OHRA 1984

The Bank President...Lecturing...the Chairman of the Board

Art: 1984
Media: Drypoint (a type of etching, prized for the velvety line quality)
Size: 19 3/4 in. H x 26

This proof is in black ink w/a bit of hand-coloring with colored pencils. There were about 11 proofs printed. One of those proofs were owned by the late Jeanne Loughmuller, who was delighted with it. She had been a Vice President at Rainier National Bank, and as the bank’s art curator, had overseen the purchase of 2 of my etchings and 3 large drawings for the RNB art collection. The whereabouts of those 5 artworks is not known to the artist.

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Collections:

Bibliothèque Nationale Française, Paris, France.
Dept of Prints / département des estampes.  Gift of the artist, 1985.
A dry-point print in French is "point-sèche.”

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The drypoint etching was exhibited, and reproduced in a library-published Recent Acquisitions catalog, 1990:
Estampes et “livres d’artistes” du XXe siècle: enrichissements du Cabinet des Estampes 1978-1988.

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Thanks to Dan Weismann, SIU-Carbondale alum and a college friend of the artist, for returning this proof (seen in this gallery page) that he had bought in '85 when I was fundraising to leave for then planned years studies in Krakow, Poland. (Weismann hadn't framed it and offered to send it back to Segan, which also helped fulfill Segan's goal of finding a new home for it in a publicly viewable collection).

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The double portrait imagery was inspired by two consecutive no-shows, in 1984, by the president of First Interstate bank of Washington, to my Seattle arts studio.
FIB of Washington was later bought by Wells Fargo Bank.

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At the time of the sale of FIB to Wells Fargo, First Interstate Bank of Washington owned 2 of Segan's large (2x3 ft) etching and aquatint prints.

For years they were framed and displayed in the First Interstate Tower law staff offices. (Back in the 1990's an acquaintance who worked for FIB of Wash. Told me they were there on such and such a floor in the the FIB legal dept offices. That acquaintance, Linda Radoff, born 1952, passed on from cancer in 2002. She had attended the same synagogue as the artist).

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The 1983 purchase of the two etchings was overseen by a bank VP, James McCready, who died before the new bank tower, called First Interstate Tower, was completed.

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Both of those etchings vanished with Wells Fargo’s buyout of FIB. The executive staff at Wells Fargo at the newly renamed bldg (formerly First Interstate Tower) refused to say whether or not the two framed etching & aquatint prints were listed in Properties lists of items transferred from the FIB offices to the Wells Fargo offices.

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It’s possible the etchings were moved to FIB branches that are still in operation in eastern Washington state; and there are FIB branches in several other states.

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For a great movie viewing experience that is broadly thematically related to the title of my drypoint etching, see the 1976 parody  movie about American tv network news:  “Network.” The scene in the network’s executive boardroom with  news anchor Howard Beale (acted by the late Peter Finch) and the network chairman-of-the-board Arthur Jensen (acted by the actor Ned Beatty) will knock your socks off!