Go to any wine-tasting room in Yamhill County—or anywhere in Oregon, for that matter—and chances are pretty good you’ll see art on a wall or two, perhaps everywhere.
Not surprisingly, this is true at A to Z Wineworks in the hills just east of Newberg: It is, after all, one of the largest wineries in Oregon. But there’s a crucial difference here: Virtually all the art was produced by artists who had a hand in making the wine.
What started several years with an unusual proposal by an Oxford-educated software engineer has evolved into a permanent collaborative project in which the making of wine—which itself is regarded by many as a kind of art—is merged with an artistic practice inspired by that making.
A-to-Z’s unique artist-in-residency program is now in its fourth year, and an exhibition by the current artist, Krystyny Vandenberg, a recent art school grad from Los Angeles, is on display at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg. A Break in the Clouds, featuring painting and textile work about “themes of community and identity and the difficulties of forming relationships,” is in the Central Gallery though Oct. 24.
It was produced over the last year in “the biggest studio I’ve ever had,” she told me last spring as she showed me her sprawling work table in a cozy, ramshackle of a house on the A to Z campus just a minute’s walk from where the noisy and messy business of making wine occurs. It’s a 15-month residency; Vandenberg arrived late in August 2023 for full immersion in winery operations.
“They were clear that they want you to work hard, and then you can paint,” she said. “I’m pretty adventurous, and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It seemed odd, but I like combining art with other disciplines, like art with archeology or art with winemaking. I think you can learn a lot about art by combining it with another field of research, so I was just really intrigued.”
The view of winemaking as involving an aesthetic instinct notwithstanding, the art/wine connection and even the idea of embedding an artist in the production of wine with an eye toward seeing what sort of art came out on the other end also struck A to Z co-founder Deb Hatcher as a little strange, too.
The concept was proposed by Adrian Chitty, the former engineer. After a couple of decades firing the logic-oriented cognitive processes of his brain’s left hemisphere at full capacity, he felt the pull of the right hemisphere, where imagination and intuition are thought to dominate.
He was intrigued by craftspeople and artisans who make things with their hands. Knowing he and his family were headed to Oregon, he reached out to Hatcher with the idea. After the initial wariness about an email from a stranger who was then overseas, she warmed to the idea.
Chitty’s 2019 residency culminated in what is now a staple of the program: An exhibition at the CCC. The title, Transformations: A to Z Wineworks’ Artist-in-Residence — a Year in Review, said as much about Chitty’s evolution from a self-described “computer guy” to an accomplished photographer as it did about the subject of his rich imagery: The alchemy of turning grapes into a bottle of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir or Riesling.
His photographs, documenting that year’s harvest and capturing the symmetry and order he now realizes is hardwired into his right-brain perspective, are now on permanent display in A to Z’s spacious tasting room. There’s also an interesting project he’s completed since then: a year-long photographic documentation of a single grape vine.
Hatcher says it’s another illustration of how long-term embedding filters into an artist’s work.
“It takes us one year to make every one of these bottles of wine, one whole year,” she said. “Our artists get a real deep appreciation for that, for the connection to the earth, for the fact that we’re growing these grapes, they’re out in the dirt and we’re going to make this into a lovely thing. That sensibility is what I think is supported by our company doing an artist-in-residency.”
When Vandenberg learned of the opportunity, any initial uncertainty she had about the wine/art connection was offset by having recently read the 2017 book Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts, in which the British archeologist Alexander Langland argued for a deeper understanding of how craft is related to life itself.
“That’s how I got interested in wine and craft,” she said. “He talked about wine-making, fence-making, and how that was an art form back in the day. In grad school I became very interested in craft and how it relates to family. It was through reading his book on craft that got me to connecting the dots between wine-making and the arts.”
Vandenberg and Hatcher share an interest in art history. The latter minored in the subject, and even since getting her degree from the Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles, Vandenberg has continued her study of art history, reading books and perusing the academic literature available through the JSTOR database. She’s particularly drawn to pre-Renaissance paintings, and she feels that’s influenced her style, which she describes as “very flat.”
“These very flat religious paintings are just fascinating, they use wonderful colors, and they were just starting to use perspective,” she said. “There’s something very modern about them, very contemporary, and I really like combining historical aesthetics and motifs with contemporary aesthetics, because we’re always affected by our past. Also, a lot of my work comes from a very graphic design style, very illustrative. It’s not too realistic or cartoony; it’s somewhere in between.”
Family, in fact, is a theme that comes through in Vandenberg’s paintings, which begin with a photo before becoming a drawing and finally a painting. In one, which appears to be set in the artist’s on-site residence, they are gathered around a table with bottles of wine. Most include A to Z workers, and some attending the opening night reception in September recognized colleagues—even those whose faces are not visible.
“What was most exciting to me was how many people from the company on a Friday night didn’t go home but came out and supported Krys,” Hatcher said.
“It’s always a fun thing to do,” Vandenberg said of artist receptions. “You make work in isolation for a long time, like a year. It’s nice to have people around it. Everyone is always very encouraging and very positive, telling you what they like about it.”
Two other artists did residencies after Chitty’s first year. Hatcher’s daughter Hadley, whose music work was shut down during the pandemic, turned to painting and landed the residency. She was followed by Nieko McDaniel — like Krystyny, a Southern California artist — who works almost exclusively with recycled and reclaimed materials.
Chitty has been there for all of them, and he’s counseled them simply to immerse themselves in the experience as fully as they can, to “just really get under the skin of this place” and stay true to their own vision. “You’re here to express yourself and your response to the experience.”
“In 2019, I had no idea how this would evolve, whether there would even be another artist, but here we are with number five about to start,” added Chitty. “And I walk through the tasting room and I see all the artwork hanging and it’s like, ‘Wow, this is a thing.’”
David Bates is an Oregon journalist with more than 20 years as a
newspaper editor and reporter in the Willamette Valley, covering
virtually every topic imaginable and with a strong background in
arts/culture journalism. He has lived in Yamhill County since 1996 and
is working as a freelance writer. He has a long history of involvement in
the theater arts, acting and on occasion directing for Gallery Players
of Oregon and other area theaters. You can also find him on
Substack, where he writes about art and culture at Artlandia.
2 Responses
You have the functions of the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain mixed up. Left is analytical, mathematical, logical. Right is holistic, creative, emotional.
Thanks, August. You’re right. We’ve now switched those hemispheres in the story to their correct positions.