Home The Art of Community
Art in the Whiteater Neighborhood is Central
to this Colorful Community's Identity
This bright tile sculpture of a family greets those that enter the Whiteater Neighborhood.
SLIDESHOW: A collection of neighborhood images and several 2nd & Blair artists in their studios.

Art in the Whiteater neighborhood is central to this colorful community's identity. A bright tile sculpture of a family, one of many works of public art in the area, greets people who enter the Whiteaker neighborhood at Blair and Van Buren Streets.

A fence serves as a community bulletin board for posting notices of upcoming local events. Steel and wood sculptures rest in front of several businesses. Wall murals on various buildings around the neighborhood add to the atmosphere.

Art in the Whiteaker neighborhood is central to this colorful community's identity, as it is to the broader community of Eugene, Ore. Eugene has an art walk on the first Friday of each month. In downtown Eugene, the upscale galleries hold artists’ receptions where patrons can sip wine and nibble cheese as they listen to lectures by artists and discuss the works they have on display.

But there is another art walk held at the end of the month. The Last Friday Art Walk takes place in the more down-to-earth, grassroots, somewhat rundown area of the Whiteaker neighborhood.

  The Whiteaker artists’ community consists of several loose networks of artists, many of whom share common buildings as studios. These include the Second and Blair Artists, a group of artists off Taylor and Third Avenue and First Avenue Artists.

The Second and Blair Artists warehouse, which encompasses the better part of that block, is an older building sprinkled with gang graffiti. Inside there are about a dozen artists who work with glass, ceramics, etchings, mosaics, dyed silk clothing and mixed media. The back half of the building houses a large shared photographic studio, which sublets to another group of artists. About a third of the artists in the building have booths at the annual holiday market held in the Lane County Fairgrounds in December.

The Second and Blair Artists, although each is independent, have common sales and an annual open house on the first or second weekend in December. This year several of the artists collaborated in a Valentine’s Day sale. Many have open studios and demonstrations for the Last Friday Art Walk each month.

John Rose, of Rose Design Studios, got his start as a church renovator, and he now does custom stained glass work for public buildings and private homes. The majority of his work is specialty repair and commissioned pieces. Rose is one of the original artists to lease space in the old warehouse on the corner of Blair in the Whiteaker neighborhood. He opened his studio there in 1989.

"A lot of the artists knew each other," Rose said,  so when spaces began to open up in the building, Rose got in touch with his artist friends, who had expressed interest in leasing space for their studios in the large building.

Except for a few signs hung out over some of the doors, a passerby would not realize the treasures that lay behind the garage doors of the beat-up, gang-tagged warehouse.

A Last Friday Art Walk reveals the talents that lay within the curious building. For example, Michael DiBitetto, an intaglio printmaker with a BFA from a New York university, gives a detailed demonstration of his printmaking process.

DiBitetto’s dog, Homer greets visitors with a sniff and a friendly wag of the tail before he returns to his station on the rug near at the doorway between the front room and the press. DiBitetto’s studio consists of a suite of three rooms.

The front room is a comfortable living room with leather furniture, framed hangings of his etchings and soft jazz music playing on the stereo. A large carved inked wooden impression block hangs centrally on the wall.  The connecting room holds samples for sale, the press and a plate-inking station. The back room has more the feel of a shop with supplies, reusable cheesecloth, gloves, solvents, a work sink and other tools.

DiBitetto inks up a custom engraved plate and with much rubbing of the ink into the fine grooves, gives an explanation of his process before running the plate over the moistened paper in his on-site specialized press.

He etches his plates primarily with a vibrating rotary tool called a dremel, although he also uses acids and scratching methods as well. He makes plates in a variety of sizes and many plates takes weeks to produce. He recalls a time as a student he “used the backs of spoons” to transfer images.

Several of the artists in the aged warehouse sell their products nationally and attend fairs and show in galleries across the United States. Others work on commission or in a freelance capacity or have booths at the Saturday Market. Their works are seen outside Whiteaker on a daily basis.

For example, Rose has work on the downtown LTD bus station clock tower, in the second-floor windows of the Eugene Public Library and at the Hult Center ticket office, as well as the stained glass work at the Newport Public Library.

The annual open house fills the block with shoppers migrating from studio to studio in the otherwise secluded workshops of the talented low-key artists from the “other” side of town.