‘Big Dog Studio’ producing larger-than-life murals, fostering community; fundraising for downtown mural in the works
By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news
A private Ashland art studio is fostering a sense of community in Ashland — with a big, friendly dog as its mascot — while making larger than life murals and artistic connections that span the nation and the globe, and plans for a mural right here in downtown Ashland.
Artist John Pugh and his wife, Anne Pugh, have leased an industrial warehouse housing Big Dog Studio, 255 Helman St., for the past three years. The Big Dog Studio, named for Pugh’s late Irish Wolfhound, Austin, hosts small community gatherings like movie nights and art classes at the studio while creating world class murals.
Pugh is a world-renowned artist, emphasizing in trompe l’oeil (pronounced tromp-loy). While it means “trick-of-the-eye” in French, the artform involves illusion, for which Pugh has an affinity, and started in the Golden Age of Greece.
He is in the process of fundraising for the creation of a local mural in downtown Ashland called “Where the Crow Lights,” a nod to the name of the Shasta and Takelma village in the area.
Pugh will work with tribal representatives in weeks to come on the final contents of the mural.
“I’m excited about going further with some of the stories … and about what happened in the
park there around ‘Where the Crow Lights’ and what’s been passed down orally, and bring them into the mural,” he said.
The retro-futuristic Chautauqua dome that was the predecessor to the current Allen Elizabethan
Theatre, according to a pamphlet about Pugh’s art, is something he hopes to create right here in Ashland, albeit in two dimensions.
“The dome became the egg that ‘hatched’ the idea for Angus Bowmer to build a new Globe Theater on its foundation,” the pamphlet reads.
The mural is slated for the side of the Elks Lodge, 255 East Main St., on a currently blank wall above Chase Bank.
“When you’re coming down Main Street, people will think that there’s an opening in that building and there’s this thing inside of it and there’s a person in there before they realize that it’s an illusion,” he said. “So there’s a quality of difference with the human experience.”
The piece will depict a young, indigenous woman leaning against an old oak, contemplating creation on the side of the wall above Chase Bank. Pugh said he pursued that wall specifically when he arrived in town.
“It’s a tumultuous tale about a search for harmony,” Pugh writes in a pamphlet about his art.
“It’s a love story.”
“The rest is our imagination,” Pugh told Ashland.news, “but it’s definitely got that flavor of Ashland, what makes Ashland (have) the mystical vibe.”
Fundraising for the mural has begun and the project is estimated to cost $250,000.
Pugh is hoping to have at least half of the funds raised by the community before he begins the mural, and he can paint it inside his Hersey Street studio, and then install it in person, adding glazes.
“We want community ownership,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be a contribution to downtown, another major element to draw people.”
Pugh said it could take several months to complete once he starts.
“This project, despite all the other great things … this is more important to me than anything else because this is the connection with my forever place and my ‘home’ town – my new hometown.”
“I think I’ll be starting it in my studio by this spring,” he added. “That’s my guess. It feels like things are happening with this now. I believe in this project.”
Donations for the mural project are being accepted on a separate website, Wherethecrowlights.org.
On his website, Pugh said the use of trompe l’oeil as his “visual language” allows him to communicate effectively with a large audience.
“People take delight in being visually tricked,” he explains. “Once intrigued by the illusion, it invites a viewer to visually cross into the mural — to discover and explore a profound concept.”
Pugh says he avoids the “common place” mural and instead seeks to create an iconic, dynamic anomaly.
“The passerby is much more apt to engage with an uncommon architectural event while they unconsciously survey the urban landscape,” he writes.
“As an artist, I must create a ‘sense of place.’”
He has done so in Ashland, in an old industrial factory warehouse on Hersey Street at Helman Street.
“My focus has been more of a national diversification,” Pugh told Ashland.news during a tour of the studio in August. “The more you can diversify out, the more chances you’re going to have a consistent flow.”
Pugh has created more than 200 murals, with myriad works in California. From Santa Clara, Sacramento, Lindsay, to Hermosa Beach, Victor Valley, Santa Cruz, and Chico, his style has left its mark. He has also done murals in Hawaii, Illinois and Minnesota and his work can also be seen internationally in Mexico, Taiwan and New Zealand.
Pugh is also currently working on murals that will be used in North Carolina, Colorado and
Washington, D.C., the latter one of which he’s very excited about in particular. It will depict
prominent U.S. citizens who went through the naturalized citizen process and will be displayed in the lobby of the Milken Center for Advancement of the American Dream.
“It’s right there on Pennsylvania Avenue, it has a glass front … It’s right there. You can see the White House if you’re upstairs … I’m sure all the presidents will see this mural, so It’s a really exciting spot for the piece.”
He created his first trompe l’oeil mural in Chico, California, in 1981.
“I had a dream about that wall breaking open and, to my knowledge, I’m the first guy (whose) ever done a broken wall illusion,” Pugh said.
“That was a real profound experience for me to do that and it’s like … the career destiny thing … and this door opens: murals!”
“I think it’s really important that we stop and look at those nagging side doors that open sometimes … I believe that’s where our destiny is,” he added.
His method is unique — “I cement the material together in the studio with tape, paint it, and then take it apart and then basically put it up on a smooth wall on location, like wall paper but with an acrylic gel instead of wallpaper paste. It’s like taking my own art and then wallpapering it and touching it up on location.
He mixes his own paints and uses a transparent glaze on his paintings to bring out the colors.
“There’s painting I do on location, too, if I can’t fit giant walls too big in the studio, so I’ll try to do the core of it … in my studio and then whatever I need to on location to complete it,” Pugh added.
The method is efficient for Pugh, allowing him to work on several murals at once and live in one place.
‘Muppet, love dog’ Banff rules his artistic castle with gentleness
While Pugh is the mastermind behind the industrial studio space, Irish wolfhound Banff is one of its mascots.
Banff’s late predecessor Austin, a female wolfhound, inspired the name of the studio, but Banff is currently the top studio dog in residence. At about 3 feet tall, extending about
8 feet long (including tail), Banff is indeed a big dog, which Pugh describes as a “ just this big muppet, love dog,” with a big personality. Banff is known for offering friendly greetings to studio guests.
“When I used to let Banff jump up and … stand up and lean against me, he could easily put his chin on my forehead,” Pugh said with a laugh.
Pugh said he found wolfhounds to be “soulful” when he first met some while doing an art installation in Anchorage, Alaska.
“Their vibration is like, kind of at the same pace of humans,” Pugh said. “Their energy is more like ours and I just instantly connected with them.”
The 174-pound Banff can also be found in some of Pugh’s art, specifically an anamorphic mural he painted in Seattle.
John and Anne’s puppy, also an Irish Wolfhound, Wilson, is coming up behind. At the time of the interview in mid-August, Wilson was 30 pounds and 12 weeks old.
“He’s the big dog in training,” John said.
With his own wolfhound pack in tow, plus a roaming 23-year-old cat named Six, John feels at home in Ashland. He remembers visiting the city at various points in his life, from traveling during his youth and as he came of age.
The first time he remembers coming to Ashland was as a kid, seeing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He grew up in the Bay area, and has good memories living on a sailboat with his parents.
During college, Pugh and a friend hitchhiked into Ashland.
“I remember the sense of enchantment I had with this town,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to that almost ineffable energy.”
“I’ve met a lot of people that come from extraordinary heights of spiritual experience and they all agree that there’s this … it’s present here, and as an artist, I’m very sensitive to that,” he added.
“I feel home here, I really do.”
Pugh relocated to Ashland about two-and-a-half years ago from Truckee, California, about five hours south, in Lake Tahoe.
“I had a great wealth of friends there, it’s really important for me to connect with the art community,” he said. “The art center closed right before I got here.”
So, Pugh decided to incorporate a classroom for life-size drawing and paint nights, located near the front of the 4,000-square-foot industrial studio space. A kitchen is located off to the side, making it feel even more like home.
“We have a good group that meets here, the life drawing (classes),” he said. “There’s a lot of artists that come here so I feel like it’s been a place for really good art, really good artists.”
Pugh sees the offerings as opening up a space for more community art.
There’s no membership fee to join the studio, just an eagerness to make art and gather with community.
The space originally was a pencil and mouse trap factory, he said.
“This was shipping and receiving for Yala for a while,” John added, referencing a major yoga clothing line.
“We always are looking for models and we’re always looking for artists that want to improve their skills with life drawing,” Pugh said.
Life drawing classes are available each Wednesday at 6 p.m.
“There’s no better way to practice rendering skills than to do life drawing,” he said, noting he joins in on the class, too.
The next movie night at Big Dog Studio will be a showing of “Harold and Maude” at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at the studio.
To learn more about Pugh’s art, go online at artofjohnpugh.com.
Learn more about the downtown mural at wherethecrowlights.org.
Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].
Sept. 14 update: Added photo of Banff standing.
