School of Architecture and Allied Arts Blog

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art from January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

This conversation is with Surabhi Ghosh. Whether she is drawing, painting, printing, stitching, or bookmaking, Ghosh is always invested in the idiosyncrasies of visual language. Her current research centers on the meaning of pattern and decoration within spiritual, political, and domestic narratives. Focusing on ubiquitous motifs like the circle and the dot, she creates abstract compositions that blur the lines between painting, sculpture, and textile design.

Ghosh is also co-director of an international artists’ collective and annual publication project known as ‘Bailliwik,’ which she cofounded in 2004. Her work and collaborative projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Western Gallery at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA), NEXT Art Fair, MDW Art Fair, and Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago, IL). Her books are included in several collections worldwide. She has an upcoming exhibition at SideCar Gallery in Hammond, Indiana.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: You’re the fibers professor, but a lot of your work is not in fibers. Why?

Surabhi Ghosh: My background is in fibers; I have a BFA and an MFA in fibers. I’ve been teaching in that field for the last six years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. About three years ago I switched my focus from working with fabric and textiles.

I’m particularly interested in repeat pattern design. I started doing small-scale drawings and paintings, approaching them as sketches or experiments about color and pattern. I realized I liked doing those and that I wanted to get bigger, focus, and improve on my technique. Since about 2008, I’ve mainly worked in painting, so now I’m as much a painter as a fiber artist. I don’t mean to imply that I’m never going to go back to fibers. It’s in my bones at this point.

And I paint using a somewhat non-traditional process: I use paint as liquid color. All of my recent work is made up of accumulations of dots, and each dot is made by putting a little drop of paint down. I use a really small brush, load it up with paint, and make a little drop instead of a stroke.

DA: Why use this technique? Is it fibers related?

SG: Yes, the very small, repetitive mark that I’m drawing on is related to various fiber techniques. I connect it to embroidered stitches as well as quilt-making, where patterns are pieced together by combining many different pieces of fabric. I also think about crochet structures and woven structures when I make my work. I create these swirling micro patterns within the larger form, and I relate that process formally to crochet, which is really important to my experience with fibers.

DA: That makes sense. Are the designs themselves inspired by fibers?

SG: They grew out of my interest in decorative border patterns. In Indian textiles decorative borders are very common. Saris always have borders around the edge, and they are often very abstract, very geometric, very decorative. The edges are embellished, and that edge is embellished, and then that edge is embellished–a motif is always edged with another decorative motif.

In my work, I reflect on the way patterns build incrementally. I never have a plan, but I use a roughly geometric system, which, when applied dozens or hundreds of times, creates unpredictable patterns. These patterns emerge out of the simple system of dot placement I use. I’m interested in that process of handmade geometry.

DA: How do you choose the colors in your piece?

SG: My color decisions are intuitive. Because of how the dots are built, each line is building on what came before each. With each subsequent line I make a decision about color. Sometimes I decide I want it to be a gradation, and sometimes I decide I want a contrast.

DA: So you don’t decide exactly what the finished piece will look like ahead of time?

SG: I draw out the basic contours and make that shape into a stencil. I often work in series, so I like to have them as stencils so I can use that exact same shape again but in a different way. If you look at my work chronologically, you can see that I have been simplifying and simplifying, and what I’m doing right now is purely focusing on the circle and the oval.

This piece was a huge change (Orb 1, above). This happened at the beginning of last year. It’s essentially a circle I’m filling in with dots. I’m interested in evoking the similarity between macro and micro views. This piece can suggest a map of continents and bodies of water or an orbital view of a planet of some sort, while it also resembles a view through a microscope of a sample.

DA: You have also used formats and techniques beyond fibers and paint in the past. Do you still?

SG: I’m interested in the book form and I always make books; it’s a regular part of my practice. I tend to use them to conduct experiments, create samples, or research ideas. For example, when I started using the circle primarily in my work, I wanted to know more about the circle as a decorative motif. I did this project with my husband, partner, and collaborator called See Ouroboros Run (below), where we researched circular motifs and how they recur in obscure or ancient belief systems, what various meanings circles hold, and if is there a universal meaning behind the circle. Those ideas were housed in a book made to look like a teaching tool, maybe for kids, which established a fictitious belief system from a conglomeration of sources. I’m interested in visual storytelling and comic books are a big influence on my work. I tend to make two or three books a year like this, in small editions.

I’m also coeditor of Bailliwik. It’s an annual anthology that works as an artist cooperative — everyone in it submits work and chips in some money. My partner and I do the layout and have it printed. We encourage special projects and limited edition works to include along with the printed book and once everything is assembled we send copies to the contributors, who then distribute them however they like. All of the work is also published online on our website. It’s a total DIY artist project. We’ve been publishing since 2005 with eight issues so far. At first we put out two a year, but it almost killed us, so now it’s annual.

I love books as a venue for the arts – as an alternative to a gallery or museum. It’s something that people can take home and sit on their couch and look at. Maybe we can reach a different audience than people who go to galleries or museums. It’s more personal, more intimate.

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Artfrom January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

This interview is with Dan Powell, a photographer who received his BA degree in 1972, an MA degree in 1976 from Central Washington University, and his MFA degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1980. Powell taught photography in the Art Department at the University of Northern Iowa from 1980-1987 before beginning his current position teaching photography at the University of Oregon in 1988.

Powell has received numerous grants and fellowships including University of Oregon research awards, Polaroid Corporation purchase awards, a Maine Photographic Workshops grant, and in 1981 he received an Emerging Artists Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work appears in collections at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Lightwork, Syracuse, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Art Institute of Chicago. Powell’s work has been reviewed in prestigious publications including Art Week, New Art Examiner, Art News, Afterimage, and the New York Times. A comprehensive archive of Powell’s work is being collected by Special Collections, Knight Library at The University of Oregon.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: What drew you to the medium of photography?

Dan Powell: That was a long time ago. In 1972 I took a basic photography course and really enjoyed it for the same reason it’s so seductive for so many people. You feel your creativity oozing out of your pores and that’s a wonderful thing. And it led to a study in photography.

DA: I looked through your portfolio and there seems to be a division between your landscape work and your constructed work. Why both?

DP: The manipulated work I did as a product of where I went to undergraduate school, which really encouraged a conceptual or constructed approach. Rather than taking straightforward pictures out there in the world, images were constructed and highly manipulated, treated as much as a surface for marking as an image. That work was continuous from when I went to school to get a masters degree in the mid 70s all the way through the early 90s. It evolved over a period of years and was in keeping with how photography was critically recognized during that time. That was the kind of work that constituted my practice as an artist; that was what I exhibited. The work in the landscape and images shot on European travels were really more side ventures at the time. I never really showed that work much at all. In my later years as an artist that work has become more interesting to me than all the constructed work because it is tied to place and time and personal history.

DA: Did you go to Europe to take those photos, or were you traveling and decide to take photos?

DP: What came first was the western landscape work. I am from the west and after living in the Midwest for 9 years I acted upon my affection for the land here photographically. Then came photographing during travels overseas, in the 90s mostly. I loved to travel and my wife and I traveled a great deal in the Mediterranean region. I would always take a camera and then I applied for a few grants to travel. Within a very short time photography and travel became a part of the same activity, impossible to separate. It was a wonderful union to make and I miss that a great deal.

I didn’t have any preconceptions about what I was going to shoot. We used to drift a lot when traveling. We had a general route, of course, but specifics were left open and we came and went according to our desires at the time. Photographing was much the same way, just what presented itself to me.

DA: What catches your eye? Is it light, or composition, or what?

DP: The whole idea of drifting pertains to the camera too. It is making visual sense out of what you see, or better put, seeing something that makes visual sense to you. The idea of seeing and finding something that lies outside the ordinary. Sometimes that’s very formal. Photographing itself is to create some kind of formal construct around what you see, to organize a space. It was the idiosyncratic in many cases, but not all. In my portfolio, many images may be very painterly in form; others might be more idiosyncratic, as in ‘how could that be?’ Images depend on different sets of considerations, and I always like that eclecticism in my work.

DA: There is a section of your portfolio where you juxtaposed two images. I kept thinking about what the pairs were trying to say. Is that what you were aiming for?

DP: Definitely. That work came from the early trips traveling in Europe in Greece, Turkey, Italy, and Croatia and going to these fine museums where you could photograph. There was natural light and it was beautiful to photograph these antiquities. So I took it upon myself to create my own collection from that collection. To collect the collected, in a sense; to photograph books in a library or something like that. That’s why I often combine those images of antiquities with book images. They are both a text, an evolution of human consciousness through time, in statuesque form and written form. What this work was about, “The Keeping of Record” (below) was photographing an archive; this vast archive of western consciousness, a western origin myth. So I’d photograph these objects and there they were but you can’t see through them into the time itself. We can’t go there from the constraints of the time we live in. We can’t escape our present cultural skin. I took it upon myself as an artist, instead, to put another image up against it, to correlate something with it. To provide my response to the image with another image. To play with it, in a sense, in contemporary terms. To make sense out of this past archive according to the present time that I live in. This work was a culmination of the European travel photographs that I made.

DA: How has your work evolved through your career?

DP: Both activities [constructed images and travel/western land images] went on simultaneously, and one played off of the other. For instance, “The Keeping of Record” series, those dualities that were created there, are from individual images from which I had no plans to make that work. They were just other images that I shot in Europe and then later when I came home the idea occurred to me to juxtapose those images. That spawned the creation of that constructed work. One really rose out of the other, and that is true all the way through my work. Even the other constructed images, they all came from actual images, either made in the studio or out in the world. One sort of derived from the other. And many times the images from out there in the world just remained distinct. They were born whole.

DA: Besides travel, do you have other influences?

DP: In the last 15 years or so, I’ve been interested in language and cultural theory. Certainly language theory has played very heavily into my work. Word as a sign, language as a sign. It’s not just what it says but what it represents in the form of connotation. All the way through my work, even in the constructed work, a clashing of signs and symbols, words and images were important. I used to do a lot of dumpster diving when I was in graduate school. It was the beginning of the sprocket driven computer age, so you’d find these reams of computer read-outs that said phrases that made no sense. It’s language gone astray, gone awry, but you can still read it and create meaning, as in “The Flow Chart” series.

One of my foremost interests in photography is its use as a language. Of all the art media it’s probably most akin to the spoken word because of its relationship between representation and reality. A word is a replacement for the actual thing. The thing is not here to show you so I used the word to describe that thing. A photograph is the same thing. They both stand in; they’re surrogates. I’ve always enjoyed mixing those signs and symbols in my constructed work and that certainly carries over into my travel photographs and even the landscapes. Even the single images, oftentimes are complex in terms of a mix of things.

DA: Do you feel like a Northwest artist, whatever that may mean?

DP: Not at all. But I was born in the Northwest, and other than a nine-year stint in the Midwest and a year in New York, I’ve lived here. I love the West. It’s a fine place to live and a person is fortunate to live here for many, many reasons. When I came back here, I was delighted to come back from the Midwest largely because I was interested in photographing the land here. At that particular time in my career I was really involved in that, really interested in that. That was ‘86 through ‘90; they were really big years for me for photographing in the land and photographing the Northwest. Then I started traveling overseas more.

As far as being a quintessential Northwest artist, no, I don’t feel that affinity anymore since my days photographing in the land here.

DA: The Knight Library at the UO is collecting your work and creating an archive. Could you tell me more about that? It must be an honor.

DP: The Knight Library, starting four or five years ago, started collecting my work, my archive, in a sense. Over that course of time, I have donated work and they purchased others that are representative of all the series I’ve done and all the phases of work I’ve done. They’ve collected probably 1600 pieces at this point and more to come. I feel fortunate and honored. I think it fits my work more than others because of the quality of document that much of it holds; particularly there is a lot of work in Oregon and of the west. That’s mostly what they’re interested in, but in collecting me they’ve also collected all of my other work. I feel fortunate to be able to leave my work with them.

DA: Should work stand for itself, or is something gained hearing from the artist?

DP: Both things are true. I think the work should be able to operate on its own merit. That doesn’t mean it might not be combined with language, with words, as a part of imagery or in the process art making. A lot of conceptual art uses words. The work that I have in this show is heavily dependent on the title. In fact, you wouldn’t understand it completely without the titles. The titles explain the work, and I want the titles to explain the work. They’re a part of the piece.

On another token, reading about someone’s involvement in their art and why they make it and how they view it, can really inform you a lot and help you understand the work in different ways than you might otherwise. If you go into a museum and you see work and it hits you and you like it, you think certain things about it. If you go read the words, the work expands, and you probably will think different things about it and have a richer sense of the experience.

So, yes and no. I think different kinds of art work in different ways that way too, and that’s very important. One piece may need to stand on its own, and another piece must absolutely need words with it. If you see a great film and then read all about the director and the process of making it, their intention in making it, it maybe doesn’t make it a better or worse film, but it informs you and gives you more information to feed into the work.

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Artfrom January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

This conversation is with Sylvan Lionni, a painter visiting the UO for the 2011-2012 school year. Lionni’s has been shown in New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, and Sydney. He has upcoming shows at Kansas Gallery in New York and Stene Projects in Stockholm. The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: What kind of art do you do?

Sylvan Lionni: As tempting as it is to define other artists, I don’t want to do it to myself. Once you say ‘I’m this kind of artist’ you take away a whole range of choices and you limit yourself to just doing that one thing.

DA: Where do you get your inspiration?

SL: I really love minimalism and geometric abstraction. When I was fifteen I fell in love with Mondrian and then later Frank Stella and this whole group of artists. At the same time, I had this problem with the arbitrary nature of painting. Why is this yellow and this green? Why is it this big instead of that big? That’s a problem that’s inherent with abstraction. You’re always going to run into that when making an abstract painting and I could never get over that. My solution was to find things that make me feel the same way that the art that I love feels, and then make those things. That’s what I do. It’s walking down the street and seeing something. You go into the deli and see the lottery tickets and, oh, that means something and that can connects to this and they look like buildings (above).

DA: Some paintings, like the faded American flags (above) have an obvious socio-political message. Others, like your painting of the dot stickers seem less obvious. Is there commentary or meaning behind all of your work?

SL: That’s a tough thing, meaning in paintings. I go back and forth on it. There’s the tendency in the art world to want to make a sound bite about your work to make it more saleable or to make you seem smarter. It’s always a bit of a problem. The flags — maybe I shouldn’t have made the flags. Right after September 11th and everyone had flag stickers on their cars. Then a couple of years went by and they had all been bleached by the sun and it seemed like a good metaphor for something. Art with messages, ugh. I don’t want to make propaganda.

DA: As someone who doesn’t study art, I have this idea that I need to figure out the meanings of paintings.

SL: F— that.

DA: The paintings of the stadium diagrams (above). They weren’t meant to look good, but when you paint them like you did, they look great.

SL: Exactly. Meaning in art is a good way to get into making something. You have to go through those mental gymnastics to make something, but in the end it’s better without it. If you’re looking for meaning in art, I don’t know.

DA: Do you paint your work by hand? It seems like it would be painstaking.

SL: No no no. I draw everything on the computer. Depending on the piece, I’ll have a big sticker printed and then paint over the sticker and then peel the sticker off. Like those stadium paintings, if I sat there and tried to tape one off, it would be a nightmare. I just draw it with a computer.

DA: What’s your overall process?

SL: I make a lot of drawings. Walking around, I make mental notes. That’s interesting, or that would be good. I take a picture of it. I make a lot of drawings; I draw them all on the computer. Most of them I throw away because there’s nothing there. The ones that I think are kind of interesting; I’ll Photoshop them onto a wall, just to see what it would be like as a painting. I always have a folder of 30 ideas and maybe each will have 10 drawings that could possibly be paintings. It depends on if it’s for a show or something, or what I have money to make, as they can be really expensive.

So finally I get to a point where I have to make something new and I decide. There’s always the problem of what kind of panel, or stretched canvas. If it needs a sticker I get the sticker printed. I paint the background color. I put the stencil on, paint over it. That could take a long time. If it’s four colors its quick, if it’s fifteen it takes longer. I have to tape off each area over the stencil, paint, peel the sticker, and I’m done.

DA: You have a couple of pieces directly on to a wall. Could you tell me more about those?

SL: I did a couple of wall paintings. I did one for a show in Washington, D.C. I used to show at a gallery there. That was the carpet from ‘The Shining’ that was from a specific frame from the movie just with the boy taken out. I like the idea of making a painting of the floor on the wall. I don’t know, I just thought that was fun. The whole thing with ‘The Shining’ was interesting to me, too.

DA: Some of your pieces don’t come from the every day (like “Red Shift,” above). What’s the thinking behind it?

SL: I was always so afraid of making an abstract painting. I could never justify decisions to myself. At some point, I said to hell with it. I should do it because I’m afraid of doing it.

DA: It’s refreshing to hear. In my first architecture studios I had a hard time justifying my decisions. I would ask questions like, ‘Why should I put a window here instead of there?’

SL: This is the first time I’ve ever taught. I was explaining to one of my students last week: take out everything in the painting that you want to be there and leave the things that need to be there. If you want to put a window there, it’s probably going to suck. If you need to put a window there it will probably going to be really good.

Art is supposed to be ugly. People have this idea that art is supposed to be beautiful, but it’s not true. I’m not saying I make ugly paintings — I wish. Cocteau said, ‘Fashion is what’s beautiful today and ugly tomorrow. Art is what’s ugly today and beautiful tomorrow.’ You look at photos of the people in the 70s today and they look ridiculous. You look at Picasso when he made the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and people were like, that’s not even a painting, that’s hideous. That’s what you are supposed to do.

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Artfrom January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

My first conversation is with Brian Gillis, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice examines relevant socio-cultural issues that may have fallen on deaf ears, been buried over time, or simply obscured by something else. He is interested in history as both an archive and a mine, as that which can at once chronicle and act as a catalyst for the reconsideration of one’s world. His work is discursive, research based, and uses a variety of production strategies ranging from observation and representation, to comment and action.

Gillis is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Illinois Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, Bronze Prize at the Art Interview 23rd International Artist Competition, Berlin, Germany, a Brink Award Nomination, and a Merit Fellowship at the Contemporary Artists Center, NY. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at the Abraham Lincoln Museum, IL, Tacoma Contemporary, WA, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, MI, with an upcoming exhibition at CUE Art Foundation, NY.

The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: Your work focuses on the hidden and obscure in society. Why is that interesting to you?

Brian Gillis: The most interesting thing about it is when you find something that might be hidden in plain sight or something that’s obscured by something else. That ‘aha’ or discovery leads to a reevaluation of your world, or who you are, or who the people around you are. That helps set up a real or implied discussion about who you are and who you want to be, and what you want your world to be. A lot of this comes from who I am as a person. My entire life I’ve been interested in the history of marginalized people or cultures and learning about inequities, in large part, I think, because of the potential a response has to balance them.

DA: Sometimes the meaning of your work is more obvious to me, but in others it seems more like a puzzle. Is the meaning always consistent in your work?

BG:  I’d like to think many of the objectives of the work are consistent but I think the mechanics of how to get there are varied. The devices I use most commonly are to put things next to each other and through their juxtaposition they communicate a question. And, if the viewer articulates the questions to themselves, it could lead to further investigation.

DA: All of your pieces use their space well. Do you have the space in mind when you create your pieces?

BG: More often than not, I try to use the site as one of the components. Recently I built a piece called “Now!” at Tacoma Contemporary (above), which is in this old Woolworth’s building in this area of Tacoma that packed with banks; it’s a financial district. So, I thought it was appropriate to make a piece about people resisting aristocratic domination. It’s really important for me not only formally to take the space into account but conceptually as well.

DA: What’s the story behind the hydroponics piece (above)?

BG: My objective was to use the gallery as a laboratory to try to understand what role disobedience may have played in the development of humans. The whole project was based on the question ‘what is disobedience?’ I thought of the whole space as one piece; the tank piece was one part, the safe cracker was another part, et cetera. With the hydroponics element, I was thinking ‘What is disobedience in science?’ Perhaps it’s the activity of simulating sun, or simulating soil, or nutrients, or choosing specific genetics for certain yields.

DA: Your pieces use a variety of materials. How are they chosen for a piece?

BG: Materiality is very important to me. I really feel like the materials in and of themselves are as big a part of telling the story as an image or an object. For instance, if using ceramics, it could get at fragility, permanence, or it could also reference cultures, et cetera. whereas using frozen beef livers could get at a host of other things. I pay a lot of attention to what these materials are; I really want the materials to contribute conceptually, to exist out of necessity. I really feel privileged by the times that I’ve come up in as an artist, where we have permission to use whatever material is necessary.

DA: Do you have influences?

BG: I do have influences that come from art and other artists, but I would say my greatest influences come from outside the discipline. For instance, Zora Neale Hurston is one of my greatest influences. She was a writer who became popular with the Harlem Renaissance. She was not only a poet and a writer, but also an anthropologist at a time when anthropology was new, and women and African Americans really weren’t doing it.  She was a polymath. I think of these old 18th and 19th century ‘learned gentlemen’, men of wonder, the first scientists, who were basically these rich dudes who were in a position to investigate things in the world. You might have a guy who is an astronomer but there was no discipline of astronomy so he ends up being a musician, mathematician, telescope maker, and astronomer. My greatest influences are these people who come at things from multiple perspectives and develop a background through training and inquiry in a bunch of different areas.

DA: Do you know what piece you’ll be exhibiting at the faculty art show?

BG: I’m still not sure. One of the things I love about being an artist is the permission I have to constantly be redesigning who I am and my approach to things. For the past 5-7 years the majority of my work has been these solo projects focused on the relationship in space between these pieces in the show. A group show is problematic in this regard. For group shows I’ve been sending away parts for things that carry with them the context of the bigger thing, but I always kind of feel like they fail to get at the original context completely.

This group show is interesting and exciting for a bunch of different reasons. One is that my colleagues and I all have different practices, and I really respect them a lot and we seldom have time to talk about our work. It’s also being curated by an outside person who I respect a lot. What we’re all really excited about is how this outside person who is unbiased can draw threads between who we are. I want it to be new work, and I have a couple of things on deck that could go in there, but I really don’t know yet. I must say I’m a little intimidated by it. When you have the space to yourself, you can create a context. If my piece is next to somebody’s piece that’s a video about war, and my piece happen to have a layer about conflict, inevitably they’ll play off each other.

I think one nice thing about this group show being based on our connection to an institution and not a theme in the work, is that the audience will understand that these are individuals that have very disparate practices, so maybe they won’t link the work together as much. I’m excited about these problems.

DA: How do you work through ideas?

BG: I have a system where I’m constantly generating new ideas, developing ideas previously generated into something to act upon, and acting upon something. I have a sketchbook that I always carry with me and whenever I think of a new idea I start a new page. I’ll take some notes and I’ll pour resources or more ideas into it as they come. Very often I’ll start a word document and work with it the same way. A lot of my work deals with history and social inequities, so a lot of it is very heavily researched. I’ll go the library, do web searches, talk to people, and use the word document as a receptacle. The form usually takes shape after this stage relative to the objectives I establish. Then it may be in a place where I can write a narrative about it. Once I have some objectives that work as a proposal, can then develop a proposal, and then I shop the proposal. Once I find a place in the world for the work, I make it. Sometimes, I just get an idea and make stuff.

DA: Much of your work feels like a monument or memorial to your subject. Is this an aspect that you think about when working on a piece?

BG: For the last 10 or 15 years I’ve been thinking a lot about monument and memorializing something. In the last four or five years I’ve become more suspicious of the gallery and whether it is the most appropriate context for my work because I want the work to be completely democratic, where anyone can access it. People like you and me might be the kind of people who go to an art gallery, but I want it to be something that’s really more widely available. I’ve been trying to shop projects I’ve developed for public spaces. I would like to see the work become more and more public, so it could take into account a specific context outside of a building defined for art.

A friend of mine’s family founded this town outside Palermo, Sicily around 900 years ago. It’s pretty amazing. I went there and they have this wall as a part of their property that has been there forever. It’s this place called Casteldaccia. In the late 19th century this pasta factory was established, and they eventually started manufacturing a majority of the pasta for Trader Joe’s. Now, even though everyone in this town has been there for like 900 years, because this pasta factory has gotten all of this acclaim in the States everyone thinks the factory’s founders founded the town. So, my friend’s mom has been working on this family tree to set the record straight.

In a lot of these towns in Europe, in the courtyards, you’ll often see a stone up on a building where the market was that have these different lengths or measurements engraved in them. You know, an inch is based on a part of a guy’s hand, etc. It would always be based on the aristocrat in town’s body. In this town, Castledaccia, there are these measurements from my friend’s ancestor but it is over looked in favor of believing that this currently successful factory family founded the town, so my friend’s mom is putting together their family tree to go up there publicly and lay claim as the founders. I’ve been talking with them about doing some sort of project about this.

I would love to do something that’s not only public but is also a necessary service to the place or community. Putting a monument in Tiananmen Square would be really great because it would keep Tank Man’s story alive forever, but I would like the work to provide a service that goes beyond a retrospective testament or memorial. I’ve been trying to develop things that are a retrospective testament but also locate an identity in a place; something that could be a little more relevant to who the people are in that place and perhaps something that lives through some sort of perpetual service beyond the identification of something that happened at a site long ago.

DA: How much of your work is inspired by being in Eugene? Is your influence all of where you’ve been?

BG:  I’m sure I’m influenced by Eugene in some ways, and certainly all of where I’ve been make up who I am. But, I think the biggest thing is probably being attached to a research institution. I think it influences me and really contributes to my practice invaluably. Not just the resources of the libraries and the people, but the way I approach the work as an academic.  As a historian, journalist, or scientist might in a lot of ways. I might develop a hypothesis and do research and experimentation, et cetera.

I think there is an ethos in the Pacific Northwest that supports social equity that is a big deal to me too.  As I’ve become more suspicious of the gallery as the end context, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the value of the production of art is in society to begin with. I think of a lot of the work I’ve been doing as being rooted in observation, or representation, or comment. Since coming to Oregon, I’ve really been interested in having observation, representation, comment and action be a part of the work. It might exist in the gallery in one iteration, but then resonate outside in perhaps a different form. For instance the hydroponics piece we spoke about was a part of a larger piece focused on investigating what disobedience is, but were growing a crop of tomatoes in the gallery that were given to a food bank. Then, at the conclusion of the show, one of the three hydroponic cabinets was given to a science department at a high school by the gallery so they could continue to grow tomatoes for the food bank.

I’ve been more and more interested in the work being public in ways where an action can lead to service. Where it becomes more than just me in a privileged position commenting on something, but such that the comment is a point of departure for some action or service that then operates to further inform or define that comment and somehow completes a loop of sorts that makes all of its parts more relevant.

Photos courtesy of Brian Gillis.

 

Johnpaul Jones, FAIA:  “Seeing the Things In Between”

The 2011 Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architectural Design is Johnpaul Jones, FAIA, of Jones & Jones Architects, Landscape Architects, and Planners, Seattle, Washington. In the fall of 2011 and as the 2011 Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor, Johnpaul Jones presented two lectures at the University of Oregon for the School of Architecture and Allied Arts Department of Architecture:  “The Frog Does Not Drink Up the Pond in Which It Lives, “ October, 2011 in Eugene;  and “Times Change but Principles Don’t,” November, 2011 in Portland. Among the many attendees at the lecture in Portland at the UO in the White Stag Block were Pietro Belluschi’s two sons, Peter Belluschi and Anthony Belluschi.

Jones has a distinguished 40-year career as an architect and founding partner of the Seattle-based firm, Jones & Jones Architects, Landscape Architects, and Planners.  His design philosophy emerged from his Choctaw-Cherokee ancestors and connects his work to the natural, animal, spirit and human worlds.  His designs have won wide-spread acclaim for their reverence for the earth, for paying deep respect to regional architectural traditions and Native landscapes, and for heightening understanding of indigenous peoples and cultures of America.

What follows is a post on his Portland lecture, “Times Change but Principles Don’t.”

Northwest Native Canoe Center Seattle, Washington.

 

Johnpaul Jones is internationally lauded as an architect of both structure and landscape in Native, indigenously-inspired design projects.  Jones’ projects take a multidisciplinary approach swirling together symbolic Tribal activity, a sense of place, the natural environment, Native social customs, and religious beliefs.  His projects stand as virtual cultural reconstructions and beautiful culminations of cosmological concepts and life represented in an architectural achievement. Jones’ approach is one that reaches well beyond the basic requirements of a building to incorporate Native sensibilities and aesthetics.  His ability to bridge a path between the built environment and the Native universe, has allowed him to meld buildings rich with imagery, connections to the earth, and stratifications of story with reference in color, texture, and detail creating both a structure and a site that melds story and interpretation of a living, reacting, existing culture.

Johnpaul Jones began his presentation, “Times Change but Principles Don’t,”  with an acknowledgement of the namesake of his distinguished professorship: Pietro Belluschi; Jones also profusely thanked both of Belluschi’s sons, Peter Belluschi and Anthony Belluschi (seated in the front row) for attending the lecture.  ”Your father,”  Jones proclaimed addressing both the audience and Belluschi’s family, “was timeless, he had spirit.”  Jones asserted that the designs of the famed Northwest architect “inspired [him] to become an architect.”  Also, praising his architectural education at the University of Oregon, Jones recalled that “[UO] was the right place for [him].”

Jones, himself of Cherokee | Choctaw heritage, became involved in Native art  and architecture early in his career due to his belief that one must bring new life to indigenous design and commit to taking a sort of pilgrimage to Native cultural environments thereby becoming influenced and inspired by the rich aspects of these Native traditions.  He encouraged a proactive personal seeking of this heritage as a way to gain an awareness of the Native environment.  This individual participation in the culture of a region would contribute to one’s understanding of distinctive forms.  Once one has experienced this uniqueness of site, the subsequent built environment and landscape design will more honestly evoke Native stories and connections to all four of the worlds present in indigenous beliefs:  natural, animal, spiritual and human.

 

The importance of these four worlds to design and structure, according to Jones, cannot be underestimated —as these elements become the formative basis of the project.  Jones reflected that the natural world has the potential to effect us everywhere and needs to embrace the idea of sustainability as a constant.  The natural world deals with light and the seasonal equinox and solstice patterns.  Thus, in designing for a site the very initial step taken should be noting the cardinal directions, the location of the sun, and the stars in the cosmos.

Animals are of importance to a design and structure as well.   Many Native stories come from the animal world.  Using the inspiration of a living, breathing thing, whether a delicate frog, butterfly, bird or dragonfly to tell a story about life, existence and the fragility of living beings becomes a powerful design principal.    The spirit world contains objects such as rocks, views, mountains and trees, as all things have a spirit, says Jones.  Understanding or recognizing this idea of the spirit world will translate to a respect for the site and a comprehension that the land has something to tell.  Equally important is the human world as in all work there is the element of the passing on of knowledge.  Good design must provide opportunities to pass knowledge; and this component comes from the human world.

Using the idea of a canoe filled to the brim with elements from all four worlds:  natural, animal, spiritual, and human, Jones urged architects to “listen to the client, respect the land of the site, and be aware of the bigger message.”  The built environment is not just a sequence of buildings, said Jones, but stuctures that contain “life messages” and serve to act as translators of both ancient and indigenous gifts.

 

Jones continued by discussing several projects he has participated in:  the National Museum of the American Indian, the Commons Park in Denver, Colorado, and a zoo design.  In each project, Jones emphasized that importance of a diverse practice and the diversity of design but, overall, the importance of a respect for the environment and natural settings and an integration of all four worlds.

For each of his projects that involved Native tribes, Jones recounted the sequence of the work pattern.  First, one must establish what is “welcome.”  He urged both the writing and thinking of the idea of “welcome.”  In addition to discovering this key concept of “welcome,” the architect must work with the tribe to determine the life force of the people.  In his cultural museum design at the Southern UTE Cultural Center and Museum in Ignacio, Colorado, Jones spoke of the lives of the people as always spiraling outwards much like the spiraling basketry the tribe handcrafted.  Jones made a connection between trying to work within these stories and integrating this concept into the ultimate design.

 

Discussing his work with the Mercer Slough Nature Park in Bellevue, Washington, Jones described the master plan as embracing the value of creating a place for walks and a place where people could connect with themselves. This connection space and place would serve to provide a sense of enjoyment.  By integrating walkways and spaces in between the buildings, providing places to sit and see nature and the natural views of the surrounding landscape, and giving ample opportunities to appreciate the natural light though large windows in the buildings, Jones developed a way to integrate the person to the environment.   In doing so, the architect provided a source for conversation about what is being seen and what one is literally surrounded by.  Jones calls this “giving reasons to talk to [children] and to explain things.”

At Fort Vancouver, Jones related a project of reconnection, of a circle that connects to itself, his renowned Vancouver Land Bridge and was a key component of the Confluence Project.  His design here is intended to reconnect visitors to the river and to the land; to uncover the spirit of the place and the enchantment of the history, both Native and of the Western Europeans.  The effort one must make to “walk up and over and into the Fort” compels a sense of circular involvement and movement in amongst objects that seem low and unobtrusively part of the land.

Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat and the Icicle Creek Music Center, Leavenworth, Washington, is a project of Jones’ where he let his design meander naturally and organically throughout the complex.  Integrating large windows that face snowy, rocky hillsides, Jones thought to bring the outside in and use the natural surroundings to inspire the work of the musicians composing, playing, and practicing within the retreat.  As Jones puts it, his arms swirling to evoke the movement and melding of nature and music:  “you can see clouds moving, birds flying, and this brings the spirit of the music alive.”  It is a place to create and to observe, a place where one is not separated from the natural environment that is so strikingly just outside the windows but where one can infuse creative musical composition with the stunning visual component of the dramatic landscape and moving weather systems.

Architects must be adept at designing for emotion, Jones continued.  In the early 2000s, Jones was asked to design the masterplan for the Bainbridge Island Japanese-American Memorial, a monument wall to honor the Japanese Americans who were displaced during WWII.  Jones created a place of quiet, a gently curving cedar wall where visitors can remember and honor their ancestors.  Key to this project was working directly with the Japanese American community of the region to discover what they would feel epitomized their emotional response.  The site would have to be something that recognized all diverse peoples.   Jones recalled with reverence the appreciation he received from the Japanese-American community for this project.

 

Jones’ most recent Native project is the cultural education center in the Rocky Mountains, the Southern UTE Cultural Center and Museum, in Ignacio, Colorado.  Jones spoke of how the tribal members came to him and asked for a building that would represent their “circle of life”philosophy.  The tribe wanted a permanent gallery, a temporary gallery, and a native gift shop  in addition to educational and administrative components and a library.  The desire was to have a complex that began in a space that was clearly a  Welcome Center.  Jones devised a welcoming area that utilized the tribal concept of a cone, or a circle that crossed a stream and progressed under an arbor covered in a translucent material to let light glow within.  Jones thought that the most important component of this project was that it feel welcoming and that it resonated with the cultural mores of the tribe.  The resulting structure makes use of a great deal of colored glass (similar to the architectural designs of Pietro Belluschi, said Jones, as well as echoing the regalia of the Native tribe on this land).

As Jones brought his presentation to a close, he somberly appealed to his audience to remember: “Times Change but Principles Don’t” and commented that he felt Pietro Belluschi had understood this in his designs.  “We are destroying the earth,” cautioned Jones.

Jones’ lecture reminded the audience that the times have changed, the landscape is rapidly changing, but we remain here to live together and to be creative in the pursuit of allowing this land and all the people to listen to the swaying of the leaves, the roaring of the river, the blowing of the winds, the snowcapped majesty of the mountains.  The smallest frog or butterfly should be compelling enough to inspire a connection to animals and nature; the weather and the flowing of time, might evoke spiritual appreciation, and the father sitting with his child on a park bench telling her the story of the woodpeckers or the creek or the bear,  should provide a reason to think about the human world and the importance of communication, conversation, and connecting with one another.  Jones encouraged all to look in between things, to observe and notice that which is always present and around us.

Jones’ Portland lecture was delivered to an audience of over 150.   Quiet and contemplative throughout the presentation, listeners fell into an even greater sense of attentiveness as Jones read a well-known poem by Chief Dan George:

The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me.  The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me.  The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning, the dew drop on the flower, speaks to me.  The strength of fire, the taste of salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away.  They speak to me.  And my heart soars.

“We are part of this planet,” said Jones, “It is never going to go away.  So, take care of it.”  Jones advised, by “listening and being respectful,” and, above all, we must all seek to  “see the things in between.”  Do not forget the importance of “the place, the culture, and the environment, keep bringing these up” he encouraged.  When designing, “keep at it, and put people right in there.”  While Jones credited his mother and grandmother for teaching him the lessons of his heritage, he also thanked his university education for developing his approach.  Adopting a humanistic perspective and maintaining a design philosophy where the people-element is never forgotten or sacrificed is a principle Jones proudly says he “got from the University of Oregon.”  Post-lecture, Jones was asked for his comments about this recent experience as the Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor and his work with the students at the University of Oregon.  He commented that he tried to instill in the students the idea that “It’s not the final designs, even though that is what we are judged by, but the ‘Emerging Indigenous Gifts’ that count.”   He added that he would like to “thank all of [the University] for the opportunity [it] gave [him], and look forward to continued interchange.”

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Jones’ lecture provided an education into the wisdom and unparalleled legitimacy of indigenous peoples.  His ability to come into the peace of a wild, natural environment and to absorb the presence and stillness of nature by bringing that into his designs is a principle of grace and understanding.  As an architect, Jones has allowed his heritage to move him and transpire into a empathetic design aesthetic.  It is this multidisciplinary aesthetic that  brilliantly incorporates into his architectural systems and thus adding meaning and story to the landscapes, shapes, textures, colors, patterns, rhythms, and forms of his projects.

[Note:  the video of Johnpaul Jones' Eugene lecture is available at the following location:  "The Frog Does Not Drink Up the Pond In Which It Lives."]

post  sabina samiee

many heartfelt thanks to johnpaul jones for sharing his images with us for this blog.