Leonard Baskin and Helen Frankenthaler

Two shows at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education

If the world of images is aflame with pieties, grudges and gimmicks where do you turn? Two shows at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education give respite through immersion in deep soul and visual pleasure. The visual pleasure is not frivolous but thoughtful with a sharp edge of material intelligence. Leonard Baskin: The Great Birdman opened in October and runs through the end of January. Helen Frankenthaler just opened this weekend and runs through March. In many ways, these two artists are diametrically opposed. One is a figurative artist steeped in narrative derived from Jewish, Classical and mythological sources. The other is the consummate modernist: urbane, cool and committed to abstraction. Both shows are rooted in the art of printmaking and it is interesting to see where they diverge and where they converge. 

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) thought of himself as a sculptor but really his true impact comes from his printmaking and book publishing. He started his Gehenna Press in Northampton, Massachusetts after seeing William Blake’s output as poet, artist and printer. William Blake is a presiding spirit in Baskin’s work. Winged figures such as the titular Great Birdman as well as angels, birds and insects abound. You could see the avian preoccupation in ink drawings of various birds and bird like creatures. The hybrid creature makes frequent appearances often in the form of oracular and divinatory presences. 

The exhibition was instigated by his niece Judith Baskin. Included in the show are letterpress cards, personal correspondences with etchings and other ephemera that demonstrate a studio practice that was seamlessly woven in with his life. The connection to poets and books and family anchor the otherworldliness of his figures. Baskin is an artist of soul. To enter into his world is to swim in profound waters. Each of the works at OJMCHE pulls you deep into those pools. 

Baskin was a consumate craftsman. His ability to use woodblock print, a medium associated with clunky vernacular imagery as something approaching ink drawing is masterful. The soulful expression is evident because he had a firm grounding in drawing, composition and the mechanics of printmaking. If in the fifties when he emerged as an artist he seemed retrograde because of his figurative and narrative impulses he only grew beloved to artists as the decades went on. 

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) too was grounded in a rigorous practice. If Baskin seemed anti-modern, Frankenthaler was the ultimate modernist. Working against the biases of the art world that viewed women as muses or dabblers, she turned her considerable gifts and aesthetic grit towards making a body of abstract paintings that resisted the messy psychology of peers such as Jackson Pollock. In the late sixties she began working with printmakers and helped to transform the practice. Working at scales and with techniques that pushed the boundaries of what prints can be yielded a body of work as immersive as her paintings. 

A work such as Freefall from 1992-93 includes hand-dyed paper, several colors on different materials. The huge azure field is as rich as any painting. Overlapping forms that bump and break against each other resolve into a shimmering field. A work like Madame Butterfly is comprised of a hundred and two colors from forty-six woodblocks. The retention of the woodgrain gives the image a solidity that breaks into airiness with the floating forms of color. 

Most of the history of printmaking concerns mass reproduced and multiple images. In the nineteenth century, artists often only knew of a famous painting via etched reproductions. The woodcut especially is associated with populist art such as broadsides and early books. In the hands of both of these artists the woodblock can express a liquid line or a translucent field of color. Both walk the line in their prints between reproducible multiples and one of a kind images. The prints have facture. In different ways both artists demonstrate the pleasures of practice. They both trained in rigorous systems. Craft, material knowledge and serious practice are necessary foundations.

Hearts are broken, the culture is keening for multiple dead. The skin of discourse is raw with years of agitation. This small exhibition is a salve. It’s not topical. It’s not polemical. Yet it offers a dose of soul and a dose of beauty.

NOSTOS: THE LONG WAY HOME

For anyone interested in taking the drawing and storytelling workshop Nostos: the Long Way Home at Building Five in 2024, the workshop will be $1600, that’s $300 off of the full price. This workshop will be a rich and deep exploration of storytelling, drawing and visual narrative. We give the story of the Odyssey lots of time to open up, expand and allow you to enter into it. Ultimately you will tell your own story about home; whether that is as a native, an immigrant or a refugee. Join me in 2024 to inaugurate this workshop. Go here to register.

The Odyssey is one of the most iconic of Western stories. We look at what the story has to say about leaving home, coming home, and being a migrant in the world. What does that longing in our stories say about our own longing? Who is a migrant, a refugee, or a native? Our stories root us to the ground and allow us to travel over great distances. How do we define home? Can we find stories in the ground beneath our feet that welcomes newcomers and honors the ancestors?

Over the course of the five sessions we dive deep into the story of the Odyssey through oral storytelling and book discussions.

This course connects one’s innate creative spark with deep-time storytelling and straightforward drawing exercises. Oral storytelling, themed readings, and image making exercises are braided together into each session. This course is for teachers, writers, cartoonists, artists, or anyone interested in unlocking their visual storyteller. This is not about technical prowess, but storytelling and expression. The drawing exercises do not require drawing skill or previous training. Participants come away having created their own story based in image and text; gaining tools for telling stories with pictures and thinking in mythic time.

Each weekend begins with a Friday night lecture.

Saturday is a full day of storytelling, drawing exercises and workshops.

Sunday is work time and presentations.

Building Five, NW Marine Artworks,

2516 NW 29th Ave., Portland, OR 97210

APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces. 

JUNE 28-30, 2024:
Out at Sea
Now that the initial excitement of setting off has settled into the day to day, how do we move through the days? Telemachus tries to be a man, Penelope fends off the suitors, Odysseus heads home and is thwarted. What does it feel like to be a refugee and cast from home? More quick exercises, we build on images from the previous session. 

APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces. 

SEPT. 7-8, 2024:
Dreams of home fires
We’re right in the middle. Everyone tries to hold the line and survive. Immigrants and natives consider what home means. New materials, longer exercises after the storytelling sessions.

NOV. 2-3, 2024:
The Land of the Dead
Odysseus consults the dead. Underworld musings, ancestors from the other side of the veil come to have a word. One long project after the telling. 

DEC. 13-14, 2024:
Homecomings
Odysseus comes home as a nobody. Penelope starts to waver and Telemachus gets a hint from Athena. Not all homecomings are happy. Who are you when you return after a journey? One final work session and a mini-exhibition.