>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

WAY BEHIND THE SCENES: Michigan native and artist Cory Peeke is the new director of Nightingale Gallery at Eastern Oregon University. (The Observer/LAURA MACKIE-HANCOCK).

By Jeff Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

t's time for a changing of the guards at Nightingale Gallery.

Cory Peeke is taking over as director for Jessica Plattner after her two years at the helm.

Plattner is moving on to a tenure-track position with the Eastern Oregon University Art Department teaching painting, design, drawing and art history.

A Michigan native, Peeke, who is also teaching Art 101, moved here from Seattle. There he worked in galleries, a children's museum and as a working artist. He has a BFA from Kendall College of Arts and Design in Grand Rapids, Mich., and an MFA from the University of Idaho.

"We're thrilled to have Cory here and really lucky to have him," Plattner said, adding he was chosen from a strong national field of candidates. "The art department is just getting better and better."

Peeke, a mixed-media artist who currently has a show at Eastern Washington University, got a sneak peak at EOU last year as a visiting artist. He said he was impressed by the faculty and students.

"The interaction was so congenial," Peeke said. "They were excited about what they were doing."

Peeke's art involves lots of experimentation with materials. His current work is collage-based using paint chip samples that anyone can buy at a local hardware store.

The gallery director job will offer Peeke several main challenges. The first is organizing shows and bringing in interesting artists from across the nation.

"It's important to challenge viewers to see work that is more diverse and different from what we see locally," Plattner said.

The second challenge is promoting Nightingale as a connection between the university and the community and between the art department and the rest of the university.

The third big challenge is training student workers and giving them experience in arts administration.

Plattner focused on those challenges and more during her tenure. She worked to increase community involvement by making art show openings more accessible to the public.

She also invited teachers to bring their classes to the gallery. And she made the gallery more accessible to the campus community by inviting professors from other disciplines to the gallery. For example, she brought in Spanish classes and talked about the shows in Spanish, drawing on her experience of living in Mexico. She also brought in writing classes and gender studies classes to focus on gender issues in art.

Peeke hopes to take what Plattner has built, and build on that

foundation.

The gallery is expanding its role. A milestone was being open over the past summer for the first time for the Artists of Eastern Oregon show, a biennial juried show that Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council grants helped fund. Peeke is hoping that show can be alternated each summer with the top five award winners from the previous year's show.

Nightingale is also in the process of building a Web site. The site should be up by the first of the year, to give people a peak at what Peeke is up to.