Andy Warhol isn’t the first person who comes to mind when thinking about late Newport artist  Rick Bartow (1946 – 2016). Warhol famously represented popular culture while Bartow, a member of northern California’s Wiyot Tribe, was known in large part for how he portrayed Native American culture. Yet, exhibits by both artists bookend the High Desert Museum’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. The museum in Bend kicked things off in December of 2023 with Warhol’s Endangered Species series; Rick Bartow: Animal Kinship opened on September 20th.

When the High Desert Museum thought about how they wanted to celebrate the anniversary last year, Executive Director Dana Whitelaw said they immediately thought of Warhol. Whitelaw, a primatologist who has spent time studying lemurs in Madagascar, said the museum initially contacted Jordan Schnitzer and his Family Foundation solely about Warhol’s Endangered Species prints series. A departure from Warhol’s typical celebrities and soup cans, Endangered Species instead focuses on ten animals at risk of extinction (seven of those are still at risk). 

The Foundation, located in Portland, holds one of the largest print collections in the country, if not the world, and had so much more to offer. So, Endangered Species became the first show in a yearlong, three-part series of works on loan from the Jordan Schnitzer and his Family Foundation that focused on animals, the environment and our relationship to both. 

The second exhibit was Near, Far, Gone, a group show that included work by contemporary artists Ann Hamilton and Kiki Smith. Rick Bartow: Animal Kinship will be on view until February 2025. 

Bend is only one place in Oregon this fall to see a Bartow exhibit. Rick Bartow: Crow’s Fear is on display at Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene. On view until October 19, Clarke’s gallery has close to 28 pieces and unframed art, too. Clarke’s is a consignment gallery with the Rick Bartow Trust and the artwork she chose for this exhibit include large colorful pastels, lithographs, monotypes, and drypoint prints, small drawings and mixed media works on paper. 

Animal Kinship in Bend features sculptural pieces as well as 2-dimensional art, but the obvious difference between the two exhibits is that you can look at the artwork in Clarke’s gallery with an eye toward leaving with some of it in hand.  

Clarke was introduced to Bartow in 2008, when arts reporter and photographer Bob Keefer invited her along on a trip to Newport. Hired by the artist’s alma mater Western Oregon University, Keefer was writing a story about the artist. They met for lunch in Newport’s Nye Beach area before going to Bartow’s home studio. 

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Clarke said that, unlike other artists she knew, Bartow appeared to work on only one piece at a time. Standing in front of the only art in progress in his studio, he relayed a story. She was entirely engrossed in what he was saying when out of the blue he swirled around and made a sweeping mark across the page he was working on.  

“I was so surprised,” Clarke said, “I gasped.” 

Then, before she left that day, Clarke gathered the courage to ask if she could show his work at her gallery. He directed her to Froelick Gallery in Portland, who represented him. Seven years later, working with Froelick, she presented her first show of Bartow’s art, all prints. It coincided with the Jordan Schnizter Museum of Art retrospective Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain and it sold out. 

What is it about Bartow’s work that attracts people?  

“It has it all,” said Clarke, referring to the spectrum of emotion the artist was able to convey. His work communicates an enormous range of experience: from pain and suffering to humor and whimsy. He was Native American, a Vietnam veteran, and a widower. But even if you weren’t privy to the specifics of his life, his imagery is highly expressive – the range of emotions are all there. 

Just listen to any recording of him talking about his work and you’ll see that his ability to speak of difficult things, and then interject humor, was present in his personality, as well. In 2009 the High Desert Museum invited him to view their Indigenous Plateau collection of 7,000 objects, and recorded his response as part of their Art Through Ancestry program. 

Bartow found feathered objects in the collection that reminded him of things used by his grandmother in healing ceremonies. With gloved hands, he picked one up and described why he believed it wasn’t “just decorative.” Then he showed how his grandmother would have used the item. “These old things,” he said, “they make me cry ‘cause you can really see it. Where we were and where we are, where we can go…” 

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Afterwards, he returned to his studio in Newport where he was filmed in the process of creating For Roger, a work of art also featured in Animal Kinships. For Roger is a colorful pastel portrait of a bird drawn large to fill the frame. Just above its head, sort of stuffed into the format, is the face of a man. A figure depicted by Bartow is often accompanied by another that is hidden. In other words, the idea that we are not alone is a theme. 

Near the end of making For Roger, Bartow drew a curved line across the page. It was not unlike the one Clarke saw him make in his studio in 2008. Maybe that particular gesture held significant meaning for the artist. Or maybe he just wanted to add one last line to mark he was done, like putting a period at the end of a sentence.

Me and Spegi is at Karin Clarke Gallery, and though the subject matter is similar, it is done in an entirely different style. Instead of abstract and pastel, Bartow used tight hatching and line. Once again, a bird takes up most of the format but this time a man, identified as the artist, is positioned within the frame of the animal. The arresting part of the image, besides the placement of the figures, are the expressions on both bird and man: they are the same. 

For Roger and Me & Spegi feature the use of line in multiple ways: to create resemblance, with hatching to create values, erassure for symbolizing loss, and as gestural marks. Drawing was Bartow’s way into his subject, a process that allowed him to represent what he felt. It is not surprising then that the Whitney Museum of American Art–which acquired four of his works in 2022–is including it in What It Becomes, a group show highlighting drawing which is on view until mid-January, 2025. 

Autobiographical Hawk, a pastel and graphite work by Bartow at the Whitney, is both beautiful and frightening. Another double portrait of bird and man, it carries with it the feeling of a hurried piece, an unfinished sketch like one you might find in an artist’s sketchbook. But add more details, or erase any of the gesture lines, and the impact might well be lost.  

“Say hello to the elders,” Bartow said when looking at the feathered objects from the Indigenous collection at the High Desert Museum, “because we see evidence of them here. And so…they’re still alive.” 

The same could now be said about him and his work: Say hello to Rick Bartow.

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Rick Bartow: Crow’s Fear is at Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene, Oregon until October 19.  The gallery is located at 760 Willamette Street in downtown Eugene. It is open Wednesday-Friday from 12-5:30 pm and Saturdays from 10 am-4. pm. The gallery will hold a First Friday Reception on October 4 from 5:30-7:30 pm.

Rick Bartow: Animal Kinships is at High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon until February 2025. The museum is at 59800 US-97 and is open daily from 9-5 through October 31 and then from 10-4 beginning November 1.