OPB crew filming in Wallowa County for ‘Art Beat’

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Visitors taking photographs and videos on the Main St. of picturesque Joseph – home of life-size bronzes, flower planters, native boulders and bright red sugar maples – are a common part of the local landscape nowadays.

However, shots obtained by a trio from Portland around town and in the homes of several Wallowa County artists this past week will receive much wider exposure in the future than photographs taken by the typical tourist.

An Oregon Publich Broadcasting crew composed of producer Jessica Martin, videographer/editor Tom Shrider and soundman Thom Dentler spent Tuesday through Thursday last week in the county filming segments for OPB’s “Oregon Art Beat” program. Another crew is expected to be back in the county this week.

For the past three years the half-hour show has been spotlighting artists and artisans from all over Oregon.

“I’m loving it here. It’s absolutely gorgeous and the best thing about it is an endless supply of material for what we do,” said Martin last Thursday on her final day in Wallowa County. She has been with OPB for 10 years and producer for Art Beat for about one year. “I’ve been saying ‘we HAVE to get to Joseph,’ and we are finally here.”

While in Wallowa County the crew filmed four artists at work – one photographer, two sculptors and one goldsmith – for three or four Art Beat segments of from seven to nine minutes each. The segments will probably be shown together in a single Art Beat featuring Joseph and Wallowa County four to eight months down the road.

Martin promised she would give local people plenty of advance notice when the program will air.

The artists singled out this time around were photographer David Jensen of Enterprise, whose work has appeared on the cover of the annual Sierra Club calendar; sculptor and former Joseph mayor Shelley Smith Curtiss; Western bronze artist Austin Barton, who has homes in Joseph and Battleground, Wash.; and goldsmith Stewart Jones of Joseph, a past winner of the prestigious De Beers Diamonds International Award.

This week a second crew will be filming other local subjects, including western musician Janet Bailey. None of the local foundaries happened to be pouring metal for Curtiss or Barton pieces last week and Martin also wants to include footage of metal pouring.

“A lot of it is word of mouth, and we do some research on the Internet,” said Martin about how the artists were chosen to spotlight, especially in a place like Joseph with a wealth of artists of all kinds. “We usually come to a place with one or two names, and leave with eight. It’s a lot more here. We already have a thick file.” She said diversity of styles and personalities, as well as quality of art, was important in deciding who to spotlight.

Though this was Martin’s first visit to Wallowa County, both Shrider and Dentler have filmed here in the past. Shrider worked on an OPB documentary shot in the middle of Joseph’s major street renovation in 1999 about small towns in Oregon that change in order to survive, and both Shrider and Dentler were here on another assignment a few years ago.

One of the OPB’s memorable moments during this latest assignment was a 45 minute hike packing all their camera and film up to the top of the Wallowa Lake moraine led by photographer/mountaineer Dave Jensen in the dark at 5 a.m. Tuesday in order to film the morning as it dawned over Joseph.

“We had to keep stopping to rest,” said Martin. “Dave was nice enough to wait for us.”

In addition to the top of the moraine, the crew filmed Curtiss and Barton at Kelly’s Gallery on Main in Joseph, which displays the work of both artists; Jensen’s home darkroom; Curtiss’ home studio; Jones at work on a gold ring at his home studio in the Indigo Gallery, which he and wife Catherine Matthias operate in Joseph; and at Norman Arts, a finishing foundry in Enterprise where patina was being applied to one of Barton’s sculptures.

Martin said that Art Beat has a thick file of many more Wallowa County artists they would like to feature in the future. “We will be back,” she promised.