A recent encounter with a stranger yielded a gift. She had perused my art website, found it to her liking and saw parallels in choice of topics to a favorite artist of her’s, Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. She gave me a catalogue of his recent show in Boston, Just Is, that pretty much blew my mind. The gallery website below contains biographical and artistic information.

https://www.puckergallery.com/artists/#/samuel-bak/

I had, of course, never heard of the guy. Nor had I heard of any of the women painters focussed on abstract work that I was able to see at a different exhibit in Boston two weeks ago. Today’s photographs give you a pretty accurate description of the range  – from boring to fascinating, traditional to truly inventive. The ones that had an implied narrative stuck with me for the longest – it is just easier for most of us to remember a story than to recall a pattern, no matter how beautiful.

Given the sheer number of people able to make art these days, and the number of real and electronic outlets available to bring the work to the public, it is of course not surprising that even people who are keen on painting or other forms of art know only a minuscule percentage of what is out there. Which brings us to a local treasure, Oregon ArtsWatch, an invaluable source of information when it comes to being better informed about art.

Beverly Hallam, Crossed Rock, 1966

About 6 years ago a group of the smartest journalists in town decided to fight the attrition of art news that went hand in hand with the downfall of local print journalism. Single handedly, without serious financial backing at the time, and for all I know around a kitchen table, they started publishing a nonprofit online arts journal,  orartswatch.org

Lest you think that a business model á la The Little Art Critics that Could is doomed, marvel at their success: the group has posted more than 3,000 stories that attract tens of thousands of readers every month. They have sponsorship agreements with more than 40 arts and education organizations, content-sharing partnerships with TravelPortland and Artslandia, more than 200 individual donors (most of them sustaining, annual donors), and an active social media presence.

Barbara Takenaga,  Tremolo, 2005

Writing is done by a diverse set of free lancers of whom 30 or so regularly contribute. Diverse indeed: the organization aspires to offer view points from a variety of writers in terms of age, educational background, active or passive involvement in the arts and political orientation. The only constant element is the quality of the writing. The founders focus on identifying contributors of younger generations and mentor them in what could otherwise be yet another endangered species: smart art criticism.

Meg Brown Payson, Drift, 2006

I learn much from them, beyond staying informed as to what’s going on around town. The essays make me think about my own approach to making art, my difficulties within the art scene, my desire to combine my political reasoning with my creativity as a photographer and writer. I am friends with some of them, owe all of them.

Christin Baker, Diaphanous Leverage, 2016

Do yourself a favor and sign up to their website http://www.orartswatch.org

or Fb  page https://www.facebook.com/ArtsWatch/.

Do all of us a favor by supporting them, if you can, financially, since every $$ comes back to all of us in added value of knowledge about art at a time when art education has dropped from the agenda. Nonprofits like this are never out of the woods – they need us, almost as much as we need them!