The Copper Menagerie Artist Tallmadge Doyle brings Oregon’s flora and fauna to the Ford Alumni Center.
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Banana slug is stuck on the wall of the UO Ford Alumni Center. It’s on the lower-left side of the fireplace, under oak leaves, oozing its way toward a western pond turtle perched near blooming trillium flowers. And on the fireplace’s right side, a silver-haired bat hangs upside down. In fact, the entire fireplace is besieged by bugs, birds, and beasts. Etched into copper plates and set into a cedar wall, they make up the Contemplari Natura art installation by Eugene printmaker and UO adjunct instructor Tallmadge Doyle, MFA ’93. “I wanted to connect the building with nature,” she says. “I brought the outside in.”
The State of Oregon’s One Percent for Art in Public Buildings Program mandates that one percent of new buildings’ construction costs must be allocated to public art. When the call went out for artists’ proposals for the Ford Alumni Center, more than forty people applied. The art selection committee chose Doyle’s work for her naturalistic portrayal of Oregon’s flora and fauna. “It was easy to imagine a visitor taking a seat by the fire and, at a slower pace, exploring the breadth and depth of wild Oregon through her engaging and detailed interpretations,” says Teri Giustina, MS ’86, a past president of the UO Alumni Association Board of
Oregon outdoors inside Twenty-one copper plate etchings depicting the flora and fauna of Oregon are installed in the Hearth Room (lower right) of the Cheryl Ramberg Ford and Allyn Ford Alumni Center. The large image above depicts a salamander and wild ginger, the smaller piece (upper right) is a brown trout with oak leaves. Photos by Jeff Earp-Thomas.
Directors and a cochair of an alumni center leadership committee. “The fact that Tallmadge is an alum and has taught at Oregon is a happy bonus and a point of pride at the center.” James Meyer ’81, the building’s architect from Portland’s Opsis Architecture firm, says he designed the alumni center to capture a sense of the Pacific Northwest. The fireplace is a central feature of the building and is surrounded by an incense cedar wall (twenty-nine feet long by eight feet high). Doyle’s plates are inlaid in the wood, which was milled from a tree living
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