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By Anna Elkins, 152 contributed posts
View all Anna Elkins's posts. About the author: art + word + spirit: A painter and poet, I play in the crossroads of art & spirit. My paintings are visual stanzas of a poem I will spend my life writing - with brush & pen. I've had the honor to create and exhibit art in the United States, Europe & Micronesia. "As with poetry, painting is either a battle or a dance. Given the choice between music & a sword, I choose music." See Anna's listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource.
Paris, New York, San Francisco…and Southern Oregon! A dream lineup for a poetry book tour, and I’m so grateful for the friends in each place who helped make this happen. Hope of Stonesis ready to greet the world, and you can pre-order it via my wonderful publisher, Press 53.
I’m going to let the dear poets who wrote praise for the book speak for me on this blog. Continued gratitude to them for the beautiful words!
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Anna Elkins’ Hope of Stones is a magnificent (I do not use the word lightly) collection—a beautiful, moving, and thought-provoking book of poems. The writing is striking in its control of tone and its precision, unfolding layer after layer of resonance and implication. Three characters: the nun, the architect, the poet who triangulates the relationship. Three different times in history, three different significant endeavors: the architect’s Paris below ground that reflects and supports the Paris above; the visionary nun’s passionate immersion in the inner mansions of God’s Castle; the poet’s engagement in the sensuous spirituality of her research. Give this book to everyone you love. No book of poems I’ve read in a long time more deserves serious, joyful attention and a wide readership.
—Jim Peterson, author of Speech Minus Applause
This gorgeous book of contemplative poems refuses to accept an easy division between work and prayer. Here, hope is not a thing with feathers. Hope is a paradox, a thing with both heft and light. It is weightless with history, ruin, and body. It is heavy with abyss, nothingness, and caves. Bone and stone point beyond themselves towards the absence of building things up and the presence of emptying things out. Language is both meaningful and errant or even wayward: “earth / is an anagram for heart.” A nun prays “none” against “none.” A whole is reminiscent of a hole. This is a poet’s clearing, housed in eventual collapse. The one who works and the one who prays cross paths, eventually, head to head, skull to skull, in the undertaking of the poet, who excavates a kind of fast, and a kind of pilgrimage, as a way of seeking the first lost garden fruit–the castle cathedral, the ever-never-catacombs–unpicked, undisturbed, and undreamed.
—Gina Franco, author of The Accidental
In Hope of Stones, Anna Elkins creates a multi-various and many-voiced world—set both in the present and in two different pasts, and narrated by three different characters—the Nun, the Architect, and the Poet. This fantastic book reminds me of A. Van Jordan’s M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, another hybrid collection that brings strong individual poems together into a cohesive narrative. Whereas Jordan’s mode is often cinematic, Elkins works as a portrait painter. Through osmosis, the scholar-poet becomesthe architect and the nun, allowing this intertwined history to work also as an extended metaphor on creativity and desire: “One stair at a time / one corridor after another & a final glimpse / up a shaft to see the pinhole light of sky shining / though a manhole cover….”
—Sebastian Matthews, author of Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision
Hope of Stones is an elegant collection. Its formally accomplished poems, distinct voices, and visual design invite us to see the page as a temporal-geographical region. The architect, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, speaks from the lower left margin where he focuses on materiality, catacombs and the undergirding of Paris as he tries to save the city from collapse; the nun, Teresa of Avila, speaks from the upper right margin, where she shares her architectural vision of the spirit. And the poet, who is either in Oregon or traveling, occupies the center of the page where she brings her own dailiness—fires in summer, plums ripening—into conversations with these historic figures. The poet descends literally beneath Paris in her quest for the architect and ascends into the ethereal and sometimes levitational world of the nun. Like Dante, Elkins takes us on a journey. Hope of Stones traverses countries, continents, and historical periods until finally time and space collapse into a kaleidoscope of spirit.
By Anna Elkins, 152 contributed posts
View all Anna Elkins's posts. About the author: art + word + spirit: A painter and poet, I play in the crossroads of art & spirit. My paintings are visual stanzas of a poem I will spend my life writing - with brush & pen. I've had the honor to create and exhibit art in the United States, Europe & Micronesia. "As with poetry, painting is either a battle or a dance. Given the choice between music & a sword, I choose music." See Anna's listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource.
Come with us!
Deep Travel is heading to Paris in April! We have two spots left on the trip, which runs from April 4-10. For six splendid days, our small group will be exploring the City of Light’s boulevards, bridges, bistros, galleries, patisseries, and parks.
We’ve named this trip “The Artist’s Life,” and that’s exactly what you’ll get to explore. To enrich our travels, we’ll hold daily “happy hour” art sessions blending art, writing, and conversation. We’ll be staying in the marvelous Marais neighborhood—my favorite—in walking distance of the Seine, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, and countless eateries.
A few extra perks: a luncheon cruise along the Seine, a dinner and literary salon in a private home on the city’s oldest park, and a walking around our Marais neighborhood with author and Paris podcaster, Oliver Gee.
I’ve been delighted to help organize Deep Travel trips since 2014. We’ve gone to Morocco, Mexico, Spain, and Nepal, and this will be our first Deep Travel workshop in Paris.
For more info, visit the Deep Travel website. And for even more photos and fun, check out the Facebook page.
By Southern Oregon Artists Resource, 1650 contributed posts
View all Southern Oregon Artists Resource's posts. About the author: SOAR: The Southern Oregon Artist's Resource is a directory of Southern Oregon artists, artisans and those who serve them and calendar of their art events, and Art Matters!, our blog posting Southern Oregon art events and matters of interest to artists, enthusiasts and patrons of the arts near and far. SOAR was created and is maintained by art advocate and web designer Hannah West in Jacksonville, Oregon to promote our diverse and talented arts community to our visitors and the rest of the world.
Eva Thieman Announces Owl Exhibit
Eva Thiemann announces today that an exhibit of her oil paintings of owls is hanging at the Eagle Point Public Library from now until the middle of March.
Eva is originally from Latvia. She came to the USA in 1997, lived in Alaska for 6 years and in 2003 moved to Applegate,Oregon.
Ms. Thiemann earned an Art degree from the Academie of Art and a Biology degree from the University of Riga, Latvia. She has created sculptures in bronze. Some of them are in private collections in Latvia, Germany and England.
When Eva came to Alaska, she was overwhelmed by its beauty and wildness. For the first time in her life, she was able to observe Alaska’s magnificient inhabitants — brown bears. On numerous camping trips to Denali National Park she saw bears on the tundra with spectacular mountain scenery, and in Katmai National Park she came within close proximity of bears fishing at rivers and salmon streams.
Since then, painting brown bears integrated with Alaska scenery became Eva’s passion. One episode of her video of a bear fight at Brooks Falls has been included in the National Geographic movie “King Bear.”
After many years of painting bears exclusively, Eva began painting owls to great reviews. Thiemann’s unique mix of realism and abstraction results in colorful and effective renditions of her subjects in exquisite oil paintings.
By Anna Elkins, 152 contributed posts
View all Anna Elkins's posts. About the author: art + word + spirit: A painter and poet, I play in the crossroads of art & spirit. My paintings are visual stanzas of a poem I will spend my life writing - with brush & pen. I've had the honor to create and exhibit art in the United States, Europe & Micronesia. "As with poetry, painting is either a battle or a dance. Given the choice between music & a sword, I choose music." See Anna's listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource.
A year ago today, I drew this compass to illustrate the five feelings I wanted to cultivate in 2019.
The four points: joy, peace, prosperity, and grace. The heart-center: harmony.
I started to write the words onto the compass, but then I realized I wanted the image to be “evergreen.” I wanted to use it every year if I felt like it. To use five words…or just one.
For 2020, I have just one word. This time next year, I’ll let you know how it turns out! I have a feeling it will be good, if only because this year, I let my five desired feelings guide most everything I chose to do.
This was the first time I approached a year with feelings instead of goals…so much more fun and freeing! I’ve spent too long confusing what I want with what I want to feel.
What do you want to feel during the coming twelve months?
By Brooke Nuckles, 421 contributed posts
View all Brooke Nuckles's posts. About the author:
Join us for the January First Friday Art Walk festivities!
January 3rd from 5 to 8 pm
Ashland Gallery Association Exhibit Openings & Artist Receptions
Stroll the galleries and take in the visual delights in downtown Ashland and the Historic Railroad District. Venture further to explore out-skirting galleries! Enjoy this free year-round community event, filled with a diverse array of artwork, live music, artist demonstrations, refreshments and lively conversation!
January Spotlight Exhibits
Art & Soul Gallery
What a Difference a Frame Makes!
The gallery’s First Friday show also features wine and light refreshments; live music by pianist Anthony Bock, and will be on display from December 31 – February 2.
Peter Stone has been a professional picture framer for more than twenty-three years. He owned the popular Arrowhead Framing shop in Half Moon Bay, CA before moving to Ashland and Art & Soul Gallery.He has long enjoyed the interpretive creative process and the constant creative problem solving which are custom picture framing. Peter loves the unique design opportunity that comes with each new artistic challenge.
“Every custom picture framing project comes with a story,” Peter has discovered. People only choose custom framing when the artwork has special meaning, he said. “And what is more special than our family memories!”
Pianist, Anthony Bock, a senior at SOU and a student of Dr. Tutunov, returns to Art & Soul for the third time. He effortlessly combines classical and non-classical piano music in a free and bright style, which captivates everyone listening.
Peter Stone, “sivo’ham, sivo’ham” (I am Shiva, I am Shiva)
Schneider Museum of Art
TWO GENERATIONS: JOE FEDDERSEN & WENDY RED STAR
On View: January 16 – March 14, 2020
Opening Reception: January 16th, 5:00pm – 7:00pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
This exhibition presents the work of two Northwest Indigenous artists who work across media and whose work responds, on their own terms, to historic and contemporary misrepresentations of Native Americans. Joe Feddersen, born in 1953, is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and has exhibited internationally since the early 1980’s. As a printmaker, basket maker, ceramicist and glass artist, Feddersen combines contemporary materials with Native iconography to create powerful and evocative works that explore the interrelationships between urban symbols and Indigenous landscapes.
Wendy Red Star, born in 1981, was raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star incorporates and recasts her research through photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance, offering new and unexpected perspectives on past, present, and future life. Her work is humorous, surreal, and often abrasive, yet deeply rooted in a celebration for Crow life.
JOE FEDDERSEN BIO:
Joe Feddersen, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, lives and works in Omak, WA and was a faculty member at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA from 1989 until his retirement in 2009. His work was included in Weaving Past into Present: Experiments in Contemporary Native American Printmaking at the International Print Center, New York, Autumn 2015. He has been featured in numerous national exhibitions, including Continuum 12 Artists: Joe Feddersen, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution at the George Gustav Heye Center, New York, NY, curated by Truman Lowe; Land Mark, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane, WA; and was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition and monograph, Vital Signs, organized in conjunction with Froelick Gallery and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, OR
WENDY RED STAR BIO:
Artist Wendy Red Star works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to incorporate and recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty and unsettling. Intergenerational collaborative work is integral to her practice, along with creating a forum for the expression of Native women’s voices in contemporary art.
Red Star has exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fondation Cartier pour l’ Art Contemporain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Portland Art Museum, Hood Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. She served a visiting lecturer at institutions including Yale University, the Figge Art Museum, the Banff Centre, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Dartmouth College, CalArts, Flagler College, and I.D.E.A. Space in Colorado Springs. In 2017, Red Star was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and in 2018 she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. In 2019 Red Star will have her first career survey exhibition at the Newark Museum in Newark New Jersey.
Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Portland, OR.
CURATOR MACK MCFARLAND BIO:
Mack McFarland is a cultural producer and has worked as Curator for Pacific Northwest College of Art since 2006. Currently McFarland is the Director of the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA. His exhibitions at PNCA have included commissioned projects of new works from tactical media practitioners Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Disorientalism. He has also curated a review of Luc Tuymans’s printed works, a group exhibit marking the centennial of John Cage’s birth, and a comprehensive look at the process of the comic journalist Joe Sacco. McFarland’s current question is how exhibitions and artworks can meaningfully link to our shared experience of existing together within the ongoing process of history.
Wendy Red Star, “Winter”, from “The Four Seasons”, Archival pigment print on Museo silver rag, 35.5 X 40 inches, Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR
Photographers’ Gallery (Ashland Art Center)
Kate Geary – “In the Woods”
Kate Geary’s new show, “In the Woods”, opens on Friday, January 3, 2020, at The Photographer’s Gallery at the Ashland Art Center and runs through the end of February.
Kate’s focus in this show is on the amazing beauty and even humor in the small details of the natural world in the forest. So often the small is obscured by the magnificence of the scene, the towering redwood or roaring waterfall. To pause, to look downward and notice the patterns in decaying bark, the sensuous texture of exposed wood; the beauty of seed pods lying in verdant ground cover, reflections of fall color in a meandering stream, brings a new appreciation to the beauty of detail.
Kate Geary, “Reflections of Season Past,” photograph
Creekside Pizza
Featuring Justin Gordon
Justin Gordon is an artist and musician living in Ashland Oregon who enjoys traditional processes that harken back to the twentieth century before the digital world inundated us with images and sounds and facsimiles of real objects. He can be found driving around in a yellow seventies pick up snapping photos or playing his original songs with his band The Holy Mackerels around town when he is not at work as a carpenter and painter.
Show runs December through January.
Justin Gordon, photograph
For more information about all of our exhibits and to download the January Gallery Tour map, please visit: www.ashlandgalleries.com
Please see “Spotlight Exhibits” and the January Gallery Tour Map.
By Brooke Nuckles, 421 contributed posts
View all Brooke Nuckles's posts. About the author:
Detail of I Spy, a magazine collage by Ginny Schaw
Happy Holidays!
Rogue Gallery will be open December 24, 10-2pm.
We will be closed December 25 through January 1.
In the Main Gallery in 2020
Driven to Abstraction: Paintings by
Virginia Andrade & Alx Fox
January 10–February 2
left: Anticipation by Virginia Andrade, right: A Splash of Pinot by Alx Fox
Reception: January 17, 5-30-8 pm
Explore the skillful composition of rich color and exciting texture in this exhibit featuring the work of two accomplished abstract painters, Virginia Andrade and Alx Fox.
ROGUE STUDIO
2020 Winter and Spring classes are on the website.
Would you like to make a year end
donation to Rogue Gallery? Click HERE>>
Gifts made to the Rogue Gallery & Art Center qualify for the Oregon Cultural Trust tax credit program. For more information on Oregon Cultural Trust credit program, please visit www.culturaltrust.org.
The Rogue Gallery & Art Center is the Rogue Valley’s premier non-profit community art center founded in 1960 to promote and nurture the visual arts in the Rogue Valley. The Art Center showcases emerging and established artists, presents fine crafts by area artisans, and offers a broad range of visual art classes and workshops for all ages.
Rogue Gallery & Art Center is located in downtown Medford at 40 South Bartlett Street. We are open Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
We are open for art receptions third Fridays 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
By Brooke Nuckles, 421 contributed posts
View all Brooke Nuckles's posts. About the author:
Art du Jour Gallery
213 E. Main Street
Medford, OR 97501
(541) 770-3190
OPEN Tues – Sat., 10AM – 4PM
Art du Jour Gallery’s December feature wall is a collaboration of winter celebration by participating artist members. Roy Musitelli photo 12-4-19
Art du Jour Gallery, 213 E. Main Street in Medford continues it’s seasonal exhibit with a celebration of our winter season. For Third Friday (December 20th, 5pm-8pm) we are planning a special Christmas event presented by harpist Kathy Yeoman and accompanied by vocalist Lynn Kunstman. Please go to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ArtduJourGallery) for any further updates.
Winter Wonderland Exhibit on Display Through Christmas
Our artists let their collective imaginations go free for this combined exhibit by participating AdJ members in offering our own visual representation of “Winter Wonderland”. We wish to take this time to thank our friends of the gallery for their support in 2019, and extend a warm invitation to the entire community to help us celebrate this magical time of the year on Third Friday.
Guest Artist Nancy Graham Returns to Help Art du Jour Usher in a New Year
Nancy Graham has always been passionate about art in all its forms and styles, as evidenced by the variety of subjects she likes to paint and the varied approach to each. She was always encouraged by her mother, who was a well-known artist in California and an art instructor at Dominican College in San Rafael a number of years ago. She paints only with watercolor these days and her current passion is teaching watercolor at Scrappy Craft in Phoenix, where her classes remain full year around. She tells us that the real thrill comes from the delight her students find when the composition comes together and there’s a sudden spurt of confidence. She pushes strong value shifts of light and dark, telling her students over and over, “The deeper the shadows, the stronger the light will be”.
Nancy Graham exhibit at Art du Jour December 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.
While teaching that there is more to a successful piece of art than the basic fundamentals of art theory, she likes to experiment with a variety of styles and approaches as evidenced by the selection of pieces that will be showing during December and January. Florals, landscapes, abstracts, still lifes and even a motorcycle engine are the subjects she’s chosen to show. She’s always excited to try something new, and is challenged by the possibilities that watercolor brings to her artwork. However, if one were to ask her what she likes to do best, she’d probably reply that she loves to paint the “close-ups” where she can use her small brushes to bring out the finest details of her subjects.
Nancy holds a secondary teaching credential and art degree from UC Davis, and is a member of the Southern Oregon Society of Artists, the Rogue Gallery, a past President of the Josephine County Artists Association and a juried member of the Watercolor Society of Oregon.
Support the Arts in Medford by Becoming a Patron Member
Though we continue actively seeking new artists living in the Rogue Valley region who would like to join our co-operative and display their work to the Medford community, we also love our Patron Members Membership who help keep our doors open. Ask any gallery member or contact us by email at [email protected]. Log into our website (www.artdujourgallery.com) for full membership information.
We are also holding a raffle this month for a beautiful insulated picnic basket to be raffled off during this months’ Third Friday. The winner does not need to be present to claim their prize. Contact the gallery by email at [email protected], or log into our website (www.artdujourgallery.com) for full membership information.
Harpist Kathy Yoeman at AdJ Gallery. Roy Musitelli photo 3-15-2019
By Brooke Nuckles, 421 contributed posts
View all Brooke Nuckles's posts. About the author:
Third Friday Activities
Exhibit Reception – The Natural Perspective: Photographs by Judy Benson LaNier
Pat O’Scannell and the ‘More Fools Than Wise’ Madrigal Group Christmas Carols
December 20, from 5:30 – 8:00 pm
The Natural Perspective: Photographs by Judy Benson LaNier
Community Gallery
November 29, 2019 – January 17, 2020
White-throated Bee-eater
Explore the birds of Africa through the lens of photo safari leader Judy Benson LaNier. Come and share her fascination for the grandeur and variety of these exotic creatures.
Ashland artist, Judy Benson LaNier captures the essence of the natural world through her camera lens. She has travelled extensively in Africa and photographed beautiful and exotic birds in her travels. She describes her photos as “My work is the product of a lifetime of looking for beauty in the simplicity and complexity of nature: an ant on a flower’s stem, a rain drop on a rose, a lion hiding in the bush, a Hawaiian sunset…and finding it with my lens.” Her work has been published in books and magazines and has been shown in galleries and art shows around Oregon for 30 years.
Musical Guest: Christmas Caroling: Pat O’Scannell and the ‘More Fools Than Wise’ Madrigal Group
This madrigal group will be performing a selection of well-known Christmas carols, accompanied by the ‘vielle a rou ‘, otherwise known as the hurdy- gurdy. Pat O’Scannel will be accompanying on an instrument built in the late 1600s at the court of Versailles by a builder named COTY. The instrument, built to a smaller size to accommodate a woman’s smaller hands. The instrument was restored by Stephen Bacon of Bellwood Luthiers in Ashland.
Seeing Red: 2019 Annual Members Exhibit
November 15 – December 21, 2019
The Annual Members’ Exhibition features work by Rogue Gallery and Art Center members, and is always one of the most popular of the year. The Rogue Gallery has had a long history of supporting local and regional artists. This exhibit gives Rogue Gallery members an opportunity to exhibit one piece of their work on the central theme of “Seeing Red”. Artists submitted artwork that reflects their personal interpretation of the theme. The exhibit includes watercolors, acrylic, and oil paintings as well as sculptures, photography, collage, and pastels.
Refreshments from Harry & David will be served at the reception.The Rogue Gallery & Art Center is a non-profit community art center, founded in 1960 to promote and support the arts in the Rogue Valley. The center exhibits a wide range of artistic styles and mediums from local and national artists. Programming includes art educational opportunities for children and adults. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Call (541)772-8118 for more info or visit www.roguegallery.org.
Most important settings to understand your digital camera
$45 for members/$50 non-members
Bring your own DSLR camera.
Get Social Media Fit!
with Kelli Matthews
Friday, January 24 New date!
1 – 5 pm
Join us for an interaction workshop to build your social media muscles! Building healthy social media for your business or non-profit doesn’t have to take a lot of time. With a good plan, a practical calendar, and some simple tools, you can be social media fit in 10 minutes a day (or less). Learn how!
Kelli Matthews, Sr. Instructor, University of Oregon & Managing Director, Verve Northwest Communications
Kelli has worked in public relations for nearly two decades. She’s a strategic communications professional with extensive experience providing counsel, researching, planning, implementing and evaluating communication initiatives. Her 15 years of teaching experience at the University of Oregon keeps her on the cutting edge of research and practice. Particular areas of focus include: digital strategy, media relations and crisis communications.
$50/Everyone
$40/Non-Profits
All supplies included
All class sign ups are considered final and refunds are not given. The Museum will give a full refund in the case of a class being cancelled.
Unsure if your membership is active? Check in with the Museum staff by calling 541-479-3290, or email [email protected].
Would you like to make a year end
