Art News

‘Views From the Inner Eye’ at the Schneider Museum of Art

artwork: Ellen Van Fleet - "Stripe #3", undated - Watercolor collage. On view at the Schneider Museum of Art in "Ellen Van Fleet: Barred Rock Bantams" one of 3 solo shows under the umbrella title of "Views From the Inner Eye" from June 16th through August 26th.


Ashland, OR.- The Schneider Museum of Art is proud to present “Views from the Inner Eye”. Opening with a public reception on Thursday, June 16, 5-7pm, the Schneider Museum of Art will present “Views from the Inner Eye”, their summer offering of three one-person exhibitions including, “Morris Graves: From the collection of the Vellutini Family”, “Ellen Van Fleet: Barred Rock Bantams” and “M.R. Renjan: Reverberating Echoes”. These shows will run through Friday, August 26th. All three shows are examples of the expressive tradition in the arts.  Each of the artists has created works that reflect their interior state of being; this is the source, the wellspring of their art.  Each seeks to give us a new way to look at and experience the world.

Morris Graves (1910-2001) helped establish a place for visionary painting in the annals of twentieth-century American art.  Primarily a self-taught artist, Graves rejected the bravura aesthetic of the Abstract Expressionists, and the realist concerns of the Regionalists, in favor of a mystical art in which he sought to convey the inner soul of his subject.  Executed in a semi-abstract style that evoked the subtleties of traditional Chinese painting, Graves’s work reflects his own transcendental inclinations coupled with the impact of East Asian philosophies. Graves lived the last four decades of his life in Loleta, along the northern California coast. During his years there he developed a lasting friendship with the Vellutini family (Ray, Dolores and their children Andrea and Joseph), and they in turn amassed a collection of works by their friend. All the works on view are now also members of the family, works they have lived and grown up with and viewed so often they ‘can be seen in their sleep.’  But they have never kept the collection just to themselves.

artwork: Morris Graves - "Spirit Bird", 1953 - Tempera. Vellutini collection. On view at the Schneider Museum of Art in "Views From the Inner Eye" from June 16th through August 26th.

artwork: Ellen Van Fleet - "Turtle Dove I", undated - Watercolor collage. Courtesy of the Schneider Museum of Art inAsland, OregonThe Vellutini’s have contributed works to collections and shows up and down the West Coast. And we are ever so grateful for their generosity in loaning a show to the Schneider Museum. Ellen Van Fleet is showing large, often collaged, abstract watercolors—many of them based on her observations of Barred Rock Bantams. But these are not merely illustrations of chickens.  As she states: “For over 30 I have been a visual artist following the threads of ideas through corridors opening and closing in the folds of my brain. I am stimulated by what catches my attention and what stimulates me I do; visually anyway. It has all been quite simple. There has been no other activity I do that has the snorty cavorting horse feeling that an unfolding work of art has. Art is using all that interesting accumulation of skill and Homo sapiens chance development, toward the possibility of expressing human visual mystery”.

M.R. Renjan is from Kerala state in India, and now teaches art in Delhi. While Renjan is no outsider to whatever is deemed ‘modernism’, the imaginative qualities that he frequently seems to project in his works are drawn from a still living cultural tradition, as reflected in Indian dance forms, especially those of Kerala. His images are of dramatic suspense, where the natural and the supernatural are engaged in a tête-à-tête. The works owe little to the appearance of observed reality. His predisposition towards envisioning the Pandora’s box of the inner world is timely.  He manifests it as charged with the traces of the fabulous, a theatre of pregnant meanings, surprising possibilities, of strange specters and visitations.

The Schneider Museum of Art is a result of a community campaign which was completed by a generous donation by Bill and Florence Schneider. In 1980 the Southern Oregon State College (now known as Southern Oregon University) development program, formulated by the SOSC Foundation, initiated the idea and the goal to establish an art museum and gallery on the SOSC campus. They felt it was time to bring a strong presence of the visual arts to the valley to complement the theatre and music programs that were already in existence. With support from the college the Foundation began the process to implement that program and formed the art museum committee. In 1982 the State Board of Higher Education authorized construction of a museum on campus, with funding to be provided by private donations. During this time benefits and fundraisers were held to raise money for the museum. In 1983 the Schneiders announced their major gift to the museum ensuring its completion. The State Board approved the naming of the museum for Samuel and May Schneider, parents of Bill Schneider, on July 22, 1983.  The Museum was designed by the late Will Martin, who was a Portland architect. Will Martin’s architectural style was dedicated to the idea that man-made things should complement nature, even emulate it, but never compete with it. The museum opened its doors to the public in the fall of 1986. Over the next ten years the museum continued to grow and to flourish. In 1995 a second phase of construction was contemplated for the museum to add two new galleries and adequate office space for the staff. Funding was once again acquired from private donors, and the new wings of the museum opened in January 1997. The dream is now a reality. With the opening of SOU’s Center for the Visual Arts, the Schneider Museum of Art, plays a central role in this exciting new complex bringing compelling and challenging exhibits to southern Oregon, along with a rich spectrum of programming that includes workshops, family days, lectures, performances, and concerts. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.sou.edu/sma/