Drawing by Laura Lucille Witman
Tonight Ampersand presents: The Morning After the Night Before Drawings by Laura Lucille Witman, 1927 to 1934. It's a classic example of an an amateur's body of work receiving the public treatment... which makes perfect sense since so many MFAs spend tens of thousands of dollars to replicate the effect. It's a classic case of cultural anthropology.
Here is there PR:
"Our July exhibition takes its title from a captioned drawing made in 1927 by a young woman named Laura Lucille Witman. The drawing is one of several found glued to the pages or loosely tucked away in a brightly-colored & brittle-paged scrapbook from the same era. Markings on the drawings allow us to deduce that Lucille was a sophomore in 1927 & was married by 1934, the year her maiden name gives way to O'Neil & the same year she made drawings of a lustrous Mae West & a wistful-eyed Hollywood cowboy. For a young woman living in Victorville, California, situated as it is on the fringe of the Mojave Desert, Hollywood must have been a glamorous dream made somewhat distant by the barrier of the San Bernardino Mountains. No wonder, then, that her drawings are filled with the risque trappings of imaginary movie starlets. They are flappers with lush lips, beauty marks, heart & arrow tattoos, garter belts & ever-distant, dreamy eyes. Arguably naive in execution, the drawings nonetheless convey the unique personality of a young woman enthralled by popular culture & the imagination of an amateur artist who made its visual language distinctly her own."
They also are presenting, "a selection of silver print photographs by Portland photographer, Bobby Abrahamson, who spent the better part of a year shooting Polaroid Type 55 portraits of the people he encountered on the streets of St. Johns, a distinct neighborhood in North Portland where Abrahamson lives. The show coincides with a larger exhibition of the same work at Blue Sky here in Portland during July."
Opening Reception: June 27 | 6-9PM
Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books
2916 NE Alberta St., B, Portland, OR 97211
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