December Arts: Jewish museum hosts Helen Frankenthaler works, Waterstone Gallery features gallery members

Published 12:15 am Saturday, December 2, 2023

The Tribune will highlight some gallery openings and other arts happenings each month, coinciding with First Thursday (Dec. 7).

Reminders

Pittock Mansion is hosting an exhibition of landscape paintings and rare ephemera from an award-winning early Oregon artist. “Eliza Barchus: A Woman of Resilience,” through Feb. 11, 2024, showcases 65 landscape paintings of the likes of Mount Hood, Mount Rainier and Crater Laker, and personal ephemera, including her chair, paintbrushes from her studio, awards, family albums and suitcase.

More: pittockmansion.org. …

The late prolific multimedia artist Leonard Baskin’s exhibit of more than 70 works from the collection of Judith Baskin and Warren Ginsberg is on display at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. “Always a representational artist, Baskin’s images in every media confirm his deep engagement with the natural world of birds, animals, insects and plants. However, it is commitment to the human figure and its fate in a world of turmoil and suffering that is preeminent in his work,” publicity says. The works show through Jan. 21, 2024.

More: ojmche.org. …

Stephen Hayes (“a democracy of images,” paintings) and Malia Jensen (“Look Out,” sculptures) show at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 N.W. Ninth Ave., through Dec. 30. Hayes’ work pushes the boundaries of impressionistic landscapes, using color and dynamic brushwork to create enthralling compositions. Jensen transforms space with signature dark humor and material beauty.

More: elizabethleach.com. …

Oregon Contemporary, 8371 N. Interstate Ave., presents “What Was Lost and What Remains,” a site-specific sound and materials installation by Marcus Fischer, through Feb. 11, 2024, that addresses gun violence/mass shootings.

More: oregoncontemporary.org.

Frankenthaler works

The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, 724 N.W. Davis St., is hosting an exhibit of Helen Frankenthaler’s works, courtesy of Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, through March 24, 2024.

From publicity:

A towering figure in American painting of the 20th century, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) stands as one of the preeminent artists of the post-war period. Her unique practice of pouring and staining paint into the raw canvas fused a fluid paint process that united color and movement into an emotional whole. These lyrical abstractions of sensuous color, light, and space from the 1950s changed the course of post-war painting, and set the foundation for the Color Field painting movement.

When Frankenthaler turned to printmaking in 1961, she brought the same independence of spirit and challenging of convention to the process-bound world of the print atelier — just as her radical stain and poured technique had been to painting — in order to create new methodologies of production that would allow and capture the act of spontaneous expression essential to her vision as an artist. She became the significant force among abstract artists in the mid-century in the American print renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s when printmaking moved to the forefront of contemporary aesthetic dialogue.

More: ojmche.org.

Jeffry Mitchell

PDX Contemporary Art, 1825 N.W. Vaughn St., hosts works by Portland artist Jeffry Mitchell, “Elefant Medium,” through Dec. 30. It features furniture made from wood and ceramic, housewares, lamps and drawings and prints displayed in elaborate, handcrafted wooden and porcelain frames — and uses one of his favorite subjects, the elephant.

More: pdxcontemporaryart.com.

Gallery exhibit

Waterstone Gallery, 124 N.W. Ninth Ave., presents “The Little Big Show,” a collection of new works by its gallery members, through Jan. 14, 2024. It’ll feature little and big ideas/pieces by artists, as well as artist demonstrations 11 a.m. Dec. 17 and Jan. 14.

Members work in a variety of mediums, including acrylic, oil, encaustic, gouache, solar plate etching, fiber, ceramic, glass, metal and stone.

More: waterstonegallery.com.

More

For information on galleries: Portland Art Dealers Association, padaoregon.org.