High Desert Museum receives grant

Eight Oregon arts organizations, including the High Desert Museum in Bend, will receive $69,342 in funds from The Ford Family Foundation’s Art Acquisition Program, the Oregon Arts Commission announced Tuesday .

The Art Acquisition Fund, managed by the Arts Commission, helps visual arts institutions with publicly accessible collections acquire seminal works by Oregon visual artists. The effort preserves public access to great works and supports artists and the institutions that sustain their work.

Awards help these institutions leverage organization and donor dollars to acquire works. In the four years of this program, 32 works of art by Oregon artists have been placed into permanent Oregon collections.

Awards were made to:
Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay ($8,000 )
For the purchase of “Drift: Driftwood 4,” oil on canvas, by Michael Brophy, an artist perhaps most recognized for his large dramatic Northwest landscapes. The painting is the first by Brophy to join the museum’s collection, which is focused on Pacific Northwest culture.

High Desert Museum, Bend ($7,142)
For the purchase of a group of four Wasco twined baskets by NEA and Arts Commission Fellow Pat Courtney Gold. The museum will use this grouping to demonstrate both traditional and contemporary patterns and techniques.

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene ($9,900)
For the purchase of Christine Bourdette’s chrome-plated wood and resin sculpture “Identification,” and Cynthia Lahti’s “White Belt,” ceramic, paper, wood and steel. “Christine Bourdette’s work traverses the boundaries of multiple media and has been a significant presence in Oregon’s contemporary art world,” notes Museum Director Jill Hartz, “often abstracting or simplifying the human figure as a tool for political exploration and philosophical meditation.” Hartz further describes that “White Belt” is exemplary of former Arts Commission and Hallie Ford Fellow Cynthia Lahti’s current artistic practice, which “references art historical use of collage (as popularized by Dada and Surrealist artists) through clever, jarring juxtapositions of archival paper–sources of inspiration in her ceramics production–with failed or broken sculptures from her studio castoffs.”

Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland ($11,000)
For the purchase of “Transference,” a kinetic glass and sound installation by glass artist Andy Paiko and sound artist Ethan Rose. “Transference” was commissioned specifically for the museum, and has been exhibited twice at MoCC (In 2009, in “Transference,” and in 2013, in “Object Focus: The Bowl”) and will also be a part of the upcoming 2015 summer exhibition “The State of Oregon.”

Oregon State University, Art About Agriculture Collection, Corvallis ($5,000)
For the purchase of “From Pike Place Market,” acrylic on canvas by Phyllis Yes
and “Blacklock I,” acrylic and Jory Soil by Jay Stratton Noller Oregon State University will use Acquisition funds to bring two new works into their Art About Agriculture Collection, celebrating its 33rd annual exhibition in the fall of 2015. Phyllis Yes was a professor of art at Lewis and Clark College for 27 years, where she taught art and also served as dean of humanities and chair of the art department. Jay Stratton Noller is a painter and a scientist. His architectural scale earth media works are permanently installed in Allison Inn and Spa, Newberg, and the OSU College of Liberal Arts, Corvallis, among others. Noller was a 2010 finalist in the National Science Foundation’s International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Portland Art Museum, Portland ($8,800)
For the purchase of “Beside the land of Chaldea…” gouache and graphite on tea-stained paper by Ellen Lesperance, who has been recently recognized with a Hallie Ford Fellowship, Betty Bowen Award, and is a 2014 Arts Commission Fellow.

Reed College, Portland ($16,400)
For the purchase of “Chromosome Paintings,” by Geraldine Ondrizek, a series of 23 silk panels with jacquard dye and dye sublimation. Says Stephanie Snyder, Director of the Reed College Cooley Gallery: “For the past 25 years, Ondrizek has created richly investigatory and beautiful works of art that explore history, biology, taxonomy and science.” Ondrizek is a professor at Reed College.

Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University, Ashland ($3,100 )
For the purchase of “Untitled (Body)” and “Untitled (A Shard of Glass)” by artist Evan La Londe. Says Erika Leppman, Schneider director, “La Londe is thoroughly engaged in what it is to make photographic images, is cognizant of the history of the medium and is cogently addressing this moment in photography. The growth and complexity of his work thus far warrants support and critical attention.”

About The Ford Family Foundation Visual Arts Program
The Art Acquisition Fund is one of seven program facets first launched in 2010 as part of The Ford Family Foundation’s initial five-year visual arts program established in the memory of Mrs. Hallie Ford to assist Oregon’s most promising visual artists and the institutions that support their work. The Foundation’s board at its winter meeting approved extension of the program through 2019. In addition to the Arts Acquisition Fund, other resources are being dedicated to the following:

Fellowships: Hallie Ford Fellows are provided unrestricted grants to support the conceptualization and the development of new work, annually.
Artists-in-Residences: bi-annual awards to four “Golden Spot” residency programs in Oregon, and at Djerassi Art Residency and the Ucross Foundation, that provide opportunities for artists to explore and conceptualize new work.
Exhibition & Documentation: funding for the curation, preparation, materials and traveling of exhibitions
Capital Projects: resources to improve and/or expand studio and exhibition space at key Oregon visual arts institutions
Curator/Critic Tour: visitations by national curators to consult with Oregon’s visual artists, regional curators and critics, and to generally interact with the arts community
Opportunity Grants: resources to mid-career Oregon visual artists who face unanticipated circumstances that could aid in significantly advancing the creation, production or exhibition of their work.

About The Ford Family Foundation
The Ford Family Foundation is the sole funder of this Visual Arts Program. It partners with Oregon’s leading visual arts educators, gallerists, museum and arts professionals to help implement program elements and leverages funding with other state and national resources.

The Foundation was established in 1957 by Kenneth W. and Hallie E. Ford. Its Mission is “successful citizens and vital rural communities” in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California. The Foundation is located in Roseburg, Oregon, with a Scholarship office in Eugene. For more information about the Foundation, please visit the website at www.tfff.org .

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The Oregon Arts Commission provides leadership, funding and arts programs through its grants, special initiatives and services. Nine commissioners, appointed by the Governor, determine arts needs and establish policies for public support of the arts. The Arts Commission became part of Business Oregon (formerly Oregon Economic and Community Development Department) in 1993, in recognition of the expanding role the arts play in the broader social, economic and educational arenas of Oregon communities. In 2003, the Oregon legislature moved the operations of the Oregon Cultural Trust to the Arts Commission, streamlining operations and making use of the Commission’s expertise in grantmaking, arts and cultural information and community cultural development.

The Arts Commission is supported with general funds appropriated by the Oregon legislature and with federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as funds from the Oregon Cultural Trust. More information about the Oregon Arts Commission is available online at www.oregonartscommission.org