle to discovery is the illusion of knowledge.” Some sort of science no-mindfulness. More mid-life crisis, I bet. Students in scrubs are groggy, sucking down smokes, blinking at a forgotten sun.

I think I saw this is a casino lobby in Nevada a few years ago. The glass case is new. The Spirit of Healing has graced the BICC lobby since Peter Kohler hauled it home.

No idea who the artist is. Anyone?

Jack Van Koten, a Shriner and sculptor from Indiana made this guardian of the Portland Shriners Hospital, a 40-bed pediatric orthopaedic hospital providing comprehensive orthopaedic care to children at no charge.

Laugh if you want at the simplicity, but try to think of a better place for these duffers to be stacking their chips.

Antoinette Hatfield ran a prim and proper gallery downtown in the 1990s, I can’t put my finger on when she closed. Anyway, this bust of the archangel of OHSU welcomes visitors to an underused entrance of OHSU’s main hospital. Better is a bronze frieze + pictorial history of Hatfield in the main lobby.

He’s one of those well-cared for Washington men who looks better the older he gets. This bust looks like it was made from photos of him during the Nixon administration.

The Senator had a couple of bad falls last year and hasn’t had much of a public profile recently. At 83 years, and most of those in public, he’s on the verge of deification. Possibly the most popular Oregonian of all time, next to Ralph Miller and Mel Blanc.

There’s an old rusty Lee Kelly in front of the nursing school, and another shiny one in front of the VA. Both hidious. There’s a weird collection of nurse-dolls in the stairwell of the new nursing school. There is a surreal sculpture garden for kids to play in in the center of Doernbecher. That’s about it.

Finally, a simple plaque on a small boulder on a random walkway, “In the memory of those men and women who have advanced medical education and research through the bequest of their bodies to the School of Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University.

 

OHSU – Paintings IV

I’m not strongly motivated to say much about Carl Morris or his work. Rep’ed in Portland by Laura Russo, prolific, collected, long-lived, generous, abstract painter. You can look up his bio if you like.

There are four matching paintings, which look like they were all made on the same day, just filling space in the OHSU auditorium. My guess is Jean and Howard Vollum donated these to OHSU back in the 1970’s. Sensing an ultimate gift in the tens of millions, the development department swallowed the insurance costs and parked these artworks pending the estate settlement.

The paintings are large and fresh looking, dark and ominous, uninviting and looming. Definitely not something you could hang in a home or in a room where particular people would need to be in direct contact with them. Public hallways, lobbies, entrances. Very serious stuff, but absent sufficient content to be useful. Just unpleasant.

When the Vollum Institute was designed, more Morris’ were available from the Vollum collection. In a quick run through the lobbies and the Edward Herbert room on the 11th floor (fantastic view) I counted eight. There are probably more tucked away in offices. Student & staff are oblivious to them, swallowed in their niche world of test tubes.

If you have a curious mind (why else would you be reading this blog?) check out the Herbert Memorial lecture series: An Rb/E2F/DP Complex and Chromatin Remodeling Antagonize a Ras Pathway During C. elegans Vulva Development, presented by Robert Horvitz of MIT, who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Sydney Brenner and John Sulston. March 13, 2006 at 12:00 PM in Room M1441 – better write that down, you won’t see it in your local papers.

Hilda Morris, Carl’s better half and a fine and curious teacher in her own right, will be remembered at the PAM.org in March with a solo show.

From the show description: Hilda Morris (1911 – 1991) was at the center of the Northwest’s avant-garde for much of her career, producing a large body of innovative, influential bronze sculpture. Now, in this definitive survey exhibition of more than 50 of her sculptures, drawings, and paintings are on view.

 

OHSU – Paintings III

Oregon Health Sciences University is the state’s largest hospital and only medical school. Perched on top of Marquam Hill (the fabled result of a whiskey-driven land-deal), it’s packed with researchers and the poor folks they torment, trauma hospital, two children’s hospitals (Shriners and Dornbecher), a VA Hospital, the Casey Eye Institute, a nursing school, a dental school, and not enough parking. Billions in construction and payroll over the decades and yet the halls are largely empty of cultural and commentary.

Here’s more of what I found.

By Barbara Gilson, a Portland photog, untitled, of the Portland Rose Festival. In dreary grays, it hangs in a dreary hospital hallway, a large gelatin print, very hard to look at except for up close.

The poobah deans + directors had their portraits made and hang them in and outside the main hospital auditorium (where grand rounds are held). The signature is D. Hine and the portraits look like they were all made at the same time, but the frames for the older members, some of whom passed on decades ago, are older, relative to their age. About twelve of them. Uninteresting outside of trivia. Can’t find D. Hine.

By Mary Josephson, All Your Base Belong To Us, in a waiting area in the hospital. Liberal Arts Primitive, with an extremely unfortunate title. Dreck.

George Johanson, Portland gallery stalwart; this abstract is probably from the 1970’s, probably a donation to the medical school, & hangs in a dark lobby. Hans Hoffman sans genius. No tag.

Next – Carl Morris.

 

OHSU – Paintings II

Cut to the chase: some might say city-treasure Henk Pander is an acquired taste, but his flowers are fantastic and always exquisite. This bunch hangs in a busy hallway, not far from the skybridge connecting OHSU to the VA Hospital. This is the best piece of art in the OHSU collection (which I have found to date).

Paul Sutinen is co-chair of the Art Department at Marylhurst. His Constellation of Drawings-Memory is a 1% for the arts purchase at OHSU, in the center stairwell of the newish Medical Research Building. It’s big, 7′ x 7′ or so, but is just about as interesting in this jpg.

This large untagged painting is nearby the new and luxurious Marion Miller Auditorium on the 11th floor of Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. No idea who made it.

I also don’t know who made this image, which hangs just off the main entrance / wait room. No tag. I like it a lot. It’s a weaving of images, which distorts up close. Nice colors, content. Too bad it has to be behind glass.

+++

Overheard in the University Club library, “goddamn beatnik chislers got my wife drunk on white wine and sold her $1700 worth of shit we’re ashamed to keep in our closet.”

 

Big Bassoons

The TFME / OHSU Lunchtime Concert Series presents the Bassoon Brothers on September 28, Wednesday, at the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital on the Lobby level.

They are a bassoon quartet composed of members of the Oregon Symphony bassoon section.

All TFME / OHSU concerts are free. For more information call 503-494-7686.

Not all public art is bolted in cement!