By Diane: Mini-art respite update #5: Rewards and learning experiences

Another week past inwhich I did little active painting. But as always I kept looking both at nature and my paintings.

 

   My swallow paintings are in the final step in the process - critiquing.  Critiquing is slow going.

       Friday my willingness to try something new in painting spilled over into life. Once in awhile my wild ideas result with good creations.
         I learned this week that a hand towel is a perfect window cleaner when the terry cloth is  pulled from a washing machine load and is moist.  I learned that a mashed cooked sweet potato blended with oat milk, whole cow's milk, avocada and butter makes a delicious cold soup.  It is also good as a sauce with meat.
          Another food adventure was not so happy.  Instead of mixing gratted chedar cheese I substituted cottage cheese. Instead of chopped tomatoes I substituted chopped peaches.  Instead of bread crumbs I added gluten free, brown rice crumbs.  The egg held it together but the sugars from the peaches browned much too quickly. After the first test burger, I turning down the heat. I thought it was delicious but not suitable for Fisherman Hubby who would have had a hard time swallowing the partly crispy edges.
          My guilt free, rewarding, comfort foods are variations of sweet potato soup or cream of avocado soup. I made a chocolate pudding when I add unsweetened coco powder. No added refined sugar or sweeteners! Wish I had a camera to have captured Fisherman Hubby's face. I have two desserts to myself. 
           Sometimes Fisherman Hubby has too much congestion and sometimes he over doses the dryin drops and his mouth is too dry. We both agree that his menu and his meds are not working well. Maybe more convenience foods. Bring on the chocolate coated vanilla icecream Micky bars. He liked pot stickers.

by Diane; 1966 PSC graduate connecting with today's Portland State University's Art + Design School

The stench of the San Francisco Bay at low tide, smog in Los Angeles, and racial tensions among classmates at Portola Junior High School used to be vivid memories when I entered Portland State College January 1962.   I found faculty  had concerns that reinforced mine.  There was Robert Colescott who also came from the San Francisco Bay Area, and Florence Saltzman who had lived in Los Angeles. The Dean of Social Work, Dr. Gordon Hearn had taught at the University of California, Berkeley just before coming to Portland. Probably there were others from big cities who could see that  Portland was on its way to becoming a metropolis.  So the administration and faculty were motivated in taking part in shaping the growth of the college open to and involved in the growth of the city.

       My Freshman year in college I did a preparatory drawing for a painting that humanized the concrete freeway with a man on a stairway between merging lanes onto the Steel Bridge. The selection of my subject was a repetition of similar images that I did at Woodrow Wilson High School in Portland. The earlier Berkeley, California's freeways were memories.  My Portland State experience built on some of my concerns from having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The summer of 1962 the oil painting hung in the gallery facing the administration office. I was happy to sell it to the wife of an Oregon Health Science student.  This of course did not please my painting Professor Fredrick Heidel who thought students needed to keep their college work to inform for years to come their development as artists.

        I graduated from Portland State College in 1966.   Then I continued to be constatntly aware of my college memories. My formative years continue to feed who I am today as an artist and citizen.  February 7, Kailin Mooney and Alli Cleasby of the PSU Foundation came to Albany to share the direction of Portland State University's Graduate School of  Art+Design.  I  was delighted to learn that Portland State University's holistic encouraginging interdepartmental connection are healthy and growing despite devastating cuts in governmental support.

     Portland State College Portland community outreach increased during the 1960's.  I was privileged to know the Art and Architecture Department Chair Professor Heidel, and the Social Work Graduate School Dean Dr. Gordon Hearn, as well as making the acquaintance of the Chemistry Department's Chair Dr. Johnson. And I had limited contact with other departments that were all unified by PSC President Brandford Millar.  I had the good fortune of meeting PSC President Brandford Millar on several occasions while being a student and after my graduation at a wedding of one of Dr. Gordon Hearn's daughters. At the reception my mother bragged to President Millar that since graduation a year ago, I was selling most of my paintings. He made a face of disgust.  He said he wouldn't be impressed unless I was selling pieces for thousands of dollars each. The college's purpose was not to produce marketable artisans.

      Being friends with the Dean of Social Work's family, I was invited to serve tea at informal gatherings of students and faculty.  I met Social Work graduate students.  I met a music and math student  who was a friend of the Hearn's son, both majoring in math. My memory is hazy about who among my acquaintances was concerned about the rituals around death and thought about how the process of grieving and public memorials could be made without it being a business for profit.

"Opening Heart"
 in which parts of the continuously
encompassing knot dissolved.
It is #5 in a series
 of mathematical  topology knots. 

On a personal level since graduation the thread of my Portland State College art education runs a circuitous route both through my painting process choices and my conduct as an artist / citizen.

     PSC and my mother's example instilled in me the feeling of responsibility to share my art in community service.  Currently  I have an exhibit at the Albany Public Library through February. Then in March and April l will be showing on the ground south hall of the Corvallis Caring Place Assisted Living.  "Opening Heart" will be in the Corvallis Art Guild exhibit with about 20 pieces.

    I also volunteer to teach watercolor once a year at the Oregon State Fall Creek Fish Hatchery and Research Center's Arts Festival.

  When I am painting, I often listen to what I think my painting instructors  said.  Fredrick Heidel said to make it easy to set up yourself to paint.  My latest series of topology knots, was not going well so I listened to my memory of professor Fredrich Heidel saying,  “If a painting is not resolved, a transparent glaze can pull the painting together.” Heidel was fond of Shiva Rose Red. The Shiva company went out of business so I substituted a little Quinacridone Red in mostly Liquitex Gloss Medium.



My sore wrists and shortage of time is aided
by using a recycled cookie container and empty glass
Yoplait Yogurt containers. Thank you Heidel and his wife Florence Saltzman for recommending easy set ups.

 A few years after graduating from Portland State College, the art department sent out questionnaires asking what our transition was like going from academia to making art out in the world. I sent a cartoon of me in hiking gear with a camera tripod topped by a drawing board. 

To sum up my Portland State College experience, I carry with me memories of  my instructors and fellow students at Portland State College.  The experience continues to inform my art and my curiosity. While visiting Denmark and Norway I photographed their use of light in architecture and lighting fixtures.  In Paris last year, I traced the foot path of Henri Rousseau to the hot house gardens where he drew inspiration for his painting "The Dream." The banner for this blog is a detail of a painting intended to be a present day version of Rousseau's painting.