Ashland artist, Betty LaDuke, has generously gifted Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences three paintings to the Art About Agriculture program in commemoration of Dr. Porter Lombard, OSU Emeritus Researcher. Dr. Lombard’s contribution to the Oregon wine industry is immeasurable.
“Dedicated to Porter Lombard for his pioneering work at Oregon State University in developing the Oregon grape industry, and beyond. And, for five decades of professional and personal friendship shared with my husband – Peter Westigard, an OSU Entomologist – and our families.” – Betty LaDuke, 2019
Betty LaDuke (née Bernstein) was born in 1933, The Bronx, New York City, to Jewish immigrant parents from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Poland. She grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood where early influences in her arts education included classes taught by distinguished African-American artists, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White. College scholarships led LaDuke to study art at Denver University (1950), the Cleveland Art Institute (1951), and at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico (1953- 1954). In Mexico, she explored the diversity and heritage of the region, as well as visited the studios of prominent Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo. LaDuke founded her professional artist studio practice in Guanajuato, Mexico, and lived for one year with the indigenous Otomi people of the Ixmiquilpan Region where she painted murals that depicted Otomi heritage. In 1956, Betty LaDuke returned to the United States, where she met Sun Bear (Vincent LaDuke), gave birth to her daughter (activist community organizer Winona LaDuke (b. 1959)), and earned her Master’s Degree from Los Angeles State College (1963). In 1964, Betty and Winona moved to Ashland, OR where she taught in the Art Department at Southern Oregon University until retiring Professor of Art Emeritus in 1996. Betty LaDuke married Oregon State University Entomologist, Peter Hughes Westigard (1933–2011) in 1965, and had her son, Jason Westigard in 1970. In 1972, a sabbatical from teaching enabled LaDuke to spend a month in India sketching the people and their connection to nature, food production, and heritage; a trip that inspired annual travels throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America that focused on sketching the experiences of indigenous women, their cultural heritage, and agricultural practices. LaDuke captured these experiences and sketches in numerous books, including Compañeras: Women, Art, & Social Change in Latin America (City Lights Books, 1985), Women Artists: Multi-Cultural Visions (Red Sea Press, 1992) and Africa: Women’s Art, Women’s Lives (Africa World Press, 1997). LaDuke’s work with Heifer International’s study tours from 2003 to 2009 culminated in the Dreaming Cows series of sixty-two artworks and the book, Dreaming Cows: The Paintings, Murals and Drawings of Betty LaDuke by Susan Jo Bumagin (Heifer International, 2009). LaDuke donated the series to Heifer International’s World Headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Betty LaDuke’s artworks can be found in many public and private collections throughout Oregon, including Coos Art Museum, Grants Pass Art Museum, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Pacific University, Portland Art Museum, Rogue Valley International Airport, Southern Oregon University, and the Art About Agriculture Permanent Collection (College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University). LaDuke was the recipient of Oregon Arts Commission’s 1993 Governor’s Arts Award for individual contribution to Oregon culture, and the United States Society for Education Through Art 1996 Ziegfeld Award for distinguished leadership in arts education.
Bountiful Harvest
In 2010, Betty LaDuke was invited to observe and sketch the flower harvest at La Mera Gardens (Fry Family Farms) in Talent, Oregon. This experience served as an awakening to the marvel of local agricultural production and the people that make it possible.
Sketches from regular visits to the Fry Family Farms blossomed into numerous large paintings on shaped and routed plywood panels that celebrate the dignity and pride of farmworkers during all phases of agricultural production across a wide variety of produce. In 2012, the Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport acquired Celebrating Local Farms and Farmworkers, a selection of twenty-six panels, for permanent display. Betty LaDuke’s 2016 book, Bountiful Harvest: From Land to Table (White Cloud Press) shares her artworks and story along with stories from agricultural workers, orchard and vineyard owners, and the Ashland Food Cooperative.
Grape Planting
Betty LaDuke’s Grape Harvest, 2015, a triptych of acrylic paintings on shaped wood panels, was generously gifted to the College of Agricultural Sciences for permanent display within the Department of Horticulture in commemoration of Oregon State University Emeritus Researcher, Dr. Porter Lombard. Dr. Lombard’s contribution to the Oregon wine industry is immeasurable. The three panels comprising Grape Planting originated from sketches from Quail Run Vineyards, Roque Valley, Oregon, with guidance and support from the General Manager, Michael Moore. Grape Planting, 2015 was accepted into the Art About Agriculture Permanent Collection by the 2019 Art About Agriculture Advisory Council and co-sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity.
GIFT of the ARTIST, in commemoration of Dr. Porter Lombard, Emeritus Researcher in Horticulture at Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center (1962-1980) and Oregon State University, Corvallis (1980 to 1992)
Art About Agriculture 2019
Co-sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity
