(Above: Warm Winds by artist Jason Greene of Corbett, is part of the Vestiges exhibit on display at the Maude Kerns Art Center from June 23 to July 21, 2023.)

Edited by Randi Bjornstad

Two new exhibits, bearing the somewhat enigmatic titles Vestiges and Evocation, open at the Maude Kerns Art Center on Fridaym, June 23, with a public reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and remain on display through July 21.

Vestiges

Vestiges features work by Julie Anderson Bailey, Janine Etherington, Jason Greene, and Karen Russo, while Evocation is a two-person show with art by Andrea Schwartz-Feit and John Richey.

According to the announcement of the opening, the art center describes Vestiges as “visual stories that represent a kind of call and response collaboration with nature,” focused on the Northwest landscape for inspiration as well as explanation of both urban and rural environment.

Here’s a synopsis of their approaches:

  • Julie Anderson Bailey, from Roseburg uses paper sculpture to illustrate humanity’s fragility and interdependence with the natural world, with an eye to “balancing hope and heartbreak as we adapt in this time of climate change. These disruptions to our daily life force us to learn new ways to co-exist in community.”
  • Eugene artist Janine Etherington, influenced by geometry, uses small, square, cradled panels and blocks to create imaginative mixed-media works that “develop intuitively, helped along by the endless possibilities in combining and recombining the elements.”
  • Jason Greene, who lives in Corbett near the Columbia River in Multnomah County, often focuses his paintings on the forest near his home, sensing its energy and motion as it is felt, not just seen. He seeks connections in the forest that allow him to “wonder about my experience within it. Like ever-expanding roots reaching for nutrients, those connections provide an endless supply of metaphor and meaning.”
  • Elmira artist Karen Russo creates ceramic sculptures in which the figure becomes the landscape, finding inspiration in the abundance of wildlife and native plants in the Douglas Fir forest that surrounds her home. She uses seed pods, feathers, bones, and stones to create textures and patterns upon the surface layers of her sculptures.

John Richey, of Corbett, creates his art from laminated wood.

Evocation

The second show, Evocation, also examines patterns in nature and the way they influence and inspire artists Andrea Schwartz-Feit and John Richey.

Artist Andrea Schwartz-Feit’s medium is encaustic, also called hot wax painting.

Schwartz-Feit of Eugene, interprets her relationship with the natural world through encaustic paintings, describing them as a “time-meets-space experience, a manifestation of a marriage of the personal to the universal.”

Richey, who comes from the tiny community of Cove, in eastern Oregon’s Union County, expresses his art in the form of standing figures created from laminated slabs of wood, which he shapes and sometimes paints, saying that “They don’t so much resemble human figures as they evoke psychological human presence.”

 

Vestiges and Evocation at the Maude Kerns Art Center

When: June 23 through July 21, 2023; opening reception 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on June 23

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; noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday when exhibits are on display

Information: Telephone 541-345-1751 or online at mkartcenter.org