This is the JundtArt Museum's second Drawn to the Wall exhibition. In 2001, Museum Director

Scott Patnode asked five artists to draw on five separate walls in the Jundt Galleries. For two

weeks, at various times of the day and night, the museum was turned into a studio. The artists

worked on their individual pieces within the communal setting of the gallery. The results were

wonderful. Not only did the exhibition highlight work by important regional artists, there was

an immediacy to viewing works so recently completed, and so specifically created-not only

for the space but also in it.

Now, three years later, Patnode has selected a new group of artists. The parameters remain

much the same. Each artist is assigned to a 12 foot tall, 8 foot wide, utterly white wall. Each

can do with it what he or she wishes. The selection again is diverse. Because these artists

customarily work in media ranging from intaglio to computers, from found objects to paint, one

is tempted to arrange them in groups. Kurtz Vogt and O'Rourke are known as painters. Skubinna

is a sculptor, and Kolbo and Kirishian are printmakers by training. But the aesthetics, styles,

and concepts are so individually varied-from the rhythmic abstraction of Skubinna, to

Kirishian's dark coats of color, to Kolbo's appropriated images from popular culture-that

grouping seems irrelevant. As you read this, after fourteen days of work in late August, Jeanette

Kirishian, Scott Kolbo, Allie Kurtz Vogt, Kay O'Rourke, and Bradd Skubinna will have onceagain transformed the Jundt.

Jeanette Kirishian's personal history underpins her warm yet expressive paintings and prints.

Her father escaped the infamous 1915 massacre of the Armenians and came to this country

as a young man to set up an oriental rug business. Kirishian's childhood was filled with family

lore about both weavers and the Armenian tragedy. A printmaker by training, she received her

MFA from the University of Iowa, studying under Mauricio Lasansky, who urged the young

artist to investigate rug designs as a basis for her work. Years later, Kirishian still uses the

word "weaving" as a'sirnile to describe what she does. The term is apt, not only because she

adapts traditional images from rugs, abstracting them to create new visual arrangements, but

also because she uses multi-directional lines mimicking the weaving process. In addition, like

traditional weavers, Kirishian sees these iconographic abstractions of animal and vegetable

life as a way of layering visual information to communicate. Yet her work is never didactic.

She says, "I really try to keep references metaphorical. I use [these images] to deal not just

with the past, but also [for] more contemporary issues-such as destruction, war and the

environment ... " She does that well, blending folkloric images with modernist painting and

printmaking techniques to create a contemporary form of expressionism.

Scott Kolbo, also a printmaker, received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

His work has been shown throughout the western United States as well as in Chicago, Phila-

delphia and other cities. An enormously popular professor of art, Kolbo's proposal to develop

a collaborative project among departments at Whitworth College, was recently awarded an

NEA grant for the academic years 2004-6. In addition to Kolbo's success in linking disparate

disciplines within the academic community, as an artist he shows an equally savvy willing-

ness to mix and use every kind of print technology. His work easily straddles the very contem-

porary world of intermedia while remaining grounded in the long established world of social

satire. Like artists Sue Coe or Enrique Chagoya, he is interested in themes of justice and

access. While he uses all print tools available-from intaglio, lithography, web based art,

video and computer manipulations-Kolbo's application of multiple media never gets in the

way of his ideas, his loose lines, and careful rendering. He creates slightly mysterious,

usually provocative, narratives that retain an uncanny visual grace. Ordinary people in awk-

ward situations share the picture plane with advertising icons and biblical figures. Mixing his

visual metaphors grandly, he raises unsettling questions about what he describes as "our

media-soaked, self-absorbed culture."

Allie Kurtz Vogt produces the most autobiographical work of all the artists here. She re-

ceived her MFA from Colorado State University and is currently represented by the Chris

Kraisler Gallery in Sandpoint, Idaho. Conceptually, Kurtz Vogt has long focused on rituals in

her work, gathering objects and reconfiguring them into actual altars. Citing her Catholic

childhood as a source of inspiration for this, she describes collecting as central to her work-

ing process. She emphasizes that it is small observations, such as "the curve of a chair leg,

or the pose my dog takes," that give her ideas, and that reassembling these fragmented

personal records is what informs her work both conceptually and actually. The results, whether

it is her small pastels, her paintings, or the large installation seen at the Chase Gallery this

past fall, are inevitably marked by complicated symmetry and brilliant color. Kurtz Vogt sees

the time frame of this project with its two-week schedule as a challenge. She is doing some

preparatory drawings, arranging visual ideas in her studio, but also very much wants to

respond "to the immediacy of the space ... " adding, "Of course it will have color."

Kay O'Rourke has built a reputation in the Inland Northwest for her loose, painterly scenes

of people, animals, and lush vegetation. Educated at the University of Washington as well

as Gonzaga University, she exhibits regularly with the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane.

Strongly influenced by myths and folktales, she points out that the things of every day life

take on magic and become mythical. One sees that in her paintings, where beautifully drawn

gardens and domestic scenes are undercut with intimations of fantasy, often as disturbing

as they are alluring. O'Rourke sees herself as a storyteller, stating "I like to ... take a story

that interests me and push it in all different media." In addition to her painting, O'Rourke is

also a sculptor. A number of years ago she developed an alternate persona, Wake Robin, to

claim authorship for these works. In 1997, O'RourkelWake Robin won an award at the

Bellevue Arts Fair in Washington. Reflectively, O'Rourke describes the process of working

in different media, separated by an alter ego, "I think this did several things. For one, it made

me a better artist, [but] it also took on other meanings. It's like being a kid, being able to play

with toys-it gave me an opportunity to make an entirely new environment for myself."

Of the five artists here, Bradd Skubinna's work is arguably the most abstract, the least

referential to external ideas and motifs. Skubinna's work typically focuses inward, directing

our attention to its materials and his working style. Originally from Spokane, Skubinna spent

a number of his adult years living first in Seattle and later in New York City where he re-

ceived his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Represented by the Lorinda Knight Gallery

locally and by Francine Seders in Seattle, his work is a contemporary form of minimalism.

Constructed with acute attention to detail and pattern, initially it has an ephemeral, fragile

appearance. The Oregonian art critic Jonathan Raymond compared Skubinna's light touch

to the "warm whispering voice [of the late] Gonzales-Torres." Skubinna, like Felix Gonzales-

Torres, Wolfgang Laib, and others, makes art that creates a sense of quietude. Using scraps

of plastic bags, bits of cellophane, discarded envelopes, or tape, he carefully, painstakingly

transforms this refuse into unlikely elegant sculptures, tapestries, and tableaus. Skubinna works

with materials that would be considered detritus in anyone else's hands. Part of a rising tide of

artists, Skubinna's work reclaims formerly discarded notions of beauty and decoration and

renders them both moving and relevant.

There is something enormously satisfying about this project. Although not unique (it has his-

torical precedents in exhibitions by artists such as Jim Dine, Sol Le Witt, GRONK, and others),

it nevertheless remains an idea antithetical to traditional museum practice. Instead of curating

specific, already completed works, this time the museum privileges what artists actually do.

There is an element of trust that the works will be successful, but even more startling for

museums (with their habit of archiving and collecting), is, that at the end of this exhibit, like

rabbits returning to a magician's hat, the artists' efforts will be painted over and returned to

their former status as simple gallery walls. That this is done for us, the public to witness, and

that the work is not designated as a commodity for later trade, sale or collections, places it into

the category of performance. It is a performance piece based on the most fundamental studio

practice: artists making marks and exploring ideas.

Frances OeVuono

Contributing Editor, Artweek, Professor of Art, EWU, and artist.

This publication was funded by the Jundt Art Museum's Annual Campaign 2003-2004

©Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258-0001.