Open Studio Recap 07.25 | Pato Hebert, Gail Langellotto, and Eliot Spaulding

It was a warm July afternoon with smoke from distant wildfires wafting through when members of the Central Oregon community joined PMRCAA staff and artists in residence for the Open Studio. This event’s format was a little different; usually we rotate through each artist’s workspaces, and view their projects surrounded by the spaces in which they create. Due to unfavorable weather, we moved all three artists to the PMRCAA classroom.

Multidisciplinary Artist Eliot Spaulding

Eliot Spaulding delivered the first presentation of the night. On the wall behind her she had tacked pieces of her current “10 Knots” community-based installation project. This is a traveling and figuratively living art installment, where she asks communities she visits to contribute new knots. This project was inspired by her walks on the Santa Barbara beaches, where she studies (but does not remove) washed up, fossilized whale bones. The project has evolved into looking into migration patterns of whales and how cargo ships affect these patterns.

During the course of the event, embroidery hoops were passed around, inviting the Open Studio attendees to contribute as much or as little as they would like to “10 Knots.” She hopes to have one panel of the installation done by the end of the year. Her vision is to exhibit the finished piece in Santa Barbara, where the work was born and inspired.

Entomologist Gail Langellotto

Following Eliot was our entomologist-in-residence, Gail Langellotto. Growing up, she was always interested in science and Gail shared that she was the kind of kid to read the encyclopedia for fun, and that she was able to identify which bugs were hitting her car windshield by the splat pattern they created.

During her time at The Ranch, Gail collected all sorts of bugs specific to Central Oregon. Part of what was so exciting to her about coming for a residency was the opportunity to once again work on her own project. It has been 15 years since Gail, a professor at Oregon State University, has worked on her own rather than helping a student with their project. She needed to refamiliarize herself with pinning the bugs upon arrival, and she has since collected so many. Science, at times, can be a little dry and hard to grasp, but Gail has a knack for making learning and talking bugs and science lots of fun.

While she has been on The Ranch, she has spent most of her time out of her studio collecting bugs in the garden up at “Headquarters”, the pollinator garden, and the Kitchen Garden located at Hammond House, where artists stay during their time at The Ranch.

Artist Teacher Organizer Pato Hebert

The last presentation led by Pato Hebert, who is currently working on an installation that will be exhibited at Reed College September – December. Since March of 2020, Pato has been living with long COVID, which his most recent project is focusing on. One way long COVID symptoms shows up in Pato is through malaprops, the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar sounding one.

Because of his struggles with long covid over the past 3.5 years, he has logged over 500 malapropisms in his speech over the past 3.5 years. For his project, he is taking his mixed up words, and laser cutting them out of various types of salvaged wood to be put up on a gallery wall and exhibited at Reed. He hopes to be able to exhibit all 500+ malapropisms in his upcoming installation.

Overall, the Open Studio was a wonderful event with a wide variety of creativity and knowledge shared with the community. The artists noted that they enjoyed being able to listen to their fellow residents talk about their practice and projects. The community always shows up for our residents and is open to learning all about them and what they have to offer.