Pretty Not Pretty (Again)

In the spring of 2017, Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art organized and produced the original group exhibition PRETTY NOT PRETTY exhibition, which found tremendous critical and popular success among viewing audiences in Portland.  

 PRETTY NOT PRETTY (AGAIN) will once again showcase the latest ceramic sculpture created by three of Oregon’s most celebrated artists working with clay and fire as principal media: Hiroshi Ogawa, Amy Fields and Brad Mildrexler. 

 This exhibition asks the question: what are different qualities and meanings within the concept of “beauty” and “ugly”, and emphasizes how one’s interaction with unique works of art are always visual encounters based on personal preference.

Making Visible The Invisible: Abstract Artists of the Pacific Northwest

Jeffrey Thomas in collaboration with the Murdoch Exhibition Space is pleased to present a timely and diverse late summer exhibition called Making Visible The Invisible: Abstract Artists of the Pacific Northwest opening with a reception for the artists and the public on Wednesday August 2, 2017.  

Scheduled to engage visitors to both the Seattle Art Fair and Portland’s own Converge 45 art event, this group exhibition of paintings, works on paper and sculpture explore various traditions of abstraction in the visual arts.

Canopy: On Helen Lessick's Trees

Co-sponsors Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art and the Murdoch Exhibition Space are pleased to present CANOPY: On Helen Lessick’s Trees, a solo exhibit by Helen Lessick that is a must-see for cultural visitors, art lovers and tree-huggers throughout the summer of 2017.

Lessick has been investigating the imagery and metaphor of plants for decades and CANOPY showcases Lessick’s recent works with trees across the American west. CANOPY explores our experience of and protection by trees.  The exhibit coincides with the 30th anniversary of House for Summer, Lessick’s living tree sculpture growing in Portland’s Hoyt Arboretum. CANOPY shows Lessick’s many site-specific installations as well as sculpture, artists’ books and works on paper in one exhibit.

Passport PDX: Places Real & Imaginary

Portland, OR. –   Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present PASSPORT PDX: Places Real & Imaginary, a group exhibition of unique works by over 21 different regional artists that is free and open to the public through Saturday, June 3.

PASSPORT PDX: Places Real & Imaginary is part of the gallery’s focus in 2017 on engaging artwork that is both accessible and unique to Portland fine art champions. Organized by John Huff and curated by Jeffrey Thomas, the artists in PASSPORT PDX: Places Real & Imaginary have been selected for their particular styles of expression that effectively and intensely transport the viewer to a particular place or territory, ranging from traditional landscape painting to surrealism to the construction of abstract space.

Pretty Not Pretty

Following the positive public response to their exhibitions in 2015 and 2016, PRETTY NOT PRETTY showcases the ceramic sculpture of three of Oregon’s most celebrated artists who work with clay and fire as principal media: Amy Fields, Brad Mildrexler and Hiroshi Ogawa.  This group exhibition will take the viewing public on a journey through an exploration of beauty in ugliness, and grace in danger.

While many exhibitions generate their impact from the individual works of art that served as diverse ambassadors for the myriad forms of beauty that exist in the world, in landscape and in figuration that are generic to the Northwest art scene.  This exhibition PRETTY NOT PRETTY charts a completely different set of visual experiences.

PRACTICED EXUBERANCE: MARY HENRY (1913-2009)

Jeffrey Thomas is pleased to organize and produce Practiced Exuberance: Mary Henry with curator Senseny Stokes in the open and expansive Archer Gallery At Clark College in Vancouver Washington (just across the Interstate Bridge on I-5).  Clark College is closed for the holiday break, but this important exhibition will re-open January 10 and run through February 11, 2017.

Practiced Exuberance: Mary Henry is a mini-retrospective of sorts, showcasing both Henry’s earliest works in the mid-60s and the last paintings she completed in 2003, the Language Series which are being seen here for the first time.  This quartet sits opposite an On/Off pair of paintings from early 1968, which have lost none of their visual impact. 

In Search of Shibui

Portland, OR. – Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present HIROSHI OGAWA: IN SEARCH OF SHIBUI, an exhibition of wood-fired ceramic vessel forms that are remarkable for both their shape, tones and texture. There is an opening on Tuesday, September 13th with a celebratory reception for the artist in the Gallery from 6-­8 pm that is free and open to the public.

HIROSHI OGAWA: IN SEARCH OF SHIBUI is an engaging exhibition of a master ceramic artist who has been making exquisite ceramic vessel forms which are timeless and yet reflecting a heritage of craftsmanship when it comes to wood-­firing clay. With the help of the local community, and fellow potters, Hiroshi built a two-chambered wood firing kiln and christened it "Hikarigama", (“the illuminated kiln”). In the 35 years of living in Elkton, Oregon, raising two (now grown) children, he continues to experiment and explore the mysterious and controlled “accidents” in his practice of wood­-firing clay. 

Material Witness

Portland, OR. – Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present ELLEN WISNETSKY-MUELLER: MATERIAL WITNESS, an exhibition of drawings, wall and floor sculpture opening on Tuesday, September 13th with a celebratory reception for the artist in the Gallery from 6-8 pm that is free and open to the public. 

Only recently relocating her studio to Portland, Oregon, Ellen Wishnetsky­-Mueller grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She studied fashion design at Parsons and printmaking and painting at Wayne State University. Wishnetsky­-Mueller developed her abstract language in drawings and paintings but eventually developed allergies to the various materials she was painting with and was forced to stop. However, after overseeing an extensive house renovation and working with spatial relationships in a new way on that project, she turned to fabricating her sculptures. 

MIGRATION by Junko Iijima

June 29 – August 6, 2016

The opening reception will take place on Wednesday, March 9 from 6-8 pm.

This past January I was invited back to the Arts/Industry iron-casting residency at the Kohler Company in Wisconsin to make Migration.

These small iron and brass sculptures are a playful combination of traditional Nanbu iron tea kettles of Japan and contemporary pop cultural elements; fusing something new and old, East and West, to make art that is here and now.   Migration continues my exploration of the collision and melding of cultural signifiers from Japan with global popular culture…in a curious twist of an old cliché, now these objects are made in America.

The Color of Memory: A Group Exhibition Curated by Jeffrey Thomas

Portland, OR. – Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present THE COLOR OF MEMORY opening on Wednesday, June 29th with a public reception for the artist in the Gallery from 6-8 pm.

What is the color of memory?  Of all our human senses, what visual works of art can actively stimulate us to a sense of wonder, remembrance and revelation? 

We know that different smells can trigger intense and often immediate recollections of time and place in each of us.   The summer scent of new mown grass, pine-sap on your fingers or the aroma our own mother’s cooking are all examples of familiar experiences to us.   And speaking of cooking, taste is another sense that can transport us into our past.   Our sense of touch is another feeling that can trigger immediate and memorable responses in us: neither a kiss nor a fist are easily forgotten.  As for our hearing, play on!

Tooth & Claw: Recent Paintings and culpture by Brian Borrello

Portland, OR. – Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present TOOTH & CLAW: RECENT PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE BY BRIAN BORRELLO opening on Wednesday, May 11th with a public reception for the artist in the Gallery from 6-8 pm.

Brian Borrello works as a visual artist and designer, dividing his time between studios in New Orleans and Portland, Oregon. In his art for the public realm, Borrello constructs unique objects and environments that activate outdoor spaces in response to local history and context.   Over his professional career as a working artist, Borrello has designed and created sculptures for elementary schools, cancer treatment clinics, community gardens in blighted neighborhoods, and toxic waste sites.  

Mary Henry: The Fabric of Space

Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present MARY HENRY: THE FABRIC OF SPACE an important solo exhibition of select small jewel-like abstract drawings that Mary Henry created in her lifetime, spanning the mid-70’s until the end of her life.  Remarkable for the interplay of color value and form in their construction, these works on paper vibrate with a visual intensity that is both unique and palpable.

“I think her compositions are always so well structured and she used color in beautiful and unexpected ways. But I’m also interested in how her career is part of the larger story of modernism in America — from her early realist work for the WPA to her transition to Op Art and her embrace of hard-edged geometry. I think she always stayed true to the utopian beginnings of geometric abstraction, seeing it as the most fundamental artistic form — an art with universal meaning made for everyone.”      Courtney Gilbert, curator of visual arts, Sun Valley (Idaho) Center for the Arts

Visions and Revisions: A Five Year Conversation

Portland, OR. – The Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art gallery inaugurates its 2nd season of art exhibitions with Visions and Revisions: A Five Year Conversation, a group show that opens Wednesday, January 20 and runs through Saturday, February 27, 2016.

Visions and Revisions: A Five Year Conversation is installed as a visual dialogue among a group of seven friends who are painters, each with a very different approach to the process of
mark-making. For the past five years, however, they have committed to meet together as a group to engage, challenge, support and share an intense love affair with paint.  

Jamison/Thomas Gallery: 1985

This group exhibition Jamison/Thomas Gallery 1985 is a recreation of the Jamison/Thomas Gallery when it opened its doors in 1985.  Sales from the proceeds of the exhibition will benefit the William Jamison Scholarship Fund at PNCA.

Portland, OR. –.  Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present the historic retrospective Jamison/Thomas Gallery 1985 as the final thematic addition to this year’s exhibition calendar of curated group shows.  Jamison/Thomas Gallery 1985 is a recreation of the influential Jamison/Thomas Gallery circa 1985, with selected artwork on exhibition that is specifically dated to that period.  It is an opportunity for the many cultural denizens of Portland, both new and old, to immerse themselves in downtown Portland’s early contemporary art scene.  

Dark Matter

Portland, OR. – Following the positive public response to the exhibition Beauty in the Age of Indifference earlier this summer, Dark Matter takes the viewing public on a complete 180 degree turn into the shadows.  While Beauty in the Age of Indifference generated its impact from the individual works of art that served as diverse ambassadors for the myriad forms of beauty that exist in the world, the exhibition Dark Matter charts a completely different set of visual experiences.

Beauty in the Age of Indifference

Portland, OR. – Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present this provocative and engaging group exhibition “BEAUTY IN THE AGE OF INDIFFERENCE”.   This show has been curated by Gallery Director Jeffrey Thomas from the work of over 24 artists, each who explores the concept of “beauty” differently.

Drawing from artists across the USA, each individual work has been selected by Mr. Thomas for its distinct relationship with what the ancient Greeks called “” and which we call “Beauty”, in all its manifestations: by shape, by form, by idea, by color, by designation, by popular demand.   
This exhibition both celebrates and challenges our notions of what is beautiful, and what role beauty plays in a contemporary society obsessed and distracted by new technologies which have obliterated old ways of doing, and seeing, things.  These disruptive patterns of behavior, and our ability to constantly need to upgrade and adapt to them have taken us away from traditional appreciation of how important beauty is in our lives.

Garden of Delights: Select Paintings by Mary Henry

Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art is pleased to present this solo exhibition Garden of Delights: Select Paintings by Mary Henry.  Mary Henry is regarded by many curators and critics to be one of the most important artists from the Northwest working in the past century.  Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art believes it is essential to keep significant NW artists in front of the public through focused shows such as this one devoted to Mary Henry, a “Matriarch of Modernism”.

Born in 1913, Mary Henry attended the California College of Arts and Crafts at a time few women were sincerely accepted by the public and the art world as artists. Then, in the late '30s, Henry experienced a life-­‐altering moment whose full effect wouldn't command her life for another 25 years or so: a lecture by the Hungarian Constructivist pioneer and Bauhaus champion Laszlo Moholy-­‐Nagy.  So impressed with her work and discipline, Moholy-­‐Nagy offered Henry a job teaching with him at the “new” Bauhaus school he had started in Chicago, the Institute of Design. This was during a time when he had never hired any women teachers.  She turned him down, graduating with an MFA in 1946.

The Sum of Its Parts - Part 2

“The Sum of Its Parts” is curated around the concept of individual works of art that champion the concept of holism: that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, an empirical observation recorded by Aristotle in his Metaphysica from the 4th century B.C.

As part of that philosophical concept, “Part 2” will feature the same artists as in “Part 1”, but this time they will represented by a different work sited in a different location in the gallery, the visual equivalent of the same choir singing a different song.

These new works in “Part 2” provide` the viewing audience with an evolving visual experience built around a sense of familiarity from “Part 1”.   Return visits will complete the visual experience, a reward that is also greater than the sum of the individual parts.

The Sum of Its Parts – Part 1

“The Sum of Its Parts – Part 1” is built around the concept of individual works of art that champion the concept of holism: that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, a philosophical observation recorded by Aristotle in his Metaphysica from the 4th century BC.

This first installment, “The Sum of Its Parts – Part 1”, features the work of thirteen artists from all over the country, each piece assembled out of components of narrative, context, scale and media. New and different works from each of these artists will be installed over each of the next three months (Part 1 & Part 2), providing the viewing audience with an evolving visual experience that encourages return visits for a complete visual experience that is also greater than the sum of the individual parts.