Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

In the Studio: Portland Artists

Posted by Michael Annus

Artists’ studios are generally off limits, but for those lucky few who get to visit this otherwise private and solitary space, it can be simultaneously a workshop, gallery and ad hoc classroom. This series, produced by Portland Community College, documents four Portland Oregon artists at work in the inner sanctum of their studios, a space which has been called “imagination’s chamber.” The artists, Eunice Parsons, Harry Widman, George Johanson, and Lucinda Parker are all established Northwest masters as well as former faculty of the Portland Museum School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). All four artists are mature and recognized working artists of the Northwest with extensive exhibition histories and gallery shows as well as distinguished teaching careers. Their work in painting, drawing, ceramic tile, printmaking and collage represent a major contribution to Oregon’s cultural history. Catch us on YouTube.

Artists

Eunice Parsons

“In the Studio: Eunice Parsons” brings us into the attic studio of collage artist Eunice Parsons, who at 90 (when the video was made) is making the strongest work of her long career. This video documents her unusual process of making a collage, at once both extremely spontaneous in its generation and equally methodical in its resolution. We get to see creation and destruction as she makes collages from scratch. Parsons also discusses her long journey to collage through painting and printmaking, and her love of both old and modern masters. The video ends with the reception of a solo exhibit of her work at the Helzer Gallery of Portland Community College in which many of the works documented in the video can be seen in their final form. Parsons’ piercing visual intelligence as well as her lively and mischievous spirit are in abundant supply. -Mark Andres

George Johanson

“In the Studio: George Johanson” documents the studio world of painter and printmaker George Johanson as he works on large paintings of bathers and jazz musicians, shares working drawings and pages from his sketch books, and gives an intimate account of his creative process. Lively, generous and inspiring, Johanson talks freely about his love of drawing, and why he prefers his process of painting on colored grounds; we see his process of making sketches for his ceramic tile work and we watch him develop a painting as well as pull a two-color woodcut print– in itself a kind of master class. The video ends with a documentation of the reception for his 60 year retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and on-site views of many of his public art projects. -Mark Andres

Harry Widman

“In the Studio with Harry Widman” brings a non-objective painter’s perspective on the mystery of the image, whether it be the figure or pure abstraction. Working sometimes on a very large scale as well as in more intimately scaled collages, Widman discusses his relationships to the dynamic of each piece as a kind of existentialist arena of activity. Widman shows us the way he “reads” an abstract image, articulating the process of conscious and unconscious decision making that informs his work, which is soulful and poetic as well as tough and muscular. Widman’s studio space becomes like a large extension of his visual world, down to the object he collects and tacks to the wall such as old leaves, gloves and sticks, which in the course of the video assume a strange and abstract aura. -Mark Andres

Lucinda Parker

Over the course of three years and three sets of paintings, we enter the working world of noted Northwest painter Lucinda Parker. In part using a drywall mudder as a paintbrush, she creates athletic and poetic work that emerges in these paintings from her fascination with clouds and water.