People of Chehalem : Ted Katz

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Ted Katz : gentle wild man

Ted Katz, Artist The art and the man are disarming. Who would expect so much color, complexity or inscrutability in his work, when he is so simply honest and mild mannered? Ted Katz is the perfect match for Chehalem and our wines--we both show brashness and intensity in our work, emotive displays being reserved for performance artists like Dennis Rodman.

From the beginning we had to have an art label. It was important because I believe the package should reflect what's inside. As a part of a full, rich, balanced life fine wine provides the same connection to an almost spiritual appreciation of the world around us that art does. It's that half step above daily living that Maslow called self-actualization. Ted, with his intricate, rich, layered, colorful or brooding abstract art, gives us a world view that makes us strain to understand. We enjoy, but don't fully get it! We would like to think our wines provide the same challenge. On the edge and dancing.

Chehalem's great friends Darrel and Barbara Baker, who own several pieces of his work, introduced Ted to us. We were equally taken and in late 1992 chose the first of seven works for our labels, Drummer, which still welcomes you on Chehalem Pinot noirs. Despite initial reserve by some advisors, our labels have been enthusiastically popular both as unique and attractive standouts on the shelf commercially and as a statement for those things artistic and subjective. The artwork for the variety stays the same vintage-to-vintage. Only when we release a new variety, such as our Corral Creek Dry Riesling Reserve from 1995, or introduce a new level, such as Pinot noir and Chardonnay Reserves, do we select new art, several of which we have bought for the winery collection.

Pinot Noir label Ted was born in Philadelphia in 1937 and has received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Franklin and Marshall College and Harvard University. With studies in Boston, New York, and Paris, and shows, grants and reviews everywhere, Dr. Ted is internationally known, yet, not surprisingly, is Portland-based. His local gallery is Butters Gallery Ltd., Portland, (800) 544-9171.

If you know our labels, you can appreciate the range of style, technique, color and theme possible in Ted's work. Of recent work, the critic Anne Hirshorn says "In the current exhibition of abstracted figures, still lifes, and landscapes, an organic, pensive atmosphere is given a new significance, and this is often penetrated by incandescent blooms of light or color." Powerful images emerge from vestigial figures as scarred as the surface of the paper, which has sometimes been scraped or burned as elements of Katz's method. "Harmony may yield to dissonant color and composition in deliberate acts to create tension." Sounds like our labels. Sounds like metaphor for a life passionately lived.

Thus art. Thus wine. See for yourself how well they marry at the Reserve Release, featuring new Ted Katz works.