NELSON SANDGREN:
The Hand-pulled Print
April 13 - May 22, 2010
Reception and Talk: April 24, 2:00 p.m.
Once again, the work of Nelson Sandgren, a Eugene favorite and one of Oregon’s most versatile artists, returns to the walls of the Karin Clarke Gallery. In his fourth exhibit in this gallery, Sandgren’s prints are featured. Over the many years of his artistic life, Sandgren worked in a variety of print mediums -- monoprint, lithograph, woodblock print -- in black and white and color. This remarkable collection includes colorful land and sea scapes, figurative pieces depicting people working and playing -- baseball!-- as well as several haunting, almost narrative, images.
A most unusual aspect of this exhibit is that there are preliminary forms for a number of the prints, which are shown along with the finished work. For example, “Moon Child,” a pensive face in the night sky, exists as two graphite drawings, a subdued lithograph, and colorful monoprint. The viewer is offered a tantalizing glimpse into the process of making art.
This behind-the-scenes sense is enhanced by the inclusion of some of Sandgren’s tools. There are his carved wood blocks, a lithograph stone on which he has drawn, and a variety of other studio paraphernalia.
Biography:
Nelson Sandgren (1917 - 2006) was born in Manitoba, Canada, and grew up in Portland and Chicago. He received his art education at the Chicago Institute of Design, the University of Oregon, the University of Michoacan, Mexico, and earned both his B.A. and M.F.A. at Oregon State University. After graduation, he joined the faculty of Oregon State University, where he remained until his retirement in 1987. Nelson Sandgren is best known for his wonderful watercolor and oil on-site paintings of the Oregon coast.
Nelson was greatly influenced by his teachers at the University of Oregon - David McCosh, Andrew Vincent and Jack Wilkinson, and although he did not study with her, Sandgren shared art philosophies with Maude Kerns in the later years of her life. In 1947 and 1948, Nelson studied with a second major influence in his work, Mexican muralist Alfredo Zalce, in Morelia, Michoacan. He became interested in creating larger scale paintings in collaboration with fellow artist friends. His public murals include those found at Mahlon Sweet Airport and the Lane County Court house in Eugene, Oregon, and also the Kerr Memorial Library at OSU, in Corvallis. He received numerous awards, grants and commissions during the course of his career, and exhibited in England, California, and Colorado, as well as Seattle and Portland.
