Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum

click to enlarge Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum
Photos courtesy Jundt Art Museum
Art by Beth Rimmelspacher.

Writer Oscar Wilde said that "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

Could the same be said of landscape art — that it's a reflection not just of the natural world but also of the cosmic relationship between artist and nature?

Featuring 81 artworks exploring the theme of landscape, the Second Inland Northwest Juried Landscape Art Exhibition at Gonzaga University's Jundt Art Museum offers an opportunity to ponder the question.

Andrew Parker, one of 66 Northwest artists whose work was accepted to what may become a triennial exhibition, has a relationship with nature shaped in part by his vocation.

"I feel like there is a vein of my work that is very much place-based or inspired by locations," says Parker, whose training as an architect is central to his artmaking.

His mixed media artwork "Boundary Lines" pulses with color, mostly yellow and goldenrod, but also spring green, with agricultural elements reflected in the work: receding field rows shimmering in the sun, a fence line in perspective and a deconstructed barn.

"It's reminiscent of a location or of nature or of a landscape without specifically being a landscape," Parker says of the abstract piece inspired, in part, by the Palouse.

click to enlarge Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum
Art by Jen Erickson.

Cozette Phillips' freestanding sculpture "Reverie" is one of the few three-dimensional works in the Jundt exhibit, which runs through Aug. 24. Phillips describes it as "a monument and memorial to the many trees that once dotted the Pacific Northwest landscape."

To create it, she took molds of bark from trees cut down after wildfires, due to blight or cleared for construction. She then assembled the cast bark onto a concave sheet of metal, essentially flipping the curve of the tree inward, and mounted the whole thing onto a mirror-polished metal base. In addition, for the past five years, Phillips has added a thin layer of bronze powder to the surface of the bark "to symbolically reference the value of nature and record the passage of time."

"The inverted tree and mirror-polished stainless-steel base offer the viewer opportunities for reflection while confronting what has been lost due to environmental changes in the landscape," says Phillips, a Spokane Falls Community College art instructor and the college's gallery director.

The reflective element in Michael Holloman's painting "Coyote's Sweat Lodge" is more overt, yet like Phillips, the artist offers a glimpse of himself in the work as well as in describing his process.

"I don't have a drawn out idea immediately," says Holloman, an enrolled member of both the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, and an associate art professor and coordinator of Native Arts Outreach and Education for Washington State University. Instead, he says composition and color present themselves as he focuses on the landscape and natural world.

On the left side of the painting, what could be the moon against a sapphire blue sky is reflected in what looks more like the sun in a turquoise pool below. Similarly, the mountain on the upper right side of the composition can be read as partially shadowed — nighttime — while its reflection on the lower right side is brightly lit, suggesting daylight. Uniting the two halves is a smaller mound of earth, with a small, dark doorway.

"It exists as a physical place, but also mythical," Holloman says.

click to enlarge Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum
Art by Michael Holloman.

Both Holloman and Phillips participated in the Jundt's first landscape exhibition, "Close In."

Six years ago, in 2018, the museum hosted the large landscape exhibition based on the broad appeal of landscape art, both to the public and to area artists, explains museum director and curator Paul Manoguerra.

"We had about 4,000 people come see it that summer, which is a big group of people for summer given that campus is so quiet," Manoguerra says. "So that was lovely and then the artists seemed to enjoy it, including a number of them who said, 'I hope you're going to do this again.'"

Indeed, museum staff discussed making the exhibition a triennial, planning a recurrence in 2021. Instead, the Jundt was mostly closed during the COVID pandemic.

Fast forward to 2024. When the subject of a landscape exhibition came up, there was a new bit of timing to contend with.

"We were going to do the landscape show anyways, but [with] our themes and what we hoped the artists would present as their themes and their connections to the landscape and the way that they think about the landscape, it made sense to latch on to the 50th anniversary of Expo '74," Manoguerra says.

Staff looked through nearly 300 submissions, resulting in 81 works that span the spectrum of art media, styles, interpretations of the landscape theme, and artist backgrounds.

click to enlarge Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum
Art by Andrew Parker.

Located in one of the museum's forward-most windows, called the Arcade Gallery, Katie Creyts' etched and fused glass piece "Waves of Palouse" is the perfect welcome to visitors and a tie-in to Expo '74, which used similar hues of blue and green in its logo.

Museum staff incorporated Expo-like colors on several movable walls and pedestals inside the exhibition, providing a dramatic backdrop for such works as Gregg Caudell's stunning painting, "Decisions," at the main gallery's entrance.

Many of the works elevate familiar places, establishing a connection between place, artist and viewer. Kim Gardell's "Serene—Lake Curlew." Paul Kennar's "Dishman Hills." Gordon Wilson's "Riverfront Park AM." Rui Xue's "Vista House Mound."

Every season and time of day is represented, offering a full color palette, from the sublime to the most subtle. Kathy Kostelec's gelatin silver print, "Snow Sky." University of Idaho assistant professor and Moscow-based painter Aaron Cordell Johnson's "Grey Days of January." Robert Eacret's ethereal watercolor, "Delta Dawn."

click to enlarge Local and regional artists reflect on a landscape theme in summer exhibition at Gonzaga's Jundt Art Museum
Republic, Washington-based artist Gregg Caudell's "Decisions."

Robert Lloyd's digital "Tale of Two Cities" is subdued in color as well as content, offering a cautionary reminder about inequity and injustice, particularly for the unhoused.

Whether politically and socially laden or straightforward and naturalistic, vaguely familiar or downright specific, and in all manner of shapes, sizes, styles, and media, the artworks in the museum's landscape exhibition offer something for everyone.

Nodding, Manoguerra agrees. "Some of them are just old-fashioned pretty." ♦

Second Inland Northwest Juried Landscape Art Exhibition • Through Aug. 24; open Mon-Sat from 10 am-4 pm • Free • Jundt Art Museum • 200 E. Desmet Ave. • gonzaga.edu/jundt • 509-313-6843

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Carrie Scozzaro

Carrie Scozzaro has made a living and a life with art: teaching it, making it and writing about it since her undergrad days at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of Art. Her writing can be found in back editions of Big Sky Journal, Kootenai Mountain Culture, Sandpoint Magazine, WSU Magazine, and Western Art & Architecture...