Rick Bartow’s life and art are both works in progress
Oregon artist and WOU Alumni receives national recogniton mixing native american themes with personel experiences to create unique visual metaphors
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Excerpt from the Spring 2008 Alumni Magazine -Full PDF article | download issue | University Advancement | Alumni publications
In 1965 a skinny, nervous, short-haired and naïve freshman named Rick Bartow set foot for the first time on campus of the Oregon College of Education, now Western Oregon University.
The grandson of a Wiyot Indian who came to Oregon from Northern California and settled on the coast, this young student grew up on his grandfather’s homestead near Newport. He was a rough kid who liked to draw. His horizons hadn’t expanded much past the misty confines of the Oregon Coast before then-art department chairman Hal Chambers awarded Bartow first prize in a youth art competition. Chambers wrote a letter inviting him to apply to the teacher’s college. Bartow quickly accepted.
Even a place like Monmouth seemed a long way away from what he had known, but the young man quickly settled in to life on the rural campus. “For a small town boy, Monmouth was perfect,” Bartow says. “A triumph of friendliness over size. I have never liked cities.
”Flash forward four decades. Bartow, still skinny but now gray around the edges at the age of 61, still loves small towns. He is sitting in a cafe in Nye Beach, a tony district of Newport, eating a sandwich and talking about art and life. Every other person who comes into the cafe on this Sunday afternoon waves and greets him by name, and Bartow, a hawk-faced, friendly man with thick-lensed wire-rim glasses, waves back and trades gossip. Dressed as he is in blue jeans and sweat shirt, he might be taken as a local tradesman.
Think again.
“Rick Bartow is one of the most significant artists in Oregon,” says John Olbrantz, director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Salem’s Willamette University, one of the many places Bartow has exhibited his art over the past three decades. “He blends Native American mythology with contemporary materials and techniques to create works that are at once powerful and evocative and speak to universal ideas and themes.
”Bartow’s evocative work has been shown around the world. He has had a solo exhibit at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His work has been shown in Europe and at the White House. He’s been shown at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. He’s been interviewed on National Public Radio.