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Title
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Mountain II
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Creator
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Madeline Janovec
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Artist ID
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95
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Date of Work
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1987
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Description
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Colorful volcano with pink lava; mountainside in violets, magenta, and teal.
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Category of Media
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Print
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Media
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Monotype on paper
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Accession Number
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1987.002
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Location
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0449a - FF3
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Date Acquired
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1987
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Dimensions of Work
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29.5" x 22.5"
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Frame Dimensions
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40" x 32"
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Frame Type
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Aluminium
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Donor or Seller
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Janovec
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Condition Statement
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1/2023: Good condition. No issues noted at this time. Needs a frame.
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Artist Bio
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Portland, OR-based artist Madeline Janovec (1935-2011) was a creator, mentor, educator, feminist and promoter of the artistic community throughout her 40-plus years in the Portland area. Even before she became an art appreciation teacher at Clark College; opened her own art gallery on Southeast Holgate Avenue, and had some of her monoprints donated to the Portland Art Museum, Janovec, her sister Stephania Potter says, had "quite the life." Over the course of her early marriages, Janovec had one husband who raced English sports cars in La Jolla, Calif., one who took her to Hawaii where he was a bartender in the army, and another who she would accompany on rugged work trips to Alaska.
"She was quite industrious, very hard working and had lots of energy," Potter says.
When Janovec was a student at California State University, Northridge and living in an artist colony in Topanga Canyon, she decided to focus her life on art.
"She always wanted to be a full-time artist -- that was her number one," says Potter, who left home and lived with her sister in 1964.
Later that year, Janovec transferred to the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1965, she was Portland-bound with her husband, Morton Kaplan, and pregnant with her only child, Pietra.
After Janovec graduated from Portland State University in 1971, her family joined her parents on 80 acres of forest on the Washougal River, where they would build a cabin and farm the land for nearly two decades.
Based out of that ranch, Janovec worked as a traveling arts teacher for the school district and at Clark College, but she also wrote on her website how the beauty of the Pacific Northwest inspired her artwork. Karen Swallow, a former president of the caucus, says the establishment of the group paved the way for future accomplishments by Janovec, including international art exchanges between Portland and communities in Korea and China.
"My drawings and monotypes come out of this living in this wholeness in the moist Northwest -- everywhere I look I see bursting, growing, moving life," Janovec wrote.
As the 1970s transitioned into the '80s, Janovec continued her studies, this time at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Around the same time she ventured to start the Oregon chapter of the Women's Caucus for Art.
"This woman fought for women's rights in the art world, way, way back," says Swallow. "She was just a devoted advocate for the arts."
Harriet Levi taught women's studies at Clark College but says she really got to know her friend Madeline after Janovec moved from the farm to Portland and when they were roommates, in 1995, during the U.N. Council on Women in Beijing.
Levi calls Janovec "instrumental" in bringing an exhibition series from the International Women Artists Council to Portland for its first time in the U.S. last August, and "forceful" in creating the connection with the Daegu Artists Association in Korea.
"She was a very forceful woman -- she also drove us crazy because she was very opinionated," says Levi, "But you need to have someone kicking you in the pants sometimes."
Friends credit Janovec for her influence in founding Portland Open Studios, Brooklyn First Friday and the Brooklyn Art Walk -- but it was her legacy as a mentor that stood out.
Source: https://www.oregonlive.com/lifestories/2011/03/life_story_madeline_janovec_a.html
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Abstract
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Pictured in vintage scan: Warren Dunn, Dick Stensrude, Joan Henson, Jim Lehman, Sue Hennum, Jim Archer, Roger Baker, Elsie Petrequin, and Madeline Janovec
