Arts Hound

New Zone Gallery is never one to shy away from tough subject matter. Exhibiting 3D work by North Eugene High School sophomores, New Zone presents Strength and Resistance: Art of the Holocaust June 9-28 with an opening reception 4 to 6 pm Friday, June 13. 

EW sat in on a soiree hosted by The Gallery at the Watershed at Noisette Pastry Kitchen May 28, where gallery owner Amy Isler Gibson unveiled the Watershed Arts Foundation, a new nonprofit devoted to local contemporary arts education. 

Shameless plug alert: EW is very excited (like, in an uncool way) to announce a new contest, ArtsHound: Unleashed on Broadway. We want your art on our boxes. Head to eugeneweekly.com/artshound to submit original artwork by July 18. EW will then choose five pieces to be reprinted on vinyl, fit to an EW distribution box and displayed for the month of September on Broadway downtown, as well as being featured on September’s First Friday ArtWalk. Winning artists will receive $200 and will be highlighted in the ArtsHound visual arts special issue Sept. 20. Stop by the EW office (1251 Lincoln) to see a prototype distribution box wrapped with local artist Kari Johnston’s mural from 4th and Monroe.

Talk the talk and walk the walk: June’s First Friday ArtWalk is kicking off a new series called ArtTalk, the brainchild of former R-G arts writer Bob Keefer, which will precede the guided tour starting at 5 pm Friday, June 6, with a presentation by sculptor Jud Turner at the Hult Center’s Jacobs Gallery. In “The Art of Repurposing,” Turner will discuss the work he’s completed since the Mayor’s Art Show last summer with images of Hindu monkey god “Hanuman,” a coffee table commissioned by a JW Marriot in Houston, Texas, and “Blind Eye Sees All (No Secrets Anymore)” — a demi-sphere constructed from camera lenses fitted with glass eyeballs. “There’s always an eyeball meeting your gaze,” Turner says, laughing. “It’s really creepy.” The sculpture went viral, appearing on Boing Boing, and Turner is now selling mini versions that benefit the civil liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Bartholomew the Rhinoceros,” primarily made from motorcycle and snowmobile parts, will be at Jacobs Gallery in the flesh, er, steel. Turner sourced the material from Cyclepsycho, a motorcycle used-part shop owned by his buddy Dave Morgan. “They have a scrap bin that’s overflowing all the time and Dave lets me go through there and take out anything I want,” he says. This rummaging process will be at the heart of Turner’s talk. “There’s just a glut of shapes and objects and things that to me, as a visual thinker and artist, presents like a playground of objects,” Turner says. 

After the ArtTalk, No Shame Eugene Artistic Director Jeff Geiger (see cover story) will lead the tour to MODERN (207 E. 5th Ave.) for the 6th Annual Evening of Illuminating Design, with work from students of the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Next up is Studio Mantra, where stylists will create hair art with the theme “Gatsby and Gangsters” on five models. Over at 76 W. Broadway, don’t miss the pop-up gallery “REMIX,” a collaboration between DIVA and Blunt Graffix featuring “work of print artists from around the world.” Another must-see exhibit is Chicago by Rail, presenting 17 of Margaret Coe’s wildly colorful paintings “inspired by a cross-country train trip” at the Schrager & Clarke Gallery, running through July 12.