I’m recently back from the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, having participated in a drawing intensive course taught by Larry Thomas.  Larry is a deeply thoughtful and knowledgeable artist, with an easy going and humble approach to teaching.

The purpose of the class was to develop a drawing project idea over the duration of the course.  I came with a project in mind that I call the “Grand Unified Theory of River Rocks” – more on that later. It turns out that Larry has spent a large amount of time drawing rocks (Actually, Larry spent 9 months creating 20 beautiful big portraits of limestone erratics from the Burren, Ireland.) and so I learned some rock drawing specifics that I didn’t expect.  Besides drawing all day in the Boyden studio with charcoal on large sheets of butcher paper and puzzling over sumi inks, Larry showed us some of his recent work involving drawings, aquatints, beeswax, and calligraphy quoting the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

From these three poor phone snap shots, it’s easy to appreciate the beauty and artistry of Larry’s work. Beeswax gives rise to the yellow tint in some of the images. The last image above is the cedar cladded Sitka center entrance, showing the door to our class’s studio (the Boyden studio).

My Project

Grand Unified Theory of River Rocks

Having spent a large part of my summer swimming in blue-green rivers in western Oregon and northern California, I noticed that river rocks tend to approach, over many years of rolling and klinking, roughly one of six shapes. These shapes are the physical manifestation of the basic forces of physics operating on the earth’s crust. They collectively reflect the aggregate action of Newtonian mechanics and are in a sense the repertoire of the erosive action of rivers. They are what rivers make, patiently, ultimately, of the landscape. My project for the class was to start to explore how to draw these shapes and how to represent them in a partially imagined landscape.

These three 4′x4′ charcoal drawings where made quickly during class on butcher paper. None of the drawings are completed works, but are instead experimental explorations. However, there are parts of each that I can borrow, aggregate, and push forward in my next drawing attempt.

I was happy with the graceful underwater motion implied by the three reeds in the second image. After discussing one of my drawings, Larry asked me to leave some of the drawing “unsaid”. I attempted that idea in the small river bottom rocks in the third image. I really liked that drawing expression and will be working with that idea in the future.

I’d like to mention that I was impressed by the creative drawing of all of the students in this class, but unfortunately I don’t have any images to share. If you were a fellow student, and have posted up your class work somewhere, please let me know in the comments so I can add a link to your work.

2011 Sitka Art Invitational

This fall the Sitka center is having it’s annual fund raiser in Portland on November 4, 5, and 6th. The fund raiser includes both a public exhibit and sale of art from 130 northwest artists, and a fund raising dinner Friday night, November 4th.

For more specific information read the Sitka center’s website.

I won’t miss it.

-Paul

I’ve recently had, ahem, some ‘technical issues’ with my website. So I’ll be catching up and may be repeating myself a bit. Also, as a result, my galleries are a bit sparse, but they will be repopulated over time.

Here are a few images from Paris, made in November 2009. Click on any image for a short slide show.

Best,

Paul

The Corvallis Arts Center has a auction fund raiser each year to support the activites of the center. This is a big event and area artists often donate some of there best works for the Auction and this worthwhile organization. The auction will be on Saturday, February 27th at 6pm, at the Club Level, Reser Stadium on the OSU campus. Tickets will be available after the first of the year at the Corvallis Arts Center for $45 each. The event last year attracted 600 guests and offers great food and live music in addition to all of the art work.

The Corvallis Arts Center runs the following programs,

Gallery Exhibits, kid’s Globetrotters summer camp, after-school and no-school-days programs, sales opportunities for artists in the Art Shop, and ArtsCare bedside/workshop sessions for patients in area hospitals.

as quoted from their artists invitation letter. My daughter enjoyed her week art camp this past summer at the Art’s Center and came home enthused everyday about the projects she got to do each day.

My Donation

Most artists living in Corvallis will want to showcase their best work, and I’m no different. I’m donating a 16″x20″ silver gelatin print of a high-key coastal landscape near Bandon Oregon. It’s a favorite of mine. The print captures the unique atmospherics of a bright foggy day on the southern oregon coast, and retains the minimalistic nature of the coast: sky, water, rocks.

Trailing Rocks, Bandon Oregon

I hope to see you there!

Things are starting to fall into a better rhythm regarding my art work after a busy summer.  My friend Jeff and I got out on a three day photography trip that we had planned for a year.  The destination was the very small, defunked, and virtually unknown town, Kent Oregon. The town officially has 9 27 residents, residing in a mishmash of modern country structures – an old but well kept shingled 2-room house, a rambling acre of land with structures from two different centuries, with the residents residing in a permanently stationary mobile home around back (with some great Jack Johnson drifting out to us), and the well fenced-in (out?) loony patriot with dozens of america flags painted and draped across the compound.  It’s a slightly uncomfortable place to work with a camera since we always had the feeling that we were well watched (a resident walked over to us to notified us that she’d written down our license plate number – welcome to Kent!).

We made the trip to Kent to photograph one of the most remarkable and unknown buildings in Oregon – the Kent Granary.  It was probably build around 1920 out of lumber hauled in on the old train line that passed through Kent on the way to Shaniko.  This train line was washed away in the 1964 columbus day storm and was never rebuilt.  The Kent Granary is roughly three to four stories high, build out of flat stacked lumber.  The enormous walls are just dimensional lumber laid flat & spike nailed together.  This build contains an enormous amount of lumber, weathered beautifully for nearly 100 years and is a fantastic photographic subject on all scales.

Kent Oregon Granary

This phone snap shows an incredible structure built for a single purpose – to store and protect the local oats and wheat harvest.  The odd tall narrow proportions and the remarkable stacked construction make for a very unique and rare structure.  The tall dark thin lines on the end of the building are the ends of two interior walls.  A long metal ladder hangs curved down the face.  A local told us it was in use up until just a few years ago, and this building sits next to the still very much in use concrete Kent granary (which has it’s own fantastic architecture and forms – but is much less rare).

I’ve been photographing forgotten buildings around Oregon for quite a few years now and I used to be shocked when I returned to a building and found that it had vanished.  [On this note, the Thompson Flouring Mill building in Shed, Oregon is now gone; however the  state bought

and preserved the mill proper about a mile east of town.  I photographed the Thompson storage building just after the state bought the Mill, but before it was open to the public.]  But now I know that is the pattern.  And unfortunately it is no different with this absolutely unique structure – it too is slated for destruction.  A local suggested we buy it and put a bar in the bottom and a brothel upstairs – we thought perhaps a microbrewery in the bottom with arts workshop space and artist-in-residence apartments upstairs.   Both just dreams.

I made a small hand-held video of the town panning around in a circle with a bit of commentary.  I will post this as soon as I figure out a way to do so that I like.

Below are a few more photographs from Kent.

Silo #42, Kent Oregon

Broken man, Kent Oregon

Modern silos, Kent Oregon

Dove and horse, Kent Oregon

Location

Kent Oregon is located about 8 miles north of the nearby town of Shaniko (which by-the-way, it’s “downtown” is for sale practically in it’s entirety for $380K – you get the very nice old 2-story brick hotel and everything else on that block including the restaurant and “RV park”.).  Shaniko is on Hwy 97, but Kent is just a stones throw east of Hwy 97.  The Kent Granary is the dark looming building, obvious from the highway.

Prints

I’ll be posting some prints from this trip in my architecture gallery in the coming months.

EXHIBITION, LECTURE, AND RECEPTION AT OSU
CORVALLIS, APRIL 6-29 – RECEPTION AND LECTURE APRIL 6

I am very pleased to announce that I will be having a retrospective exhibition of my photographs at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. This will be the “premier” installation of my traveling exhibition John Sexton: Thirty-Five Years of Photographs. The exhibition will run from April 6 through 29 in the beautiful Fairbanks Gallery at OSU. We are currently putting the finishing touches on this exhibition. I’m doing last minute work in the darkroom, and Anne and I are busy matting, framing, and crating the exhibition. There will be images from as early as 1973, along with some recently printed images from new negatives.

I will be presenting a lecture on Monday evening, April 6, at the LaSells Stewart Center at OSU, as part of the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Program. The lecture will be at 7:00 pm. There will be an opening reception at 6:00 pm, prior to the lecture, and a book signing will follow the conclusion of the lecture. The reception and lecture are open to the public and the admission is free. Seating for the lecture is on a first come basis. Fairbanks Gallery and the Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Program are sponsored by the OSU Department of Art.

I look forward to seeing a number of friends and past workshop participants from the area on Monday, April 6. During my time on campus I will be visiting with OSU photography students.