Fine Arts

Spring 2014

A wider canvas

A new museum of art on the Washington State University campus in Pullman could be a multi-story glass-walled building in which students, alumni, and community members can venture in to an open and intriguing series of galleries.

The new building, now in the conceptual phase, will have more than twice the space of the current 5,000-square-foot museum and include four distinct galleries. It will rise out of the hillside across from the Compton Union Building on the site of the former fire station and current police station.

“It gives an opportunity to complete Terrell Mall in a way that reinforces the public quality of it,” … » More …

Winter 2013

History develops, art stands still

An art historian journeys into the Renaissance

Maria Deprano meets me in Florence just outside of Santa Maria Novella, a church consecrated in the early Renaissance. While the green and white marble façade is spectacular, we’re here to look into the mysteries of the basilica’s interior frescoes.

A 2013 fellow with Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti, DePrano has traded her post in Pullman for a year in Italy to research and write a book featuring a family of fifteenth-century Florence who appear in one particular set of the church’s frescoes. The Tornabuoni were art patrons who commissioned and were featured in artworks from some … » More …

Pat Siler works on mural in downtown Pullman

Fall 2012

Video: The making of Pat Siler’s Pullman mural

A video of Pat Siler and his downtown Pullman mural.

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Fall 2012

Mural, mural, on the wall

Pine Street Plaza Mural, 2009-2012

Artwork by Patrick Siler

Pullman, Washington

Artist and WSU fine arts faculty member for 32 years, Patrick Siler’s outdoor wall mural “Pine Street Plaza Mural” holds a prominent position in downtown Pullman. He completes the third and final panel this summer.

The WSU Museum of Art presented an exhibition this summer—Curator’s Choice: Patrick Siler Mural—showcasing the sketches and finished drawings that were a part of the project.

Read about the artist and project in “Patrick Siler ’61—On the wall.” Or watch a video about Siler.

Fall 2012

Patrick Siler ’61—On the wall

Patrick Siler points to a crack in the wall he’s about to paint. He points to another, and another. He has to fill those. And there’s that slanted place in the concrete he has to deal with. He can’t push his lift onto the sloped surface. Maybe he’ll build a wooden platform to roll the lift onto. And the tree in front of the wall, well, he’ll figure that out when he gets to it.

“I still have quite a bit of preparatory work on this wall,” Siler says, sitting in the Thomas Hammer café where the mural is located. “I’ve done a lot of … » More …

Summer 2012

Dog Days, Raven Nights

John and Colleen Marzluff, illustrated by Evon Zerbetz ’82
Yale University Press, 2011

Using field notes, personal diaries, and beautiful linocuts by Evon Zerbetz ’82, the Marzluffs chronicle their three-year endeavor to research the common raven, while raising and training sled dogs to help them with their work in Maine. Zerbetz is an artist in Ketchikan, Alaska, and illustrator of six books for children and young adults.

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Spring 2012

A delicious dilemma: Ingredients for a photographic still life

With Washington’s abundance of food, we struggled to limit the still life photo for our feature “A Feast of Good Things” to just a few ingredients. Besides the native, naturally occurring foods like shellfish and salmon, our state rates second in the nation in sheer number of crops produced. Here’s a sampling:

Olympia oyster While clams and other oysters reach market size in two years or less, the Olympia can take four to five years. Even then, it’s still quite small. Native … » More …

Bob Brumblay (left) and Dave Fitzsimmons holding works by Griffin

Spring 2011

An art history

Worth D. Griffin stepped off the train in Pullman in the fall of 1924 to find Washington State College’s art department barely four years old and with just one other full-time faculty member. Prior to that, the only art instruction offered was painting lessons for students with the pocket money.

But Griffin had come to help teach design and creative composition and build a program. The Indiana native had studied commercial and fine art in Indianapolis and at the Art Institute in Chicago. In addition to working as a magazine illustrator, he trained among American realists, artists focused on rendering unidealized scenes of daily life. … » More …

Fall 2010

Spiritual landscapes

Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings

From the Collection of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan

WSU Museum of Art, October 1–December 11, 2010

Ngamaloo, 2008, acrylic on linen by Elizabeth Gordon (Balgo Hills region)

Although the details and relationships vary amongst Australian Aboriginal groups, in the beginning the landscape of the world was formed by mythical ancestral beings. Every action of these ancestors had landscape consequences. According to the fine … » More …

Summer 2010

World of Mateo

Anaheim Vacationland by Matthew Leiker, 2007, acrylic on board

The work of Matthew Leiker

WSU Museum of Art, May 18–July 2

The World of Mateo is filled with images of an American subculture known by no particular name but seemingly related to road culture, California style, album jacket graphics of the 50s and our affinity for Hawaiian island iconography. Mateo celebrates a time of Tiki lounges, drive-in theater refreshment cartoons, and a plethora of music that bubbles vibrantly with the hypnotic tones of the ukulele, inspiring his imagination to create … » More …