[Libs-Or] Traveling ART

[Ted Smith]

In October of this year, Newport Public Library will be offering for exhibit 17 original Rick Bartow sketches.  The sketches were given to the Library as Rick's way of saying thank you.  Beginning in August, the drawing will show at the Newport Visual Arts Center.  The show runs through September and will then be made available for public libraries in Oregon.  Please look at the catalog (attached) and read excerpts from the catalog below.  If you are interested in displaying these works - all of celebrated authors - send me your contact information.  You will need enough display space for these framed works that are all in the 18 x 24 range.

>From the Heart: Author Drawings by Rick Bartow
has been an exhibition-in-the-waiting for nearly 20 years.
In 2000, Rick Bartow-Newport, Oregon's native son
and internationally recognized visual artist-donated
a portfolio of seventeen small portrait drawings to the
Newport Public Library.

In the From the Heart exhibition-artist-titled-
Rick Bartow captures the faces of W.H. Auden, Bertolt
Brecht, Robert Bridges, Joseph Conrad, Emily
Dickinson, T.S. Elliot, William Emerson, A.E. Housman,
Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Archibald MacLeish,
Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandberg, John Steinbeck, A.C.
Swinburne, Leo Tolstoy and Elinor Wylie. The series
includes mixed media on rice paper and repurposed
papers (often letters and envelopes from friends).
Bartow uses watercolor with pencil and pastel markings.
Look closely, and each mark has a particular signature.
(The author names are drawn in the artist's non-dominant
left hand, creating a childlike title for each work.)

"Rick lived surrounded by books, piles of books,
stacked about his chosen place of comfort and
observation-his perch at the edge of a second story
picture window that encased a chryon of the Nye
Beach neighborhood," writes Karen Murphy, Rick
Bartow's longtime friend and trustee of his estate.
"And always the books, piled high or resting on edge,
interspersed with periodicals, art magazines, Indian
Country Today, cards and letters from friends and
admirers from around the world: a crazy quilt from his
curious mind and ever-evolving imagination."
"In the abyss following the death of his wife
Julie, Rick expressed his gratitude for authors in the
form of the drawings in this exhibit. With minimal
lines and an abbreviated palette of pastels, he portrayed
these men and women with loving seriousness.
Further, Rick chooses the ephemera of his life and
vocation as the background of the portraits. This choice
reveals his sly, dry sense of humor-Indian style with
multiple meanings."
"Rick came to the library daily as volunteer to help
get the books back on the shelf after the library expansion,"
writes Wyma Rogers, the Newport Library Director
at the time of the donation. "Rick said it was part of
what he did to get back into painting. He credited the
library with helping him get through his grief."

Ted Smith, Director
Newport Public Library
Newport, OR 97365
541.574.0600

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