Amid the riveting works by painters, photographers and other visual artists in the Portland Art Museum’s new exhibit “Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art,” one grouping of pastel drawings pops out in a delightful surprise.

They’re by the late Ursula K. Le Guin, better known for her literary works, who lived in a Northwest Portland home with a view of Mount St. Helens.

“She was enthralled by its many moods in the ever-shifting weather and light,” as a curator’s label in the exhibit puts it, and she made numerous photographs, sketches and line drawings of the mountain, said her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin.

Then Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980.

“I drew what I saw as best I could, sitting at my study window, using binoculars to bring details close,” Le Guin wrote in an essay in the 2008 book “In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. “Experimenting then with chalk pastels, I found them a good medium for the drama of ash and cloud and snow going on there, 60 miles away overland and 9,000 feet up in the air.”

When Dawson Carr, curator of the “Volcano!” exhibit, read that, he had to see the pastels.

“I’m a fan,” he said. “I knew that she was one of the great literary figures of our city. I knew that this would appeal to people.”

And “no one else that I know of recorded the mountain over time in the way that she did in these simple little pastels,” Carr said.

Of the six pastels he chose for the first public showing of Le Guin’s Mount St. Helens art, two are from 1979, one is from a couple of months before the eruption, and three are from afterward.

“I think they’re rather good,” Carr said, adding that “they can hold their own” with surrounding art by landscape photographers Emmet Gowin and Frank Gohlke and Portland artist Henk Pander. The pastels, each approximately 11 5/8 by 10 inches, flank a 50-inch-wide pen-and-ink drawing by Pander that shows Le Guin visiting the mountain in 1981.

Le Guin never had formal art training, her son said. But she drew throughout her life, starting in early childhood; when she traveled, she almost always took along a sketchbook. “Her marginalia and illustrations of personal letters and postcards are wonderful,” he said.

“She obviously had an excellent eye and developed a style and competence,” said Downes-Le Guin, who has a degree in art history and founded the contemporary art gallery Upfor in Northwest Portland.

Downes-Le Guin said his mother “would be tickled” by the inclusion of her pastels in the exhibit.

Ursula K. Le Guin's pastel drawing of Mount St. Helens: "First snow and river fog," October 28, 1980, 8:30 a.m.Courtesy of Theo Downes-Le Guin and Portland Art Museum

“I think she would be humbled to think that she was in an exhibition with full-time acclaimed working visual artists, which she certainly did not consider herself,” he said. “The subject matter was so important to her and so personal to her, she would have loved the exhibition in total.”

The book in which Le Guin’s essay appeared, “In the Blast Zone,” which features prose and poetry from 21 contributors, is available in the museum’s gift shop, along with these other books:

“Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens,” by Steve Olson, which places the eruption within a long historical perspective.

“The Eruption of Mount St. Helens: The Deadliest Volcanic Eruption in American History,” by Charles River Editors, a short collection of pictures and eyewitness accounts.

“Mount St. Helens,” Images of America series, by David A. Anderson, a collection of historical photos.

“In the Path of Destruction: Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens,” by Richard Waitt, a geologist familiar with the volcano.

“Return to Spirit Lake: Life and Landscape at Mount St. Helens,” by Portland native Christine Colasurdo, a personal meditation that was a Spring 2005 Washington Reads selection.

“The Restless Northwest: A Geological Story,” by Hill Williams, an overview that includes firsthand accounts by those involved in geological discoveries.

“The Voice of This Stone: Learning From Volcanic Disasters Around the World,” by Kevin Scott, a volcanologist who presents more than a dozen case studies.

Also worth a read:

“Eruption!: Volcanoes and the Science of Saving Lives,” by Portland author Elizabeth Rusch, a nonfiction children’s book that includes Mount St. Helens among its examples.

“A Hero on Mount St. Helens: The Life and Legacy of David A. Johnston,” by Melanie Holmes, a biography of the volcanologist who alerted the world to the eruption just before it killed him.

“I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980,” by Lauren Tarshis, part of her popular “I Survived” historical fiction series for elementary school-age children.

“Memories of Mount St. Helens,” by Jim Erickson, a journalist who covered the eruption.

If you go

What: “Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art”

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, through May 17.

Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., Portland.

Tickets: $20 for adults, $17 for students and seniors, free for ages 17 and younger; portlandartmuseum.org or 503-226-2811.

awang@oregonian.com; Twitter: @ORAmyW

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