The Willamette Valley PhotoArts Guild is based in Corvallis, Oregon.
The purpose of the Willamette Valley PhotoArts Guild (PAG) is to:
1. Promote and support fine art photography in the Willamette Valley;
2. Provide members with an educational and social environment in which to learn from each other;
3. Offer members an opportunity to exhibit their work in galleries and on the Web.
4. Encourage the appreciation of photography within the community.
Membership:
1. Monthly meetings are open to the public on the third Thursday of each month (except August and December). Meetings are held at 7pm in the OSU Center for the Humanities on 8th and Jefferson and usually include an educational program. Guests are invited to join us at any meeting to see if our group meets your interests. Dues are collected in January and are currently $25/year.
2. Member benefits include the opportunity to participate in print critiques, field trips, group exhibits (including the biennial theme show at the LaSells Stewart Center), and social events (including the annual holiday print swap and summer bbq).
3. The emphasis of the PAG is on expressive photography (i.e., non commercial). Current members work in digital format as well as in film—from iPhones to large format—and represent the full range of photographic processes, from high-end inkjet printing to traditional and alternative processes.
Information:
For further information, contact one of the following:
Phil Coleman at pcoleman@casco.net
Bill Laing at wmblaing@gmail.com
Jack Larson at ljlarson57@comcast.net
Allan Doerksen at apdoerksen@comcast.net
Rich Bergeman at rbergeman@proaxis.com
Historical Timeline:
•1985–Five photographers begin to meet informally at the old Bijou Restaurant on Fifth Street in Corvallis to critique each other’s work and talk about photography. Among those first members were Kurt Norlin and Shelley Curtis, who remain members today, and Alfred Owzcarzak, who has since passed away. Within a year they began hanging their work at various informal venues around Corvallis.
•1988–Acting on a desire to broaden the community’s exposure to fine art photography, the group (now numbering about 20) adopted bylaws under the name PhotoArts Guild and became an affiliated guild of the Corvallis Arts Center.
•1990–the PAG organized its first invitational exhibit at the Benton County Historical Museum in Philomath. In the summer of that same year, the PAG participated in an exhibit exchange with the PhotoZone cooperative in Eugene, in which PhotoZone showed work at Linn-Benton Community College’s Humanities Gallery and PAG members displayed work at the PhotoZone Gallery in downtown Eugene.
•1992–One of the responsibilities of member guilds of the Corvallis Arts Center in the past was to organize, curate and hang exhibits on a rotating basis. The shows were to feature work in the guild’s particular media with regional scope and significance, and not simply be a member-dominated exhibit. As a relatively new guild member at the center, the PAG’s first such show was this year. Titled “The Not Necessarily Silver Photography Show,” the exhibit featured over 30 photographers from throughout the Northwest who work in non-traditional photographic media. Lead curator was Ann Zimmerman, one of the group’s founding members, and the juror was Susie Morrill of Eugene.
•1993–The guild sponsored a booth in the annual Corvallis Fall Festival for the first time, with members selling prints and handing out information on the guild.
•1995–the PAG sponsored a series of summer workshops on photography, open to the public, on such topics as the Zone System, b+w printing techniques, composition and other topics.
•1998–for its second major regional exhibit at the Corvallis Arts Center, the guild mounted “The State of Oregon Photography,” an invitational featuring eight photographers from Portland, Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon and the Coast. The photographers were juried in by a committee led by former member Mark Reid with the goal of representing the highest quality in a variety of photographic styles and media.
•1999–“Here and There”, a collaborative exhibit between the PAG and the PhotoZone was displayed at the Giustina Gallery at OSU’s LaSells Stewart Center.
•2001–The PAG’s first all-member group show was exhibited at the Giustina Gallery. “Marys Peak: Sentinel of the Coast Range” became the first in a series of biennial all-member shows that continues to this day, in which the group mounts a themed show in alternating autumns in the Giustina Gallery. The purpose of the biennial, as carried over from this inaugural exhibit, has been to inspire the community with aesthetic interpretations of our regions visual heritage. All members are invited to submit a small number of prints to exhibit, and a group of local poets was invited to display verses having to do with Marys Peak. Lead organizer for the show was former member Barry Wulff. Thanks to a donation garnered by Barry, the guild produced a catalog of the show, a few copies of which remain.
•2003–“Light on the Water,” the PAG’s second biennial exhibit at Giustina, was another collaborative show with local poets, this time focusing on scenes in the Willamette Watershed. It became the guild’s first ‘traveling exhibit’ in 2004, when an abridged version of the show opened at the Linn-Benton Community College Art Gallery in January and then moved to the Oregon State Capitol Rotunda in Salem for a February showing.
•2004–The PAG’s third major regional exhibit at the Corvallis Arts Center was staged in April. The brain-child of Owen Bentley, “Photographers Inspired: Sharing a Legacy” featured prints by 17 guild members, each paired with a print by an established photographic artist who inspired them and artists’ statements explaining the connection.
•2005–This year’s biennial at the Giustina Gallery was another collaboration with local poets, this time focusing on scenes from the Oregon Coast. Twenty guild photographers hung more than 50 prints along with the words of 16 local poets.
•2006–The PAG’s Camera Obscura makes its debut at DaVinci Days on the Arts Center Plaza at Central Park. Thanks to the engineering and construction skills of Dave Groner and former member Harold Wood, the black-plastic wrapped tent was such a big hit with festival visitors the guild has continued the Camera Obscura every DaVinci Days since.
•2007–“Our Town: Photographs of Where We Live” was the guild’s fourth biennial at the Giustina Gallery. Members were asked to “turn their cameras on their own backyards; to explore what their hometowns mean to them.” It coincided with the 150th anniversary of the founding of Corvallis.
•2009–This year, the guild mounted two major shows, a major regional exhibit at the Corvallis Arts Center, and another in its biennial series at the Giustina Gallery. The “Photography Guild Invitational” at the Arts Center in May showcased the work of five Oregon photo guilds: the PAG, PhotoZone (Eugene); the Portland PhotoForum; Inner Light Society (Portland) and the Interim Group (Portland). Curated by Rich Bergeman, the show celebrated the 170th anniversary of the invention of photography. In November, the guild mounted its fifth biennial members exhibit at the Giustina Gallery–“A Journey Through Oregon in Black-and-White: Along Rivers, Roads and Rails.” The brain-child of Dan Wise, the exhibit celebrated the state of Oregon’s Sesquicentennial year with a show of 80 photographs taken on, of, or from the state’s traditional transportation routes by 26 guild members.
•2011–The theme of the PAG’s sixth biennial was authored by Bob Ross. Called “The Nature of Oregon”, the show featured about 80 photographs by 30 members that portrayed the natural and cultural landscape of the state.
•2012–A new and greatly improved model of the PAG’s Camera Obscura, designed and built by Jack and Elizabeth DeAngelis, made its debut at the DaVinci Days Festival. Gone is the black plastic hot-box we’d been using for the past six years, replaced by a sleek, cool (in more ways than one) double-walled tent that’s much easier to assemble.
•2013–The guild’s seventh biennial member exhibit is called “Favorite Places,” in which the exhibiting photographers present a trio of images showing different views of one of their cherished photographic locations or subjects. A catalog-style book was published for the show, and it can be seen in its entirety here.
Also this year, the group joined with poets at LBCC to create their first joint exhibit of photography and poetry, called Ekphrasis. The catalog for that show can be seen here.
•2014–The guild inaugurates a monthly Critique Night, in which members are invited to show work and get feedback from their colleagues. Critique Night would go on to be a monthly staple for the guild in the years to come.
•2015–It was a busy year for community projects and exhibits for the guild. Members once again teamed up with LBCC poets to create an exhibit and catalog of pictures and poetry, Ekphrasis III (see the catalog here). Several members of the group, led by John Ritchie, embarked on an ambitious project to photograph portraits of elderly in local retirement communities to accompany their life stories written by LBCC students. The project, “Life in Art,” culminated in an exhibit and reading at the LBCC Benton Center. Finally, as in all odd-numbered years, the guild had its major member show at the LaSells Stewart Center–this year’s theme was rather controversial: “Life and Death.” The brainchild of Dan Wise, the theme raised a few eyebrows at first, but once the exhibit went up on the walls, its quality and breadth overwhelmed any reservations–it was full of uplifting and life-affirming photographs that were well-received by visitors (and only one road-kill shot!)
2016–The guild’s Camera Obscura makes its debut at the Corvallis Fall Festival. With the demise of the local DaVinci Days celebration in the summer, the Camera Obscura had been mothballed for a short time until resurrected for the Fall Festival to an appreciative audience.
2017–“For the Love of Oregon” was the theme of the guild’s 9th biennial exhibit at the LaSells Stewart Center, intended as a celebration of Oregon State University’s 150th anniversary as a land grant institution. Members exhibited images alongside text that described the connections between the photographs and the many ways in which OSU touches the local and state-wide community.
2018–A handful of members teamed up with LBCC writers and the Corvallis Multicultural Center to do portraits of international residents to accompany their stories. Due to a shortage of volunteers, the guild was reluctantly forced to cancel its Camera Obscura booth at this year’s Fall Festival.