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A Renaissance man helps start a downtown
renaissance
 Jerry Ross, B.A. ’68 is an established painter
who has shown his work in Florence, Bologna and Rome. He is also a
man who cares about the arts in everyday culture, and believes it
should be part of everyone’s environment.
In 2003 he attended a conference featuring Richard
Florida, author of the “Rise of the Creative Class,” a study of U.S.
cities that have successfully revived their economies through
capitalizing on the arts. “It’s a Bohemian idea,” Ross says. “As the
number of different types of people in a community increases, they
in fact generate an artistic economy, bringing the creativity that
people find desirable in where they live and work. Lawyers,
accountants, doctors, scientists – the spectrum of various
disciplines prefer to locate in areas of rich, different
cultures.”
Taking inspiration from Florida’s ideas, and the
fact that his hometown of Eugene, Oregon does not have an art
gallery, Ross was instrumental in founding DIVA, the Downtown
Initiative for the Visual Arts, in Eugene.
DIVA now has a storefront location, but Ross hopes
the future will include erecting a new five- to six-story
freestanding building that will serve as the arts center for the
city that will house a permanent regional collection and an urban
art academy with room for classrooms and galleries. “DIVA is an
attempt to spark a renaissance in downtown Eugene through the arts.
We hope to be a catalyst for visual arts activities in the Eugene
area.
Lunch with the Mayor
Ross’s plan started in 2000 when he won the Mayor’s
Choice award in a local art competition. The prize was lunch with
Eugene Mayor Jim Torey, during which Ross proposed a municipal art
center. Many meetings later a committee was formed that created
DIVA.
“It was exciting to see an idea get implemented so
quickly. Although it took a couple years to take off, we now have a
physical location and plans for a permanent building,” Ross said. In
keeping with the ideas of Richard Florida, the concept of a
municipal art center is now written into the city arts plan. And,
plans for the permanent facility were designed by a University of
Oregon architecture class, and are being exhibited at DIVA. “Over
250 civic and arts leaders have been invited to see the exhibit. Who
knows, maybe we will actually see an art museum and urban art
college actually materialize downtown in the near future,” Ross
says.
Incubation in Italy
Jerry and his wife Angela have been traveling to
Italy every year for the past 12 years. They began by attending a
“satellites and education” conference in Bari and then spent a
summer in Livergnano (near Bologna) on the invitation of Professor
Pier Cesare Bori, an internationally renowned Tolstoy scholar. They
also traveled to Florence, staying in an apartment overlooking the
Piazza Santo Spirito, and visited the Uffizi, Florence’s major art
museum, and the Academia, an art school and museum that houses the
original Statue of David. Being immersed in this deeply artistic
culture helped the DIVA idea germinate, namely the idea that the
combination of art gallery and art school, like two poles of a
magnet, could help spark a renaissance. Ross believed that if it
worked in Florence, Italy it could also work in Eugene.
“We started going to Italy 10 years before the
recent ‘discovery’ of Tuscany by many Americans (“Under the Tuscan
Sun”" and similar books and movies that are now popular). I started
doing plein aire painting (painting outdoors in natural
light) in Italy and doing portraits of Italian friends. The more we
talked to Italians, the more we realized that art, especially the
visual arts, were more important to their lives than was the case in
the States. I would be painting in a field and an Italian farmer
would come up and want to buy the painting, still wet, from off the
easel. I would see long lines waiting to get into an oil painting
exhibit and would assume that these are all tourists. But after
getting in line, I would realize that 95 percent of the people were
Italians.”
Each time Ross returned, the feeling that Eugene
was “dead and lifeless” increased. “Eugene could use an influx of
the Italian spirit to get things moving again,” he thought. “The
only hope was to try to recreate some of the structures that made an
artistic renaissance possible. Eugene needed a downtown art school
and a museum!”
Growing Pains
Soon after DIVA formed a steering committee and
moved into a rented storefront, an exhibits sub-committee was formed
and several shows were planned. Ross exhibited some of his larger
paintings so they could be seen from the street. Other DIVA artists
contributed their work as well. Soon DIVA was on a monthly arts
event in Eugene called the “First Friday Art Walk,” and the effort
was up and running.
“I proposed an oil painting class called ‘Social
Verismo.’ We needed to get classes started up and I have always been
interested in the social verismo and i macchiaioli painters of
Tuscany (typically, paintings of peasants, field workers and
soldiers – social realism subjects, but painted in an
impressionistic style). I had no idea the class would actually fill.
It did and students were enthusiastic about being able to study oil
painting in downtown storefront facility...it just felt right,” he
says.
DIVA is experiencing growing pains, and the budget
is always tight, but everyday more people are joining as members,
and volunteer committees are growing. The “creative class” in Eugene
has found a home and is getting a renaissance going. Ross says, “all
that is needed now is a Medici or two to really give it a push.”
UB for the family
Ross’s two siblings also attended UB: Ron Gross,
B.S. ’74 & Ed.M. ’73; and his sister Diane, M.F.A. ’81, an
artist in her own right. As a student, Ross was involved in the
Students for a Democratic Society, and was a founding member of the
Philosophy Club. Though not an art student per se, Ross found his
philosophy background influenced his art. “I learned that a lot that
happens in art is conceptual and deals with perceptions: what is
reality? Philosophy was very helpful in thinking that way.”
For more information on DIVA and Jerry Ross, go
to:
http://divanow.org/
http://jerryrosspittore.com/
--Barbara A. Byers, APR
Read about other interesting UB alumni, at http://alumni.buffalo.edu/profiles.html.
Do you have an interesting story to tell? Or do you know an
alumnus who would make a good profile? If so, please contact Barbara
Byers at babyers@buffalo.edu.
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