Land, Logic & Light showcases contemporary and digital art from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation
This season, Van Duzer Vineyards introduces something new to our recently remodeled tasting room: Land, Logic & Light, the first exhibition drawn from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation to be displayed at an Oregon winery. The Thoma Foundation was established to support innovative artists and preserve important moments in art history. Their expansive collection rarely travels outside dedicated art spaces, so bringing these works into the heart of our Willamette Valley winery marks an exciting new chapter. It’s one that highlights the shared spirit of creativity, experimentation, and stewardship that shapes both great art and great wine.
What You’ll Experience
Land, Logic & Light brings together artworks spanning several decades and styles, all exploring color, structure, and form. What connects them? The same tension we navigate in the vineyard every day: the balance between intuition and control, the interplay of nature and human hands, and the continual cycle of cultivation.
As Thoma Foundation Collections Manager Meagan Robson notes, the exhibition “demonstrates the harmony between nature and process at the heart of winemaking.” It’s an invitation to consider how artistic and agricultural worlds mirror each other. Something we think about often as we tend vines shaped by the marine winds of the Van Duzer Corridor.
Bold Colors and Clean Lines: Mid-Century Painters
You’ll encounter work by Karl Benjamin, June Harwood, and Thomas Downing, painters from the 1950s and 60s known for bold, precise shapes and striking color combinations. Think clean geometric forms and vivid palettes rather than brushy, impressionistic scenes.
Their work feels surprisingly at home in Oregon’s Willamette Valley landscape, where clarity of light and the seasons define our terroir. Downing’s shimmering circles, Harwood’s refined shapes, and Benjamin’s play with perspective each show how structure and discipline can create something unexpectedly moving. Not unlike the way our winemaking balances precision with intuition.
When Art Meets Technology
Alongside these painters, you’ll find work by digital artists Petra Cortright, Jason Salavon, and Leo Villareal. These artists use computers, data, and LED lights to create pieces that feel organic and alive despite their technological origins. Cortright paints digitally on her computer screen, Villareal creates glowing light installations, and Salavon transforms movie data into abstract color landscapes.
In these works, technology becomes another kind of terroir, shaping the visual landscape much as wind and soil shape our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines.
Texture and Materials: Art You Can Almost Touch
Artists Miler Lagos, Elias Sime, and Dannielle Tegeder bring a more tactile quality to the exhibition. Lagos creates sculptures that look like tree rings made from layered newspaper. Sime builds intricate compositions from reclaimed electronic parts. Tegeder’s paintings suggest maps and architectural blueprints.
Their works evoke cycles of growth, renewal, and interconnectedness that feel familiar to anyone who has watched a vineyard move through seasons of dormancy, bud break, veraison, and harvest.
A Shared Commitment to Cultivation
Across the exhibition, you’ll notice recurring themes: circular shapes, earthy color palettes, and repeating patterns that subtly reflect the Van Duzer landscape and Carl and Marilynn Thoma’s long-standing commitment to cultivation: of land, of ideas, and of opportunity.
Experience Art and Wine Tasting in the Willamette Valley
We invite you to linger with these works as you enjoy your tasting. Notice how colors shift in changing light, how patterns reveal themselves over time, how each piece offers a new way of seeing the landscapes visible through our tasting room windows.
Land, Logic & Light is more than an exhibition. It’s a celebration of artistry, experimentation, and the creative processes that shape both vineyards and visionary collections. We look forward to welcoming you to this convergence of art and wine at Van Duzer Vineyards.
