Tag: teaching

Jody Mohney Pene, IIDA, LEED AP | Forty Years : Looking Back and Looking Forward

Interior design by Jody Pene: Large conference room in the Conference Center of Dunn Carney Law Firm by Josh Partee, Photographer.

On Monday, November 12, 2012, interior architect, Jody Pene, IIDA, LEED AP, and former principal at GBD Architects, presented her lecture, Forty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, to a Portland, Oregon audience at the University of Oregon in Portland, White Stag Block. Pene is a visiting professor at the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts Department of Architecture and the current University of Oregon Margo Grant Walsh Professor in Interior Architecture.

 

Pene gave her presentation as part of this year’s Gunilla Finrow Distinguished Lectureship in Interior Architecture for the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Gunilla Finrow attended the lecture. Commenting on Professor Finrow’s attendance, Pene said,

 

I was very honored to have Gunilla Finrow, for whom the lecture series is named, come down from Seattle to attend my lecture. And pleased also to have many colleagues, students and friends both from the university and from the Portland community attending. Some of which were from GBD Architects and team members on many of the projects I presented. It was nice to be able to share the highlights of my career with both old and new acquaintances.

 

Jody Pene greeted by Gunilla Finrow just prior to Pene's Portland lecture at the UO White Stag.

Associate professor Alison Snyder from the UO AAA Department of Architecture introduced Pene, commending the visiting professor on a long and varied career that involved significant commercial and graphic design work and color expertise. Snyder remarked favorably on the opportunity to have Pene deliver her lecture both in Eugene (November 7, 2012) and in Portland; noting that it is a privilege to be able to “bring what we do in Eugene outside of Eugene to Portland and beyond—being seen and heard in places farther away” and to have the ability to provide lectures of this content and calibre to an interested community and metropolitan audience, such as that in Portland.Pene, in addition to her visiting professorship, is also on the UO AAA Board of Visitors. Professor Snyder thanked Pene for her ongoing and multi-tiered involvement with the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

 

Beginning by illuminating her design philosophy, Pene spoke of several key factors that have played a major role in her career: the need for having a strong concept, recognizing an individual culture and goals, and being able to identify the appropriate environment of the business or client—these factors merge together in the creation of a project solution that is unique to each design venture.

 

Pene graduated from the University of Oregon in 1972 with a bachelor of interior architecture.  She immediately moved into her professional career relocating to Pittsburgh to work in graphic arts and interior design. At this early juncture, she found value in working with a team-based approach and discerned significant demand for her skills in signage and graphic design. In the 1970s, Pene relied on her, what she calls “old fashioned” handcrafting skills of drawing everything by hand and using tools such as pastels and pencil to convey ideas.

 

It was early in her UO studies and work career that Pene discovered her great love of “color and the play of patterns.” Calling upon this interest and her ability to bring together meaningful and attractive explorations of color and pattern once in a professional context, Pene’s career blossomed. She returned to the West Coast in the late 1970s to begin work with two highly significant Oregon architectural firms, Boora Architects (1978-1984) and GBD Architects Incorporated (1984-2010) where she held the position of principal for sixteen years and the principal-in-charge of interior design for twelve of those years.

 

Pene spoke of realizing the importance of collaboration in projects and of working with the entire team to create a strong concept. While her expertise would lie in the designing of the color palette and graphic arts component of the project, she consistently realized that it was vital everyone in the firm work together to pull the project together to create something remarkable.

 

Pene feels a pinnacle of her career came with her work on the renovation of Portland, Oregon’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Here she worked on the interior to come up with fifty-four new colors that would accentuate the Italian Renaissance details and inform the aesthetic of the greater interior. Everything from overall carpet patterns and specific border patterns, to the overall interior design concept complete with soaring theatrical spaces culminates to present a space of intricate detail and graciously considerate historical appreciation.  It became a space uniquely suited to its culturally-grounded purpose.

 

During her lecture, Pene discussed her range of work incorporating independent interior projects such as those at elegant Portland accounting firms and law offices. Pene recalls that she remained true to her own design philosophy whether designing way-finding signage for a stadium or the exclusive interior of a highly prestigious law firm: the importance of designing to the individual personality of the firm or the business always remained at the forefront.

 

As time passed and her career continued, Pene began to realize changes in the field and practical changes in the greater societal situation that would have consequences for how she worked and what she designed. In the early 2000s, Pene saw a shift in how people would relate to a building and how the interior design could be used to create spaces conducive to stimulating creativity. The design work at Wieden + Kennedy’s Dekum Building illustrated to her how a more casual building “painted white and with playful sculptural forms” could be used to encourage innovation and creative work.

 

This was a change Pene had seen emerging about a decade earlier. As the 1990s had progressed, she noticed that there was a transition occurring from traditional design to design that was more responsive to change and to the creation of warmth in spaces –spaces that could foster person-to-person interaction, collaboration, and conversation.

 

The future of design, says Pene, was venturing into the realm of exploring flexibility and adaptability in the workplace. This new approach embraced the concept of an open office that can be re-configured to contribute more effectively and cooperatively to a collaborative workforce. Some of the initial big businesses to adopt this free and flexible design philosophy were places like Wieden + Kennedy, Columbia Sportswear, and Nike. Pene’s design theory, readily adopted by the aforementioned clients, forged ahead creating spaces that affirmed creativity while retaining corporate identity.

 

By establishing connections to the corporate ethos and maintaining strong ties to the sense of a unified whole or corporate campus, Pene was able to design spaces that respond to a human element, are comfortably sociable, and encouraging to innovative thought. In addition to being sensitive to place and her understanding of the humanistic component, throughout her career, Pene advocated for a palette of materials as well as colors that would allow a positive psychological emotional response, physically provide a comfortable space, and energize inventive behavior. Sometimes inspired by “aesthetically unconventional interiors,” Pene spoke of the ability of a space to encourage or foster creativity and innovation.

 

As changes occurred in the economy and global marketplace, Pene traced progressions in the way designs changed for her clients. Developments in environmental considerations brought new products and the desire for sustainable materials. Pene saw opportunities to integrate the newly renovated spaces of previously industrial buildings into simple and contemporary spaces blending the existing exposed structural elements as a beautiful, raw part of the entire concept. Patina-coated steel columns would become exposed, a testimony of history and permanence and be combined with a new concrete structure to produce a relaxed and informal atmosphere encouraging teamwork. [Such as with GBD’s new Pearl District building.]

 

These innovative design principles intentionally promoted client and staff intermingling which was a distinct shift from the decades previous where offices might be cubicle-style, isolated or closed off to integration and interaction with others. Pene explained the changes in the nation’s economy and the world led to a more competitive global economy. This, in turn, brought about another change in the needs of corporate and office design: with the new digital age was the demise of the on-site printed book or need for prodigious library-like rooms in design projects for law firms. Instead, research could now be done online, at desks with computers in shared spaces and more open places.

 

Another change, altered the ubiquitous conference room. Communication was more electronic and conference centers could have multi-purposes with the invention of privacy screens and glass (technological innovations that changed the needs of the space). With economic and financial considerations in mind, saving money and cutting costs was a definite concern, too. Consequently, only one floor needed to receive and be open to the public thus decreasing overhead costs. Spaces were becoming lighter and brighter. People were to be encouraged to work together, to create in a more warm and welcoming environment and to realize to potential of shared spaces and daily interaction.

 

Pene highlighted development of trends we might consider commonplace today: the on-site workplace cafe and simple, social gathering spaces. Both of these concepts encourage on-site lingering collaboration, conversations and teamwork. People stay together longer, have more conversations and work gets done leading to greater productivity and the exchange of ideas. Even the advent of more modular furniture in the workplace allows for more space and more efficiency letting departments grow and shrink, use space and easy-to-move furniture as needed, and be more flexible to the needs of people.

 

The interior designer described how previously high-end law offices began to transition to interior spaces that were “home-like in quality” rather than strictly formal, dark and heavy. Pene associates these specific developments with creating spaces that let people “linger, relate, converse, and exchange ideas.”

 

Summing up her recent projects with slides of the Meriwether towers on Portland’s South Waterfront and the Center for Health and Healing (OHSU), Pene discussed her continued exploration into a design philosophy that creates a “living room feel.” At the Health and Healing center, Pene designed an interior that was restorative and innovative while being LEED Platinum: she was stunningly successful. She spoke of her work with Camera World and how she limited the palette there to mirror the products relying on black, silver, and nods to technology as a overall theme.

 

With a full and productive career, Pene now plans to continue semi-retirement sharing her time between Oregon and her beloved home in Montone, Italy where she finds pleasure in photographing and drawing the fields and farmland. This rural Italian paradise provides Pene with plenty of time to discover history, art, architecture and landscape…..and she continues to enjoy depicting her environment (by hand) in pastel, appreciating and being “enthralled by the seasons, the colors, the patterns.”

 

Pene showed a series of her photographs and pastels: a collection of images including poppy fields, mustard fields, a field of onions in bloom, sunflowers, an olive orchard. She spoke with great affection for the natural and agricultural environment that surrounds her in Italy and explained the “sense of revealing, in color and texture and shape, the potential of light and shadow, the symmetry and order, the curve and line, even in a random, eclectic pattern of blooming poppies in a field.”

 

As she looks towards a future well-immersed in the things she loves and still active in a field she has made great contributions to, Pene noted that with her recent experience at the University of Oregon as an instructor, she has now discovered a new interest: teaching and working with students. She would like to teach abroad in Italy to exchange students traveling there for the first time. Her career, she says, has allowed her to see the importance of international study to enhance the forward progression of one’s design ability and knowledge, reviatlizing creativity and bringing fresh perspectives. She encourages all students to step into the international sphere of educational experience to ignite their creativity and expand their reference. And, even in an age of digital dominance, students, she recommends, still need to learn to draw by hand.

 

Regarding her own continual exploration of trends, and innovative design thinking, Pene says she relies on her photography, her sketching and various sources of media to help inform and expand her knowledge and bring inspiration. She also gratefully acknowledges her frequent world traveling and attendance at fairs such as the The Milan Furniture Fair (Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano) and NeoCan Chicago as key in continuing to fuel her creative energy and staying appraised, or even ahead, of trends. Keeping in touch with the pulse of the contemporary design field is further accomplished, she says, by reading a plethora of online sources and publications.

 

A current that continually flows through Pene’s design work and consistently infuses her ability to design meaningful, thoughtful and yet dramatic and captivating interiors, is her understanding of the importance of collaboration on her projects. While she acknowledges the design community has changed over her forty year career, she cites how important her graphic design experience has been in assisting her creative work from the beginning. There is “a strength and a clarity” to projects today, she remarked, to the way people work together which she finds quite beneficial and refreshing. Being conscious of patterns and color, and tying a project together by identifying what is required to accomplish the specific goals remains the main objective of Pene’s work ethic. She emphasized the interaction between all involved, but overall, it is the sense of collaboration that is the sine qua non of every project.

 

Remarking on the tremendous changes in the design field, both in approach and materials that has taken place during the last four decades, Pene recalled that as trends emerge, and change is inevitable, the observation of what is needed, and wanted and being able to adapt that to a design is a vitally important aspect of any project.

 

The years have defined a gradual progression in her work projects—projects that moved from the creation of formal spaces to the innovative and imaginative formulation of casual spaces. And along with this inventive approach to the workplace, human, and space interaction, Pene has seen that letting people be comfortable encourages interaction, bringing about more creative and worthwhile production, and, in the end, making a more successful product.

Jody Pene at the White Stag, UO in Portland to deliver her lecture, 40 Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward.

 

Jody Pene | Pastel sketch called "Poggiolo," a fall scene of the countryside at a villa in Chianti, Tuscany (Italy).

Read the UO AAA News Story here, for Eugene.  And for Portland.

Nudes and Nudities in Greek Art | A Lecture by Dr. Jeffrey Hurwit

 

© The Trustees of the British Museum 2012. All rights reserved

On October 28, 2012, Dr. Jeffrey Hurwit delivered his lecture, “Nudes and Nudities in Greek Art” to a public audience at the University of Oregon in Portland at the White Stag Block. Following his lecture, Dr. Hurwit led a tour of the newly opened exhibit at the Portland Art Museum, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece.  The lecture and tour were in collaboration with the Portland Art Museum and The Body Beautiful.

 

A world renowned expert in the field of ancient Greek art, Professor Hurwit had been asked by the University of Oregon in Portland School of Architecture and Allied Arts to lecture to a general audience and to focus on works of art on display in The Body Beautiful.

The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece at the Portland Art Museum is an exhibit made possible by a collaboration with London’s British Museum. The exhibit, curated by Ian Jenkins and Victoria Turner, brings to Portland, Oregon what will be the only West Coast showing of the 120 objects usually on display as part of the British Museum’s collection of Greek and Roman art.

In what Professor Hurwit called “an extraordinary collection”, The Body Beautiful is an exhibit that has even managed to awe its curators with the striking majesty of its display at the Portland Art Museum.  Hurwit related hearing from the curator, Ian Jenkins that “‘Nowhere has this [exhibit] been displayed better than here in Portland.’ “  And, indeed, as Hurwit illustrated, taken together these works powerfully illuminate a breadth and depth of the Greek and Roman obsession with the human body.

Professor Hurwit’s lecture addressed specific works included in the exhibit and  introduced the topic of nudity in ancient Greek art as representational and containing differing meanings dependent upon context and the individual. Nudity, explained the professor is a costume used by Greek artists to depict a range of roles and connotation.   “In ancient Greek art,” commented Professor Hurwit, “there are many different kinds of nudity that can mean many different things….Sometimes they are contradictory.”

The content of the exhibit “speaks to us today” said Hurwit, and “reveals and celebrates our nature and physical being and bodies.”  Dr. Hurwit began by explaining how the pieces on exhibit in The Body Beautiful exemplify the ideals of the ancient Greek body.

In 440 BC the Greek philosopher, Protagoras wrote “man is the measure of all things.”  While much debate and discussion has surrounded this fascinating statement the general consensus is that judgments about qualities are subjective, truth is a relative thing, and the individual is the judge of all things.  To the ancient Greek mind, however, beauty was not relative.

Polykleitos Doryphoros. Image Courtesy of Professor Hurwit.

So comes the work of Polykleitos of Argos and his Doryphoros (made between 450-440 BC).  Polykleitos wrote a treatise on art called the Kanon and created the Doryphoros to demonstrate his theories.  The Kanon was based on the Pythagorean idea of symmetria, the notion that the parts of a form must have a proportional relationship to the whole, a mathematical formula that determines the perfect proportions of the ideal male body.

The Doryphoros is a study in contracts, in bent versus straight, right versus left, and in opposites.  Yet upon close study, all of these components are beautifully balanced in perfect equilibrium, right contradicts a flowing left, straight compliments bent, relaxed balances flexed, and stillness counters movement. This vision of highly charged repose collaborates to give the viewer a visual image of harmony.

The Doryphoros stands as a visual manifestation of the Greeks’ relentless obsession with structure and musculature, of the youthful male physique, and the male form defined by sharp lines and deep grooves counter-balanced with the exaggerated ridgey , almost-lovehandle-like quality of the hips (an interesting contradiction to the developed musculature of the rest of the form).  This is an idealized perception of what a man ought to look like.  It is the “perfect and the ideal,” a balance of curves and thick musculature.

But before the Doryphoros, Greek artists were producing Kouroi, those upright youthful males, perfectly idealized who blankly (except for that puzzling Archaic smile) and mindlessly stared past their observers and seemed to be all surface and restrained frozen movement.  The Kouroi and their neutral expression seemed to try to resist distracting the viewer by any indication of internal life of the mind.  Into this environment of  these Archaic era nudes, with their hands on their sides, left foot striding forward, arrived the Doryphoros and the impact was instanteous.

Even the marble sculptors working on the Athenian Acropolis began to alter their work—the youthful horsemen on the Panatheniac frieze of the Parthenon became more infused with movement, with the idealized and almost “Kanon”-like interpretation of the male body that we see in the Doryphoros. And, as Hurwit points out, it is an influence and a way of depicting the nude male figure that never really ends.  Just look at the Doryphoros-like stance in Durer’s the Fall of Man….

About a century after the Doryphoros was cast in bronze, a very different statue was made by Praxiteles of Athens.  Praxiteles was known for his depictions of the human body and for his figures’ elegant curved poses, relaxed appearance and a unique softness.  His Aphrodite of Knidos (330 BC) work stands as an innovative approach to the depiction of the female nude and set a precedent for the “ideal woman.”

For the most part, female nudity in ancient Greek art was unacceptable, shocking and somewhat revolutionary. As Professor Hurwit related, Praxiteles made two of these Aphrodite statues, one clothed, one nude.  One island, Kos purchased the dressed figure; the nude statue was bought by the island of Knidos.  The impact of this nude female figure, as Hurwit states, was “immeasurable.”

In the history of Greek art, the female form had previously been depicted with sparse detail or was clothed, in such pieces as the Folded Arm Figurines or the full-skirt wearing, bosom-bearing snake-goddess or abstractly on the surfaces of vases [Hirschfeld Krater, Athens, 990 BC].  And so begins what Dr. Hurwit refers to as a “double standard.”  The male body could be revealed but the female body would remain relatively hidden, clothed, abstract or only vaguely referenced.

And, of course, Greek artists were well versed in creating Kore or Korai, the definitive female representation.  Korai were always clothed, youthful, standing with one leg forward females.  When a female was depicted in the nude it was usually to denote slave girl, courtesan, or “call girl” status.  There existed a general banning or unacceptance of the female nude in most works, however, a notable exception existed in the depiction of the female nude in sculpture, for example with a work showing Apollo flanked by a nude Leto and Artemis [Relief from a temple at Gortyna, Crete, circa 640 BC].

With the study of the development of the nude in ancient Greek art, it is important to realize that Ancient Greece was not culturally homogeneous.  What was happening and acceptable in Athens, might not have been in Sparta, nor Crete.  However, it is Athens as a cultural center that helps us define the period from 600-340 BC.  From this era and a study of the works of art produced during this time, we can deduce that it was pretty much taboo to depict the female form naked.  Women, in art, are generally covered head to toe.

But in order to break through this taboo and this resistance to showing the female form au naturel, the artist, Praxiteles was very clever and thoughtful—he realized the necessity to create a narrative in order to justify the depiction of nudity.

Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos is shown bathing, modestly covering her pubis and blithely unaware of our presence.  We are in the position of approaching her, she knows not that we are there, watching her.  We are put in the position of voyeur, or voyeurese; we become the ones to blame for violating her privacy, seeing her in a compromising position, watching her while in the nude.

Voyeurs paid a heavy price in ancient Greek times.  Seeing a god or goddess without permission or consent or their knowledge was considered an anathema:  the violation would not go unnoticed nor unpunished.  The irresistible erotic power and sexuality of this statue was what lured viewers and made them its voyeurs.  A person approached this piece at his, or her, own risk (stories have been told of young men unable to resist the powerful sexual allure of this Aphrodite succumbing to and physically acting on their lust, and subsequently going mad, later throwing themselves from cliffs. )

The Aphrodite of Knidos was a liberating work as it essentially paved the way to release a torrent of female nudes and precipitated the onset of an acceptance of female form in Greek art as never before.  We see works like the Venus de Milo that explore how the addition of fabric can add a sensual layer to our view, enhancing the form within.

Suddenly the female form, post-Aphrodite of Knidos begins to experiment with a sense of allowable depictions that seem to encourage a sensual and sexual appreciation of the female form.  A winged Nike approaching Athena on the Temple of Athena Nike is in a full length clingy, dress-like garment, her body beautifully revealed by every thin fold of what must be a soft, flowing diaphanous fabric.  Curves of breasts and thighs seem almost celebrated beneath waves of revealing fabrics that cascade in anatomy clinging sensuality.  Dresses fall off bodies, and while these females are not completely naked, they might as well be—the sensuality and hedonistic visual we are given is nothing but entirely effective.  And, so the progression takes us from a cold, column-like hard, shaft clothed Kore to a new female nude defined as something almost always sensual, draped in folds and poses that accentuate her curves and softness. She bends to adjust her sandal.

The male nude remains another story and a much more complex one, at that.

Greek men strode about in the nude in private bedrooms, and at parties called symposia, sort of aristocratic drinking parties, if you will.  In the public sphere, male nudity was limited to the bathhouses, and the athletic games or gymnasia.  There was also the erotic nudity element in artistic depictions of homosexual and hetereosexual, both youth and adult liaisons—art limitating life, and vice versa.

In some cases, partial nudity of woman and girls was acceptable in the athletic games. In the Games of Hera, where virgins competed, females competed with one breast exposed but otherwise wearing a tunic. Hence, for the most part, full nudity was the privilege of men.

The Townley Discobolus. © The Trustees of the British Museum 2012. All rights reserved.

One of the centerpieces of The Body Beautiful exhibit, the Myron Diskobolos illustrates the aspect of nudity in athletics in ancient Greek art.   This nude body certainly asserts the beauty of the body and shows us an example of what is beautiful also being equated with what is good.  And, brings us further into our discussion of nudity in Greek art as having many different forms and meanings.

We have seen nudity with the male form as a way to define and show perfection and the ideal human form.  Nudity is also a custom of the gods, and therefore, a costume worn by god-like men.

The greatest of all civic heroes, we can say, is Pericles.  And our model of a hero par excellence, Theseus.  When we see these men depicted in the nude in war or battle, we can acknowledge that their physical prowess is being shown-off; but going into battle naked was not realistic, highly dangerous, and not the best way to fight.  Yet depictions of nudity in these battle-scenarios symbolizes an elevated and exhalted status, showing a sense of impending victory and courage, and of physical power.  This is “heroic nudity.”

We also see examples of “political nudity”—where political heroes are shown in the costume of democracy.  The removal of their clothes effectively distinguished them as “great leaders” and physically fit leaders in the political realm.

“Civic nudity” with the heroes as citizens (such as two brothers, The Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who plotted to murder and over throw the Peisistratid tyrant Hipparchus) are depicted in statuary nudes as heroes of the state, in a willingness to shed all, to trust all and to exemplify “democratic nudity.”

Common laborers can be depicted nude, as well.  Shown naked, their sweat and muscles revealing how hard they work.  Even nudity is used to show age from youth to the elderly: one nude illustrating the fresh, strength and slenderness of youth to the other revealing the sickness and weakness possible with the dead, dying and aged.  But both show us a vulnerablility, a fragility, if you will,—one of the young, one  of the old.

Nudity can give us a glimpse of suffering, defeat, and impending death as we see in Ajax as he prepares to throw himself on his own sword and take his own life: he is the fallen, isolated, tortured hero as nude.  [Black Figure Amphora, The Suicide of Ajax, Greek, 540 BC.]  Perhaps “pathetic nudity.”

We see a full frontal of a nude Cassandra in a Red Figure Hydria, [Naples, Kleophrades Painter];  or a naked Hector bound to Achilles’ chariot…both strong and emotional depictions of nudity.  [Attic Hydria, Achilles Dragging Hector, 520-510 BC.]

And, this brings us to the concept of the difference between sexual nudity, soft nudity, nudity for nudity’s sake and actual nakedness, as well as the comparison between male and female nudity.  Nudes and nudity in Greek art do not always divulge the same connotation or meaning.  We have the presentation of nude versus clothed and the revelation:  there is much more to a Greek nude than just perfect flesh and “heroic nudity.”

Following his lecture, Dr. Hurwit led a public tour of The Body Beautiful at the Portland Art Museum.  His tour continuing and illustrating points made in his lecture, provided insightful scholarly commentary on numerous works in the exhibit including the many iconic marble and bronze sculptures, vessels, and funerary objects most coming from the second and third millennium BC. For more information on the exhibit at the Portland Art Museum please refer to, The Body Beautiful.

[This article is a brief summary of the lecture Professor Hurwit gave on October 28.  A full recording of the lecture will be available shortly and will be linked to this article.

We extend a sincere thank you to Professor Hurwit for his lecture, Nudes and Nudities in Greek Art and his tour of The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art.   Also, many thanks to the Portland Art Museum for their cooperation and assistance with this event.]

About Dr. Jeffrey Hurwit: Dr. Hurwit has degrees in Classical Languages and Literatures from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from Yale.  He has taught at Yale, subsequently joining the UO faculty in the History of Art and Architecture.  He holds a co-appointment in the Classics Department and holds a Philip H. Knight Professorship.

A leading scholar of the archaic and classical periods in Greek art, Professor Hurwit has appeared in major documentary films and lectures at the world’s top universities, museums, and archaeological institutes.  The recipient of many prestigious awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the University of Oregon’s Faculty Excellence Award,  Professor Hurwit is the author of many works on the art  and civilization of Archaic and Classical Greece. Among his many influential publications that are regarded as standards in the field, his recent book, The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles is considered the definitive work on the subject.

Professor Hurwit regularly conducts research in Greece and Italy, and has been selected four times to teach in the Northwest Council for Study Abroad programs in Siena and Athens.  He has spoken widely across the United States and Canada and has also served three times as a study leader for Smithsonian Institution tours of Greece and the Mediterranean. In 2000, he was appointed to the prestigious Martha S. Joukowsky Lectureship for the Archaeological Institute of America, and in 2003 became the inaugural Dorothy Burr Thompson Memorial Lecturer at University of British Columbia. He has also served on the editorial board of the College Art Association’s Art Bulletin and on the Publications Committee of the Getty Research Institute.

Professor Hurwit is also currently working on Palaeolithic cave-painting in addition to his studies in ancient art.

Read one of Dr. Hurwit’s articles on this subject, The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art.

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Bruce Wolf | Part II

Part II:  Bruce Wolf, Photographer

"I signed it with a Sharpie." Bruce Wolf's portfolio

[This is Part II of Sabina Samiee’s coverage on photographer Bruce Wolf, an adjunct instructor at the UO in Portland and instructor for Light and Color:  Tools of the Trade Workshop for Summer in the City 2012. You can read Part I Bruce Wolf | A Little Profile on a Big Photographer posted previously.]

Images | Bruce Wolf

Now it is fall 2012. Wolf is firmly entrenched in the Portland scene.  He is an adjunct instructor for the Summer in the City University of Oregon Portland program.   And from the projects he has taken on, it is evident he has graciously assimilated the culture and vibe of Portland, and has never looked back.  Granted he isn’t making the prodigious dollar amounts New York had bestowed upon him, but as he comments, “that really doesn’t matter.”  Whether he is shooting Pietro Belluschi’s architectural wonders, a stunning plated concoction at Yakuza for a scrumptious-looking website, or photos for a children’s book on food, Wolf’s images are powerful, captivating, emotional, and have that je ne sais qua any photographer worth her salt dreams about.   [See Bruce Wolf:  A Little Profile on a Big Photographer]

 

If you are here in the city next summer, look him up:  Summer in the City 2013—with a little luck and a fair wind, Wolf’s experience and knowledge will be back here again and yours for the taking at the UO in Portland.  This is an opportunity to learn methods and process, gain knowledge and insight from one truly great photographer.  And, as Wolf, himself puts it, he “[doesn’t] just want advanced photographers in [his] class,” not at all.  In fact, he welcomes and encourages a specific kind of person,  “Photographers at any level passionate about photography. . . .That’s what I’m looking for,” he states.  It was a late afternoon, mid-summer and we were happily into our second coffee talk– “interview” – meeting at Floyd’s coffee shop in Old Town. Wolf was beginning to feel like an old friend.  “Passionate about photography” and “photographers at any level:”  this sounded mildly provocative…I was caught on the “at any level” phrase.  It sounded so refreshing and open to possibility. I asked him to tell me more about his 2012 Summer in the City Light and Color workshop, the students he worked with, his expectations for the course and the students and his future plans.

Bruce Wolf

Wolf finds that being welcoming to photographers of any level with a passion for picture-taking attracts students who are eager to learn and listen.  And, photographers at any level can take insightful, thoughtfully composed images. Photographs should “say something about the person who took the photo, not just be an image of what that photographer captured.” In Wolf’s opinion, a photographer “needs to learn how to present the image so that it tells a story, leaves personal narrative and inhibitions behind, and freely exposes the photographer.”  This ability can be learned over time with work and experimentation.  Wolf aspired “to teach [his] students to tell us who they are, to expose their self.”

Bruce Wolf and his students in the Light and Color Workshop

Wolf continued, speaking softly and thoughtfully.  The intent of a photo is to translate a story and project a personal signature.  When students presented their work to him for critique and review, Wolf found it best to refrain from criticism and rather try and find what “they thought the process was, or had been, like a personal journey” he says.  Wolf wanted his students to learn how to use their photographs to “take us someplace” and to make their image a “personal reflection of what drives them to see what they see, and why they see it that way.”  He suggested that they experiment with light, color, angle, cropping and content to express this.

 

Equally intriguing is Wolf’s unique pedagogical approach that assumes his students are blissfully “unaware of anything.”   He continued, “I talk to them as if they know nothing.”   Not intending to be at all demeaning or condescending, Wolf means he strives to instruct as if his students are a blank slate, ready and receptive to challenge the components of their work to access a sense of both the art and the science of photography.  He finds this approach the least intimidating and the most encouraging to his students’ sense of free experimentation in the class.

Bruce Wolf

There is one area, however, where Wolf expects his students to have a working knowledge.  His Light and Color Workshop requested that students have an existing working familiarity with Photoshop, a technology Wolf feels “is essential to contemporary photography.”  In addition, he only allowed the students to use their cameras in Manual mode—a somewhat daunting prospect for many.  If a student needed help or instruction in the mode, Wolf gladly assisted. By using only Manual mode, Wolf encouraged each student “to regain control of the camera and the image.”

 

I asked Wolf his opinion on camera equipment.  Would someone with a prosumer camera be as welcome as someone with a simple point-and-shoot? Wolf assured me, regarding equipment, students were not criticized for the quality or technical hierarchy of their equipment. One student was welcome to use her father’s point-and-shoot, which she did for the entire duration of the course. When asked if he felt the quality of one’s camera had a great deal to do with the quality of the image, Wolf responded that “it is not the camera that is the final instrument of the image” but how that “image is interpreted or taken forward to create an intention.”  Here is where Photoshop becomes the somewhat indispensible tool of the contemporary photographer, the sine qua non that allows the artist | interpreter of the image to “sharpen the intention, to clarify and capture” what one has merged into pixels, and digitalized into a printable reality.  Photoshop will help ease a transition from a captured moment to a fully finished image. Today’s digital photographs, says Wolf, will not be worked on in a traditional darkroom, a place where the photographer used to transition an image and produce desired effects, experimenting with light and dark, saturation and hue. Thus, says Wolf, “Today’s darkroom is Photoshop.”

Bruce Wolf in Google search

With all his work, his reputation and his legacy, it is no wonder Wolf is carefully watched.  Coming to Portland in 2009, a blog post by his then rep, Stockland Martel declared “BW MOVES TO PDX and POSTS photos.” [I would show you the post but Stockland Martel has since removed it.] It was a series of photos posted on Wolf’s online social media presence that precipitated a small tempest of curiosity—Wolf was doing something new, something different.  Maybe Portland enabled Wolf to branch out into a new perspective, and explore that “loneliness” he talks about.  Whatever it was, we can read about the “guerrilla photography” Wolf and his wife, Laurie launched into.  Photographing over 70 Portland restaurants for Portland restaurant scene, Wolf found his way right into the delicious underbelly of some of Stumptown’s most coveted places.

Photographing 70+ Portland Restaurants..Food! Glorious Food!

As time has passed these last few years, Wolf has eased into a singular Portland aesthetic, appreciating and valuing a sense of independence, being in a league all his own, and valuing a certain obscurity for its own sake. He seems to have found meaning, and worth, and definitely his own Portland style of cool.  He’s become one of us.  He’s settled in with a new rep, Greenhouse, and released a new book, along with collaborator and wife Laurie Wolf, Portland, Oregon Chef’s Table .

Bruce Wolf

Things are looking bright and beautiful for this New York transplant. As evidence to his understanding of things Portland, whether due to the cagey arrangements of representatives or Wolf’s own propensity to find meaningful working relationships, halibut-sized printed monthly publications have been scooping him up and sending him back out to hone his forte with a uniquely Portland grind.  And, now that we can open up some of our favorite regionally-based magazines and see architecture from our own metropolitan backyard photographed by Wolf; get google-guided to a unique Portland restaurant and stumble upon images from a few of those places we head to for something uniquely delicious, we see Wolf’s light and color in new places.  Take a trip to our favorite bookstores and see Wolf’s images in lovely volumes available to grace our coffee tables and our kitchen bookshelves.   We can access Wolf’s Portland work almost daily and we can even take a university summer course from him.  When asked what his plans for future courses at UO might be and if he’s interested in teaching again, Wolf responded, pointblank, “I’d love to.”  In fact, he is interested in teaching photography at all levels, lower and upper division, beginners to advanced.  In any case, Portland and, indeed, Oregon is certainly richer and even more beautiful when we have Wolf’s imagery of our environment surrounding us—all in gorgeous light and color…. Let’s hope it stays that way, because he sure makes things look good.

[As if it were not readily obvious, black and white photographs in this post –devoid of color and not much in the way of brilliant lighting, were taken by the author, who somewhat reluctantly posts her images in the same blog as BW images.  Images from Wolf were taken from his blog, and website, and provided to the author.]

ABOUT SUMMER IN THE CITY

In addition to photographer Bruce Wolf, Summer In the City has offered the teachings of  academic and creative  phenomena such as D’Wayne Edwards, James Cutler who directs the Summer Portland Architecture Program, and Bill Tripp, among others. It is an eclectic arts and architecture-based program, offering interdisciplinary courses, specialized studios, and a lower-division, requirement-satisfying class in cooperation with the new Urban Ducks program. In a come-one-come-all egalatarian manner, the UO opens its doors and lets the summer breeze in as Summer in the City welcomes both enrolled UO students, community members in the Academic Extension program and professionals seeking to enhance and expand their professional affiliation, network and expertise.  Above all, it is an opportunity to learn from experts.  Come join us next summer!