In our first Art Meets Science class of the semester I took my first visit to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. I always knew it was free admission to the museum for students, but I was never able to find enough free time to go during the first term of school. My first visit to the museum did not disappoint, and having only been to one small exhibit in the museum, I’m looking forward to going back and seeing the rest of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. For class, I was asked to examine a piece of art in the museum before reading about the artist and the background of the exhibit and works of art.
The piece I examined was called Black Butte and Metolius Glory (2014) made by Karla S. Chambers. My initial observations were the brilliant contrasting colors— purples, reds, orange, yellow. The colors literally popped off the canvas due to the large (almost 3D) globs of paint and brush strokes that added texture to the colorful landscape painting. Given the fact that it was a landscape, I had to wonder why it was in an exhibit supposedly on food and nutrition.
I found that the background was just as interesting as the actual colorful paintings. The artist, Karla Chambers, was inspired by her own farming and organic agriculture. The textures and colors of food inspired Chambers, which clearly translate into her, in my opinion, fantastic pieces, despite her lack of formal training in painting.