After a brief visit with Z&A to deliver the quilt we headed home and on to Silverton, to the Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house known as the Gordon House. The house was built in 1963 after a design Wright made for Conrad and Evelyn Gordon in 1958 before he died. It originally sat on a site near the Willamette River at Wilsonville, and was moved in 2001 to The Oregon Garden to save it from being razed. It sits at the edge of the garden, nicely sited.
We’ve visited it several times over the years, but this fall R and painter Jim Shull curated a show of Charles Heaney paintings to hang in the house. Curators:
Evelyn Gordon was an art collector and had a large collection, dispersed at her death. As luck would have it collector Roger Saydack owns one of the paintings from the Gordon collection, and kindly loaned it to the Gordon House along with a vintage photo showing where it originally was placed in the house. It has been rehung in the same spot for this show…on the way into the kitchen…
In 2005 Roger Hull curated a show of the work of Charles Heaney at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, and wrote the definitive book on Heaney and his work…
and today he gave a few “remarks” (as we like to say)…
As the afternoon wound down, the early darkness made the paintings hard to see (of course the house doesn’t have gallery lighting) so Sarah Munro and Sue Horn-Caskey got inventive—Sue using her cellphone flashlight!
If you haven’t visited the house, it’s a beautiful drive to a beautiful place…and the bonus Charles Heaney show is up until November 30th. Better go take a look!
