The Oregon Coast Council for the Arts is pleased to welcome celebrated screen printer and poster maker Earl Newman to both the Newport Visual Arts Center (VAC) and the Newport Performing Arts Center (VAC) during October. His exhibit, “All That Jazz and More” will open September 10 at the PAC and October 2 at the VAC and will run through the 12th Annual Jazz Party at the PAC, closing October 2, and through November 1 in the Runyan Gallery at the VAC. Newman is scheduled to make an artist talk at 6:30pm on October 2 at the VAC, during the First Friday opening reception.
Earl Newman is perhaps best known for the silkscreened posters that he has made for the Monterey Jazz Festival in California. In these signature works, he has captured jazz legends such as Joe Gordon in the 1960s, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington and Dizzie Gillespie in the 1970s, Sarah Vaughn and Lionell Hampton in the 1980s, Joe Williams in the 1990s, and Etta James and Buddy Guy in the 2000s, to name just a few. “I’ve been doing this for 300 years,” Newman joked with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Art Beat show in 2009. And today, the Smithsonian’s Division of Musical History in Washington, DC, houses a complete collection of Newman’s numbered and signed Monterey Jazz Festival posters dating back to 1963.
“We’re thrilled to celebrate Earl’s work in both the Runyan Gallery and at the PAC during the 2015 Jazz Party,” says OCCA executive director Catherine Rickbone. “Much like jazz itself, his posters and prints are lyrical and flowing in their composition and color.”
“Art can be an addiction but also a companion,” Newman told OPB.
“And that’s a good thing, because the older I get I realize I have a companion in my art interest that’s not going to leave me.”
The “All that Jazz” exhibit will include his jazz posters as well as other works from an ongoing series of nature prints, and posters and prints Newman has made for the Oregon Shakespeare Theater, Oregon State University, the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Abbot Kinney Street Fair in Venice, California.
“I’ve been able to reproduce my designs in volume, usually 100 at a time,” Newman says. “It’s like having 100 canvases on which to experiment, using different colors of papers and inks, varying color blends as I go along.”
In 1972, Earl Newman, with his wife Jean and two daughters, moved from Venice, California to Summit, Oregon. Forty-five years later, he remains a self-employed artist living a rural lifestyle atop the Oregon Coast Range. Of course, he still loves jazz, nature and the smell of ink on a silkscreen press.
The Runyan Gallery is open 11am-6pm, Tuesday through Friday. The Newport Performing Arts Center is open 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday, and during weekend performances.