Full day in Salem

We had a full and delightful day in Salem yesterday. It started with a leisurely morning, blogging in bed, breakfast on J.E.'s back deck, and then meeting Bonnie and Roger Hull at the Minto Island Growers farm stand and food cart for lunch - one of our favorite places in Salem. The salads and tacos ingrediants all come from the farm, harvested that morning, prepared and presented beautifully.

Minto island growers farm stand - from their website

Their were a lot of people there because it was a beautiful day and it is a popular spot. My eye caught a family of children in sun bonnets among the flower beds - what a lovely sight:

After a lovely lunch, and just enjoying being with friends we hadn't seen for a year, we all went to the Hallie Ford Art  Museum at Willamette University, an institution Roger Hull, who was an art historian at Willamette for 40 years (now retired), had a great deal to do in creating.

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, OR

The Hallie Ford is a wonderful museum. It specializes in the art of the Northwest, and in addition to its permanent collections, usually has special exhibits of Northwest artists. This time it had a very large exhibit of the work of Portland artist, Mel Katz, painter/sculptor. Photography was not allowed but here are some samples from the museum's web site, and Katz's website:

Some smaller sculptures by Mel Katz at the Hallie Ford

There is a whimsy in Katz's work. He described himself in a video at the exhibit as "seriously non-serious." A friend said to him, on viewing one of his sculptures, "that's totally absurd - it's wonderful," which he took as a compliment. He works in a variety of mediums: wood, metal, and even formica. In earlier years he painstakingly created his sculptures himself. Today he makes sketches which are then transformed (with his constant oversight) into very large sculptures by a remarkable team of computer experts and very high tech industrial equipment, which, e.g., can cut thin sheets of metal very exactingly with a highly pressurized stream of water!

Another exhibit at the Hallie Ford related to the part of eastern Oregon we had just traveled through. Two contemporary Oregon artists,  Christy Wykoff and Tom Prochaska, had set out to trace the journies that iconic Oregon artist, Charles Heaney (1897-1981) had made in eastern Oregon, locating the exact places where Heaney had created a drawing or painting, and then each creating their own rendition of it. It was absolutely fascinating to see artistic renditions and interpretations - each very different - of the very places I had just photographed the previous day, in a region of Oregon we love so much for its unique and stark beauty.

Tom Prochaska's pen and ink drawing of a scene on Rte. 20 coming out of Juntura, Oregon. 

Christy Wyckoff's gouache and watercolor rendering of Muleshoe Mtn in eastern Oregon.

We ended the day with a wonderful meal on the Hull's back deck. Good food and drink, laughter, sharing of our lives and experiences - what a good day ! 

                             Bonnie, Ellen, J.E., and Roger