Register-Guard
March 14, 2021
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While Eugene’s many creatives and arts-centered nonprofit organizations provide an industry foundation, there is no true municipal arts center that realizes the city's branding efforts. Until that time, however, Obie Industries owner Brian Obie aspires for The Gordon Hotel to serve as a spark and a setting for the city’s creative scene.
“It’s an opportunity for the community,” Obie said. “We’re really trying to build on that arts slogan that Eugene is a great city for the arts and the outdoors. We hope to provide that foundation.”
More than 150 pieces of local art from 84 different artists adorn the hotel’s lobby, corridor walls, and hotel rooms, with companion iPads throughout the hotel offering a catalog with bios, descriptions, and links to artist websites.
Expression will not be limited to visual art. Obie plans to include all types of arts performances in the hotel along with artists working and teaching throughout the location. Its artist-in-residence program, for example, is already underway with Eugene’s Alejandro Sarmineto painting acrylic street scenes and bucolic landscapes just inside the back entrance.
“I just arrived two weeks ago (from Arizona), and I am so excited for this opportunity,” Sarmineto said.
Vibrant art abounds in mass and number
Visitors to The Gordon will find themselves immersed in Oregon art. Even the light that’s shining down upon the lobby filters through a massive chandelier constructed from empty mason jars, designed, engineered and built by the Obie team and inspired by two Portland restaurants.
“It was a smaller space than this is, but I loved how the light reflected off the glass,” Obie said.
This is the aesthetic advantage Obie brings: As an artist and arts enthusiast, he has an eye and a mission to enable imaginative ideas.
“That is Brian. He has vision and he usually lets you run with it,” Gordon Hotel designer Midge Hoffman said.
Hoffman designed much of the outdoor and navigational signage, including the Gordon "blade." Fabricated and installed by Eugene Sign & Awning, the aluminum nameplate measures 15 feet tall, 20 feet wide and weighs in at 500 pounds and is mounted to a 4-ton base. Standing 112 feet above the street, the "blade" is illuminated by 396 LED bulbs.
Though a veteran designer, Hoffman’s never been involved in an art installation of this scope and magnitude.
“It's been great and it's been tiring, but those kinds of things are worth it,” Hoffman said. “It really is fantastic. I think it accomplished his vision and people are really excited.”
Hoffman’s curatorial perspective led her to contribute to choosing Gordon art and the flourish that embellishes the experience. Hoffman worked with Fused Glass Art’s Chris Paulson to ornament each hallway light sconce in waving, interlaced colors.
Paulson provided input and knowledge for Hoffman. Digital templates, for example, helped her to visualize post-fired, color-altered glasswork.
Completing the cooperative circle, Paulson was quick to credit Hoffman’s side of the equation. After creating the distinctive sconcework, the project scope expanded to include multicolored glass triangles that form directional mosaics at each elevator entrance.
“That was Midge’s idea,” Paulson said. “That stems from Midge being a quilter, so she has a real keen eye for things like that.”
Paulson founded his "2nd & Blair Artist Neighborhood" Whiteaker studio in 1994, specializing in handcrafted iridescent gift items, coaster sets, platters, bowls, frames and other home décor. His works has shown at American craft galleries across the country. The ancient glass craft has followed Paulson since his parents gave him a glass cutter.
“It's just one of those strange things in life where you get a fork, you do one thing and it leads you to that path,” Paulson said. “I found a niche that works. It's funny how you can trace it back to something as simple as cutting a bottle as a kid.”
With three decades of experience, Paulson crafts each piece from numerous glass sheets cut, assembled and melted at temperatures in excess of 1,500 degrees. After gradual cooling, Paulson then reheats the glass to more than 1,200 degrees to “slump” each piece into its individual shape.
The Gordon work was Paulson’s first job of this size. With over 50 triangles appearing with glass sconces appearing across six floors, there are more than 380 total glass pieces throughout the hotel.
“We got to see all the other work as well,” Paulson said. “The breadth of art is pretty impressive.”
Creative roots and cutting-edge displays
While the third through sixth floors will only be accessible to guests, the seventh floor will hold Carlita’s Rooftop, which opens up to expansive views of the Willamette River and the Cascade Range on clear days. And an open-plan second floor features the Ed Ragozzino meeting room, in honor of one of Eugene theater’s patron saints; and work from Obie’s sister, Florene (Flo) Ann Obie Scheid, and the eponymous Gordon Obie, Brian’s father.
“My father spent 50 years as an artist,” Obie said. “After Mexico, he came back to Eugene to spend his older days focused on painting Eugene’s history.”
On display in front of the first-floor elevators is muralist and painter Paula Litchfield’s tribute to Gordon Obie. Paint sprayed in confetti splashes back a framed pair of Obie’s painter’s overalls, from which a portrait of Gordon emerges, brush in hand. Surrounding the white-clad, paint-splattered man are photos of Gordon and his artistic signage.
As provided by public affairs counsel Jenny Ulum, Gordon was born on a homestead 20 miles north of Joplin, Montana, near the Canadian border. In the early 1900s, this was cold, hardscrabble prairie. Settlers looking for adventure and a better life had to earn it with hard work.
“Art was the only entertainment. He didn’t have TV up in northern Montana, up there in the middle of nowhere,” Obie said. “Art and a shelf of National Geographic magazines opened up the world for my father.”
Working his way through high school in Joplin, Gordon Obie went on to Northern Montana State College in Havre, Montana, where romance blossomed with a housemaid named Mildred. As a way to make money as an artist, Gordon began to paint signs for campus activities and local businesses around town. That was until a traveling circus hired the talented and cheap young Gordon to design various signs. After his first work, the company offered him a gig on the road.
“If you’re going, I’m going,” Mildred insisted.
So, away they went, Gordon as the snake charmer from Borneo and she a ticket vendor. They married in East Helena in 1937 and settled in Bozeman with Gordon opening a sign-painting shop in the back end of a hardware store.
Igniting inherent imagination
While The Gordon is an ode to Obie’s roots, the massive, digital display behind the hotel’s front counter is a futuristic tribute to Oregon.
As of March, a high-resolution “fantasy” Oregon waterfall stretches across 21 LED ultra-high-definition screens. With video stretching across that span, there are only some types of imagery and art that allow those images to mesh.
“Only 4K video works, and even then, it needs to be at least four or five 4K videos that we composite into a collage image,” Harmonic Lab co-founder John Park said.
The waterfall, then, merged five different landscapes to make it look like a single landscape. Unlike living room televisions, Park needed commercial-grade displays used in hotels, airports and restaurants.
“The difference being that they are not only brighter, but they can run for 24 hours a day without overheating,” Park said.
This partnership arose in 2018 with Harmonic Lab and Obie Industries aligning to inspire ideas and community through arts collaboration. Video works, for example, will be in rotation for the next four months, with new content coming every couple of weeks. And Park’s spring 2021 Public Video Art Practicum for Art + Technology students at the University of Oregon will offer a hands-on course on how to create video works for The Gordon’s video wall, with works culminating in a rotating gallery exhibition during commencement week.
Art for all
Originally, Harmonic Lab was planning community workshops with The Gordon, but the pandemic hit, canceling that possibility. As a UO instructor, though, Park was able to pivot. Similarly, pre-pandemic Obie Industries activities preview post-pandemic possibilities.
Illustrating this are 50 art pieces through The Gordon created by Obie Hospitality employees during pre-COVID “paint parties,” hosted by avid artist Obie himself. Obie decided that the group was going to feed their creative urge by providing large canvases, loads of paint, and a large empty space for employees to paint in. Most of them, Hoffman noted, had never painted anything, except for maybe a wall.
“Brian is a great believer in the idea that everyone is an artist, everyone can express themselves in an artistic way,” Hoffman said. “We all, I think, became believers, even the shy ones, that there is an artistic expression in all of us.”