About

June Oechler Underwood, Portland, Ore., taught English language and literature in Kansas, Wyoming, New York, and Virginia during the waning decades of the 20^th century. During her tenure in Kansas, she also worked in educational TV at Emporia State University. Her TV productions included an award-winning docu-drama, “Blessed, Blessed Mama,” set in rural Kansas. She served for at time as associate dean of E-State’s college of liberal arts and sciences.

After moving to Portland in 1989, she discovered art. She is a painter, doing whole cloth textile art and oil painting.

June paints, dyes, and colors most of her textiles. She digitizes photos on her fabric, and, at other times, she draws and paints freehand on blank white cotton or silk. Her textile work is machine quilted.

June also paints in oils, working mostly in "...scapes:" landscapes, hamlet-scapes, city-scapes. Her desire is to render visually the interface between herself and the external scene that confronts her. In December and January, 2008, she painted over 40 oils of the tiny village of Basin, Montana, where she had an artist's residency. When she returned to Portland, she continued her interest in her surrounds, painting her southeast Portland neighborhood. She spent February and March of 2009 at the Goldwell Open Air Art Museum as Workspace resident. There, painting in oils, she deepened her interest in depicting the three-dimensional world on canvas, conveying her experience of the "void" that is the Mojave Desert.

June is a member of Studio Art Quilt Association, the Surface Design Association, and the American Society of Crows and Ravens. She has exhibited locally at ONDA and the Guardino Gallery. She has also been part of many group exhibits, showing, for example, at the Sedgwick Cultural Center in Philadelphia, Pa., Quilt National at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio, and the Chandler Center for the Arts in Chandler, Ariz.

Her husband of 40-plus years, Jerry, a writer of satire; daughter, Jan, winner of the 28^th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest; and one grandchild also live in Portland.

To read my resume click here.