(Above: One of Dennis Gould’s colorful pieces on display in Curator’s Choice: Lane Five)
By Randi Bjornstad
Five accomplished area artists will be featured at the Maude Kerns Art Center in a new show titled Curator’s Choice: Lane Five, that opens with a reception on April 12 and runs through May 10.
The curator in the title is artist Craig Spilman, who has chosen work by sculptor Weltzin Blix and painters Margaret Coe, Jon Jay Cruson, Analee Fuentes, and Dennis Gould to fill out the exhibit.
The following statements from Spilman give a flavor of what led him to his choices and what will be on view:
Weltzin Blix has exhibited his sculpture nationally and internationally over many years. A longtime instructor at Lane Community College (1970-2002), he first began his art teaching career at the Maude Kerns Art Center in 1969-70. Blix is well known for his massive commissioned sculpture, “Capitol Fountain,” on the Oregon State Capitol Mall in Salem. The only sculptor included in “Lane Five,” Blix exhibits five bronze pieces, four non-representational and one figurative.
Margaret Coe has an extensive exhibition history, and like a number of the other artists in Curator’s Choice: Lane Five, she has had a long relationship with the Maude Kerns Art Center. She taught her very first painting class at the center in the mid-1960s, served on the board of directors, participated in the rental/sales gallery, and exhibited at the center on numerous occasions. Among the paintings that Coe exhibits in Lane Five is a triptych from a rooftop view of the San Marco Square in Venice, Italy. The center painting leads the viewer in two different directions, one over the tile roofs to the domes of the Basilica and the other downward to the dark, narrow street below.
Jon Jay Cruson has exhibited his work in solo shows throughout Oregon, most recently at the Howard Gallery in Ashland in 2018. In this show, he exhibits four of his brilliantly colored acrylic landscape paintings that mysteriously bridge the gap between representation and abstraction. His work has been described as, “While remaining representational, Cruson’s paintings tend to the abstract, a double pull that is one source of creative tension in his art.”
Analee Fuentes has shown her paintings in galleries and museums throughout Oregon, including at the Maude Kerns Art Center, where she regularly participates in the annual Día de los Muertos exhibit in the fall. Four of her large-scale oil paintings are included in Lane Five. They explore the illuminated surfaces of different species of Northwest fish, and are meant to be viewed both up close and from a distance. Fuentes describes this series as “straddling abstraction and representation.”
Dennis Gould has exhibited his work throughout the US. One of his first solo shows appeared at the Maude Kerns Art Center in 1967. For Lane Five, he shows recent work, including three paintings and two drawings, all based on what he calls “found subjects.” To him, painting are “a voyage of discovery to find something new, to push myself into unknown territory and to (create) something I have never seen before.”
Curator’s Choice: Lane Five
When: April 12 through May 10; curator’s introduction at 5:30 p.m. on April 12, followed by opening reception 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.; curator’s talk at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 4
Where: Maude Kerns Art Center, 1910 E. 15th Ave., Eugene (corner of 15th and Villard streets)
Gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday during exhibits
Information: 541-345-1571 or mkartcenter.org
