A Conversation with Rick Bartow and Barry Lopez

Artist Rick Bartow and writer Barry Lopez discussed their reflections on life, art, philosophy, and the natural world at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus on Saturday, July 18, at 2 p.m. The program complemented the major retrospective exhibition “Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain,” on view through August 9, 2015. Barry Lopez is an essayist, author, and short-story writer, and has traveled extensively in remote and populated parts of the world. Born in 1945 in Port Chester, New York, he grew up in southern California and New York City before moving to Oregon in 1968. He is the author of “Arctic Dreams,” for which he received the National Book Award, “Of Wolves and Men,” a National Book Award finalist for which he received the John Burroughs and Christopher medals, and eight works of fiction, including “Light Action in the Caribbean,” “Field Notes,” and “Resistance." Mr. Lopez, who was active as a landscape photographer prior to 1981, maintains close ties with a diverse community of artists and has written about painter Alan Magee, artists Lillian Pitt and Rick Bartow, and potter Richard Rowland. Lopez describes Bartow as his “longtime friend, advisor, and collaborator.” Rick Bartow, one of the nation’s most prominent contemporary Native American artists, was born in Newport, Oregon, in 1946. He is a member of the Wiyot tribe of Northern California and has close ties with the Siletz community. He graduated in 1969 from Western Oregon University with a degree in secondary arts education and served in the Vietnam War (1969-71). His work is permanently held in more than 60 public institutions in the U.S., including Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Brooklyn Museum, NY; and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. He has had 35 solo museum exhibitions and his art has been referenced in hundreds of books, catalogs, and articles. More than 120 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and mixed media works are in view in “Things You Know but Cannot Explain.”. Drawn from public and private collections as well as the artist’s studio, the exhibition and accompanying catalog explore themes central to the artist’s work and life: “Gesture,” “Self,” “Dialogue,” “Tradition,” and “Transformation,” as well as “New Work,” featuring exciting examples of Bartow’s production since his stroke in August 2013 that evidence a new freedom of scale and expression. Support for the exhibition is provided by the Ford Family Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, Arlene Schnitzer, the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Endowment, The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Ballinger Endowment, Philip and Sandra Piele, and JSMA members.