John Erickson Salem, 1985

Clifford Gleason was an artist of significant note before his death in 1978. Gleason was a student and collaborator of Louis Bunce during the Works Progress Administration era, and would go on to be a long-term teacher at the Museum Art School in Portland, now the Pacific Northwest College of Art. As a student of Bunce, Gleason was one of the early abstract painters of the Northwest and was well known for his paintings, drawings, and murals. In this subseries there are documents relevant to his many shows over the years, as well as many documents specifically related to a retrospective put on by Eyerly at the Blackfish Gallery in 1985 in Gleason’s honor, which was titled “The Late Paintings.” Many of the works presented in this show are represented by inventory lists and supplemented by either slides or photos of the images used in the show. These materials also document the assistance that Gleason received from his friends and colleagues during his career as an artist.