Description:
Drawing: Gouache and Graphite
Artist:
Rick Bartow (1946-2016, American Wiyot)
Location:
Chemeketa Community College, Salem, OR.
Dimensions:
25.5" x 37.75"
Awards:
2003 John Olbrantz Juror’s Award, and Paul Lamb and Reese Lamb Art About Agriculture Purchase Awards, sponsored by Charles Froelick, Danielle Fournier, the Lamb Foundation, and the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.
Courtesy of Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon.
"Beneath the surface of each drawing are numerous drawings. If we peel back the layers of onion-like skins we arrive at a gestural mark, the bone.
The dirt is the dry pastel, the bones are the marks under the skin of color, the wood of the pencil.
The dirt is the land, the bones are chisels.
The dirt is the flesh of the bones in the end.
It is the multi-colored garment for our bones, our final robe, the one we shall really wear to return to from whence we came. The chisel of bone, tooth or antler to hew and hack at the root and branch to create images and forms from annual rings and branchy knobs.
Under the dirt lie the bones in their proper place--foundations for a lineage of peoples to the land. We become the place through our contributions of family to the dirt. Gradually…gradually it becomes us as we nourish it.
A song about people and the land, memories, tears, dirt and bones."
Rick Bartow, 2003
Year:
1997