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QuickTake:
The public-owned performing arts center is filling its lower-level gallery space with an exhibition of figure-based paintings curated by downtown Eugene gallerist Karin Clarke.
When the Mayor’s Art Show wrapped up this spring at the Hult Center, the artwork came down off the walls of the Maurie Jacobs Community Room, leaving them white and bare.
Laura Lee, the managing director of the Hult Center, began to ponder.
This was the first year that the Mayor’s Art Show had returned to the Hult Center for its annual showcase. The opening reception, Lee recalled, was so packed it was hard to access the lemonade through the crowd of art lovers. What next?
“It was like some spirit had left the building, and I didn’t like that,” she said of the art-less room. “So, we started to think about, what can we do in this space?”
The answer is more art, starting with an exhibit curated by downtown Eugene gallerist Karin Clarke. Lee, Clarke and Carla Zimmerman, a friend of Clarke’s who works in her gallery, started putting together a figure-based painting exhibition, “Beyond the Figure.”
The exhibition is focused on paintings from artists including Margaret Coe and Mark Clarke, Karin Clarke’s parents, as well as Rick Bartow, Adam Grosowsky, George Johansen and Robert Schlegel. After this exhibition, the Mayor’s Art Show will return to the space, followed by an exhibition installed by Hue-Ping Lin’s White Lotus Gallery.
Clarke pointed to how the energy behind the collaboration prompted quick action to get the art into the space; when she first talked with Lee, Clarke said she could put a show up in the space the next day.
While the timeline wasn’t a single day, everything came together quickly. The initial coffee meeting to explore what the gallery show could look like was July 31, and the opening reception is tonight, Friday, Sept. 18.
“What’s been also kind of thrilling, is just how we could just decide to do it, and then like boom, it’s happening,” Clarke said.
“It wasn’t boom,” Zimmerman corrected, prompting Lee and Clarke to laugh during an interview with Lookout. “I was digging through the studio.”
Bringing more art into the Hult
Karin Clarke Gallery is a two-minute walk down the block on Willamette Street to the Hult Center, which has made it easier for Clarke and Zimmerman to run back and forth between the gallery and the Maurie Jacobs Community Room to set up the show.
That convenience, Clarke noted, extends beyond the work of pulling together an art gallery to the experience of perusing them.
“It makes it feel like we’ve got more of a gallery district, because people come and say, ‘Where else can we go that’s within walking distance?’” Clarke said. “It’s been really fun to be like, ‘We also have a show over at the Hult Center,’ and very different from what I’m showing in the main gallery. That creates a vibe.”
Clarke said when she was conceptualizing the exhibition, figurative paintings came to mind to match the drama of the stage shows on the Hult Center stages.
“Hopefully there will be all kinds of different shows as people have experienced in this space in the past,” Clarke said. “But I just thought, ‘I want to make a bit of a splash and have a clear tie-in to all the things that are happening on the stage.’”
The painting under the exhibition title, her father’s 2009 painting “Studio Visitor,” was a fitting anchor piece to Clarke, who feels like it suggests dancers in the background.
For Zimmerman, both the artwork and the exhibition title “Beyond the Figure” are fitting for the venue.
“I think about the Hult Center, when people are on stage, they’re going beyond who they are. They’re creating something else, and I think a lot of this artwork does that. It’s like figurative, but there’s something else in there going on that you want to read into.”
Lee said from the Hult Center’s perspective, adjusting to welcoming more art into the space has brought some key lessons: easier access to the lemonade, yes, but also understanding the flow of a visual art crowd versus attendees of a Broadway musical.
“Spending time with art is a little bit different than coming into a show where you’re like, ‘Come on in, get in the theater, do the thing, now it’s intermission,’” she said. “I think with the volunteers, learning that different mindset and flow, letting people enjoy and take time, it’s a different relationship with visual art than it can be with performance art. That was a learning curve.”
If you go
- What: “Beyond the Figure”
- When: On display through Oct. 31. The show is open during gallery hours, noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. An opening reception will take place at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18. The exhibition will also be open for the First Friday ArtWalk on Oct. 2, starting at 5:30 p.m.
- Where: The Maurie Jacobs Community Room of the Hult Center. (Entrance to the gallery is at the open doors in the lower level of the courtyard space between the Hult Center and the Graduate Hotel.
- How much: Free
