At 75, Maude Kerns Art Center highlights decades of work

When Mike Van’s family weighed what piece of his work would best speak to the artist’s mix of humor and skill, they went with the belted armadillo.

Van, a longtime South Eugene High School art teacher who died in 2023 at 92, was an early artist associated with the Maude Kerns Art Center, where the armadillo now hangs. 

The center is celebrating its 75th anniversary with “Legacy,” an exhibition highlighting both its history and 75 different pieces from artists who were important to the center, including Van. 

The exhibition is a celebration of 75 years of hard-won growth that was started by local artists and lasted through the decades and a pandemic. Now, it’s a financially stable corner of Eugene’s arts scene, a rare comfort in a difficult time for the arts nationwide. 

“It’s about celebrating the fact that the Art Center has persevered throughout all these 75 years,” said Michael Fisher, executive director since 2018. “It’s still here. It’s still going.”

The center was started by a group of local artists in 1950 as the Eugene Arts Center in a small building on the Lane County Fairgrounds, which Fisher referred to as a “shack.” 

It moved in 1957 to a house purchased by the center’s namesake, Maude I. Kerns, a non-objectivist painter and first head of the Art Education Department at the University of Oregon. In 1963, the center moved to its current home, a former church building located at 1910 E. 15th Ave. in Eugene, which allowed for more art classes and studio space.

Now, the center is spread across a church-turned-campus, including what was the parsonage house, in a campus with flowers, a stand-alone ceramics studio, “Club Mud,” and a resident cat-slash-office assistant, Lily.

Many artists from the center’s early years stayed fast friends. Van’s belted armadillo hangs above a colorful painting of a bouquet, done by the artist Ray Levra. The pieces weren’t paired on purpose, Fisher discovered an unexpected connection on opening night. “We found out from Mike’s daughter Kim that they were best friends,” Fisher said. 

Multiple pieces in the exhibition were produced as part of the center’s classes and studio sessions. For Mark Clarke’s piece, a 2004 portrait of a seated woman, the tie to the center is obvious to those in the know. The red velvet chair she sits on is the chair all figure painting subjects posed in at the center for years.

Kate Bollons is an instructor at the center who has taught studio oil painting since 1999, including to some students who took her classes that entire time. 

She said the 75th anniversary exhibition, surrounded by the works of artists who had died, felt to her like a memorial service without the grief. 

“Those people were there,” Bollons said. “Their work was there. They had been in this building. You’re just part of a bigger thing, and that’s a great feeling.”

The sense of a larger community is what kept Nancy Silvers coming back to take classes with Bollons for more than a decade. She was a mother of two young children in her late 30s when she started taking classes, wanting to tackle oil painting and have some personal time.

Silvers, a professional gardener, also credits “Maude’s” with giving her the creative confidence to go back to school and finish her bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture. She said having four hours a week for her art is a gift — a precious one in the current national political climate for arts funding. 

“When arts are being stripped from public education, it’s even more of an important time for this to be there,” she said. 

Fisher said the center is doing well financially, with sustainable income from services including exhibitions and studio space rentals, so it doesn’t rely on donations and grant support.

“It’s hard to watch the changes in policies that are coming down federally and through the states,” he said. “Luckily for the Art Center, we’re a little bit more insulated from that.”  

Though it has grown since its scrappy fairgrounds origins, some aspects of running a community arts center will never change.

Fisher, when preparing for the anniversary, was scanning through former board meeting minutes and notes and was struck by one complaint that seemed familiar. 

“The guy was writing, ‘I ask you this, like my fellow board members, will we ever get to a place where we’re not having to work on these pesky facility issues and we can just really focus on the art?’” Fisher said. “I just had to laugh, because in 2025, I feel like almost all of my time is dealing with the pesky facility.”

How to see the Maude Kerns Art Center “Legacy” exhibition

The “Legacy” exhibition is on view at the Maude Kerns Art Center, located at 1910 E. 15th Ave. in Eugene, now through June 20. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, and 12-4 p.m., Saturday.

The fundraiser reception “Living Legacy” will take place at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 21, at the Art Center. Tickets are $75 and available at mkartcenter.org or by calling 541-345-1571.