Exhibit contrasts two portraitists/one model

How do artists’ relationships with their subject affect what they create?

By JEWISH REVIEW

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Portland artists Becca Bernstein and Gwenn Seemel have joined in a blind collaboration to demonstrate how portraiture is more than mere mimesis, that is, imitation or mimicry.

In their newest show, “Subjective,” which opens Jan. 7 at the North View Gallery on the Sylvania campus of Portland Community College, portraiture is presented as a living process that is personal to each artist.

Bernstein and Seemel have painted themselves and each other, as well as their parents, partners and other relations. The new show consists of two views each of 10 subjects. That’s 20 paintings of individuals immortalized once by a stranger and once by their kin.

The paintings are a tangible result of the relationship between the subject and the artist. Their appearance in the same show enables gallery-goers to see firsthand the influence of the differing relationships of artist to subject on the resulting work of art.

While portraiture is perhaps one of the most traditional art forms, Bernstein and Seemel’s concept and methods are intended for a contemporary audience who expect more than just a pretty face from art.

Dr. Richard Brilliant, a widely published authority on portraiture, a professor of art history and archaeology and the Anna S. Garbedian Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, will contribute the introductory essay for the upcoming exhibition catalog, which will be published in March.

Bernstein painted a series of portraits on patchwork quilt in 2005 of residents at a long-term care facility. That series was called “The Women at Pinewood Gardens.” She received a George Sugarman Foundation Grant for socially conscious artists as a result of that series.

That grant was used in 2008, along with a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant, to create a conceptual installation in the lobby of the Portland Building. The temporary installation depicted a fictional long-term care resident’s apartment and was called “The Last Room.”

An accompanying series of paintings called “Keyhole Miniatures” was shown simultaneously at Gottlieb Gallery. It comprised 100 very small paintings meant as glimpses into human lives.

Bernstein was selected last year by Southwest Art Magazine as an “Artist to Watch” and she was honored this year with a Puffin Foundation grant.

Seemel, who is not Jewish, volunteered at the Robison Jewish Home on the Cedar Sinai Park campus when she was in high school. She called it “a formative experience to my art-making since I used to draw the residents as we chatted. My afternoons spent there are some of my best memories from my teenage years.”

She also painted a portrait of CSP Rose Schnitzer Manor Administrator David Kohnstamm (himself also an artist). “He was my supervisor when I volunteered at the home and his portrait was part of a series about death and dying and the people who come closest to it in our society.”

The January exhibit at North View Gallery launches the 2010-2011 tour of “Subjective” to art centers throughout the Northwest.

A book launch for the catalog is set for March 5 at the Corvallis Arts Center while the exhibit is there. The exhibit moves to Bend in April.

The exhibition at PCC will run through Feb. 5. The PCC Sylvania campus is located at 12000 SW 49th Ave. in Portland. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

An artists’ reception is set for Jan. 13 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the North View Gallery.

For more information contact the North View Gallery at 503-977-4264, the Corvallis Arts Center at 541-754-1551 or Becca Bernstein at 503-724-6253 (beccabernstein@yahoo.com),