When Northern California-based artist Nathan Oliveira was approached in 1986 to be an artist-in-residence in what was then called the art department at Pasadena City College, he was interested but hesitated, thinking that the proposed weeklong schedule of events would not allow him enough time to create a finished work of art to donate to the school (Oliveira letter, 1986). Interestingly, the revised schedule that Oliveira eventually proposed, turned out to be the basic schedule for future artist visits. And in the end, the week of classroom interaction, a public lecture by the artist, interviews and work in the studio that comprise the residency have challenged all of our visiting artists. 

Oliveira was aware that he was the inaugural artist taking part in the newly created artist-in-residence program beginning in the spring of 1987.  He spoke of the importance of giving the art community, especially young artists, an opportunity to experience the work of a mature artist.  While working in the print studio during the third day of the residency, Oliveira related a seminal experience from his early years as a student, in a series of classes taught by a famous artist at Mills College in Oakland, California. 

	"I, as a student, was impressed by an artist-in-residence coming to the Bay Area.  	Of course, I had to pay a lot of money to go and work with him at Mills College.  	That was the German Expressionist Max Beckmann and it was a very important 	experience for me.  There was a time in my career as a student that I needed a 	good shot of very sophisticated, mature presence.  It provided me with that." 	(Oliveira videotape, 1987)

The residency Oliveira refers to took place in the summer of 1950, when the nascent artist, of Portuguese descent, had begun his studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.  It was here that he eventually received his MFA and joined the faculty as an instructor of printmaking. Oliveira would go on to teach art at Stanford University from 1964 until his retirement in 1994.

Nathan Oliveira came of age during the height of the Abstract Expressionist period in American art, but he was never comfortable with nonobjective painting that seemed to him to lack content through the loss of visual representation.  He was concerned about recognizable forms "that conveyed internal emotions and states of mind" (Moser, 138). Many of his early paintings and prints put emphasis on the human form.  In fact, in 1959 he was the youngest of 23 artists to be shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in an exhibition entitled "New Images of Man."

Art historically, Oliveira was strongly influenced by visually expressionistic painters who were also printmakers-Rembrandt van Rijn, Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, Francisco Goya, Edgar Degas, and Pablo Picasso among others.  And although his introduction to printmaking was with lithography, he has come to be deemed a master of the modern monotype.  

Monotype has been called "a painter's medium."  This printmaking technique is one in which only one image is pulled when a sheet of slightly moistened paper is placed over the prepared plate and put through a press at very low pressure.  When the paper is lifted, the image has been transferred, a monotype created.  The monotype, or monoprint, appeals to Oliveira because he can work and rework the image directly on a smooth metal plate, creating a thick buttery surface with slow drying inks or paint and then work the topographic surface with a variety of tools, including his fingers. At times, he lightly taps or alternatively pounds the zinc plate with the heel of his hand to lift up the sticky surface. After pulling a monotype, Oliveira typically "reuses" the plate and its "ghost" remnants to begin another exploration of form.  

Pasadena Site 1, 1987, the work of art donated to Pasadena City College by Nathan Oliveira, is a monotype, conceived and created during his residency.  It is a highly abstract work done in a palette of warm earth tones with a patch of smoky salmon at the top center.  It seems to represent a mysterious landscape dominated by a large white mound with a patchwork of lines beneath it and obvious brushstrokes around it.  An "X" shape sweeps across its body. When asked about the iconographic meaning of the "X," Oliveira replied that he it was "just a symbol...a matter of geometry" (Oliveira videotape, 1987).

The title of the work helps to understanding its meaning.  Beginning in the mid to late '70s, Oliveira began creating a number of monotypes whose subjects were invariably based on a strange, indeterminate landscape.  These monotypes are known as his "Sites and Bundles sequences." (Selz, 133)  Perhaps resulting from his more extensive travels abroad in the 1980s, specific details of landscapes began to make their way into his prints.  Between 1985 and 1986, the year before his residency at P.C.C., Oliveira had spent several weeks in Italy where he was fascinated by the hilltop towns.  He produced a series of monotypes called Tuscan Sites and Italian Sites during this time.  (Selz, 78-81)  Pasadena Site 1, 1987 is related in its formal elements to these series with their similar mound-like shapes and mysterious illusions of light and space.  Pasadena Site 1 was conceived on this campus, but is part of a continuum in the work of Oliveira in which he has captured evocative archetypes with universal associations of place and time.  

References:

Moser, Joann. "Traditions through time: A consideration of Oliveira's Prints and Monotypes," Selz. Nathan Oliveira. exh. cat., San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Oliveira, Nathan.  Letter to Linda Malm. 24 October 1986. Artist-in-Residence Archives.  Shatford Library, Pasadena City College, Pasadena, California.
Oliveira, Nathan. Video Taped Studio Session Conversation, 26 April 1987. Videocassette. Artist-in-Residence Archives, Shatford Library, Pasadena City 	College, Pasadena, California.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Nathan Oliveira: a Survey Exhibition, 1957-1983, San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1984.
Selz, Peter.  Nathan Oliveira. exh. cat., San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Haynes(c)2007



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