Erin Bucklew

Every Monday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 at Allann Bros Beanery on Fifth, artist Erin Bucklew hosts Muse Art, a gathering of musicians and visual artists. Well-known local jazz, classical, and folk musicians provide both ambience and subject matter for sketchers and painters, who chip in a small fee to pay the players. "It's an open and friendly group, ranging from highly skilled artists to people learning to draw," says Bucklew. "The musicians love coming here. Sometimes they use our work for album covers." After high school in Tacoma, Bucklew studied art at the UW in Seattle and in New York. She moved to San Francisco, became an lesbian activist in the 70s and 80s, graduated from SF State, and spent 16 years as a Spanish/bilingual school teacher. After she met her partner Bonnie Mann in 1993, they adopted four kids, then moved to Eugene in 2003, when Mann got a job teaching philosophy at the UO. Bucklew launched Muse Art at the New Day Bakery with folk musician Eric Nicholson in 2004. "For the first few months it was just the two of us," she says. "Then artists started coming, and now we get five to 10 people." Interested artists can email erin502004@yahoo.com, or just drop by on a Monday evening.