Summerfield woman leaves a legacy of art for OSU

Jackie Swint hands over her art collection to the school and a tidy sum of money to help students with the cost of education

By Bob Schoenberg

The Regal Courier, Sep 5, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Bob Schoenberg / Regal Courier

Jackie Swint’s 1960s rubbing of a carving in Thailand, uses oil paints rather than chalk or crayon to create the image, a technique she learned from her friend, Francine Faulhaber.

ADVERTISEMENTS

The rubbings had a peculiar look to them, as if someone were trying to say something, a message to those who looked on them, as if that someone was trying to tell us something important from a long, long time ago – hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

A few of the rubbings, and they look like watercolor paintings really, were done by Summerfield’s Jackie Swint when she was stationed in Southeast Asia working for the State Department. She had learned to do the rubbings using a technique her friend Francine Faulhaber, the wife of an employee with the U.S. Agency for International Development, had taught her.

Her friend showed her how placing rice paper or a thin textile over a textured surface, like a bas relief carving, and rubbing oil paints over the surface to create a two dimensional picture on paper of the carving.

Most who do a rubbing use chalk or crayon to create it, such as when genealogists transfer what is written on a tombstone to paper as a way to preserve the words for the family.

Archeological scholars and students create rubbings of carvings they find at the sites of ancient civilizations. These are also known as temple rubbings.

Many governments and curators at ancient building sites no longer allow rubbings as they often damage the carvings.

It was luck to have been in Thailand at the time she learned the technique because she and her friend were able to get rubbings from the Wat Po Temple before it was closed down for that sort of thing.

“Francine and I were able to get rubbings from the original carvings before they stopped allowing it in 1968,” Swint said.” No one is allowed to do it now. Francine created rubbings of the entire series of carvings along the walls.”

Now these rubbings, Swint’s and some of Faulhaber’s that were given to Swint as gifts, 11 in all, are going to Oregon State University, along with a trust account that will pay $10,000 in scholarship funds to four women business students each year.

Swint had graduated from Oregon State in 1951 and wanted to leave them her money and her artwork, where she knows both will be appreciated. On one hand the artwork will be preserved and on the other, women will be getting money to learn a valuable skill.

“I set it up for women, because most of the scholarship money was going to men in athletics,” Swint said.

1 | 2 Next Page >>