Paul Neevel, 60 Years – A Retrospective – Photographs from 1962 through 2022

November 4 – 26, 2022

Opening reception: Friday, November 11, 5-7 p.m.
Walk-through tour of the show with the artist and pot-luck reception, Sunday, November 20th at 2:30 p.m.

Emerald Art Center
500 Main St.
Springfield, OR 97477
541.726.8595
Open Tue – Sat 11-4 p.m.
Plus the Second Friday every month, 4-7:30 p.m.
www.emeraldartcenter.org

Free and open to the public

A retrospective exhibit of Paul Neevel’s 60 years as a photographer, including images from 1962 to 2022.

Paul Neevel grew up in International Falls, Minnesota, the “Icebox of the Nation,” through grade school, then completed high school in his father’s somewhat warmer home town, Baldwin, Wisconsin. Paul’s grandfather, Ed Neevel, was the “town photographer” in Baldwin for decades after opening a studio there in 1895.

Paul developed his own interest in photography while he was a student at the University of Wisconsin, and visited the Madison Public Library on a regular basis to read books on photography. He bought his first camera, along with darkroom gear, shortly after graduating in 1962 with a degree in meteorology. While continuing to work on a master’s degree, he began to exhibit and sell his photographs.

His first exhibit in Eugene was a one-person show at the Gross Gallery, on 13th near the University campus, in 1968. He still lived in Madison and didn’t see the show in person, but he moved to Eugene two years later to study at the University of Oregon, one of the few schools to offer a degree in photography at the time. While studying for degrees in journalism and fine arts, he was a teaching fellow for Bernie Freemesser, UO professor of photography, who established the Photography at Oregon Gallery in the UO Museum along with his students in 1966.

During his first 20 years in Eugene, Paul had a camera repair business at home. He photographed traveling art shows distributed by the Visual Arts Resources branch of the UO Museum of Art. He has since photographed artwork for many local artists and more than 150 weddings.

Paul joined the Photography at Oregon Gallery committee in the mid-1970s. He was in charge of installing the monthly exhibits for more than a decade before the gallery was eliminated by a new museum administration in 1992.

In 1989, Paul Neevel was invited to photograph and write for the Eugene Weekly (then called What’s Happening) following his 1988 Jacobs Gallery show, 40 Portraits of Artists. His Happening People column in the Weekly has profiled more than a thousand local personalities nominated by readers since it first appeared in 1996.