Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford, featuring large-scale works on canvas by Nathan Oliveira, looks very near completion.

A little birdie told me.

I spoke to Palo Alto boards shortly after Nathan’s passing about the value of honoring his role in town cultural history, as distinct from the history of the university. Gail Price subsequently wrote a proclamation honoring the famous professor and painter, who I also thought of as the father of my schoolmate Joe or Joey Oliveira.

I also circulated — ok, it was more like a hectogram — an idea that We The People should purchase 209 Hamilton which was Nathan’s downtown studio in the 1960s and turn that into a museum for his larger works and revert the upstairs — the former stage — into studios. Ok, Stanford’s idea was better.

Meanwhile, we do have a large work in bronze at the Art Center.

The Windhover — named for the paintings not the man but actually a Gerald Hopkins Manly reference as well — is also notable in that it has no interior wiring. It is across from Roble Gym and next to the Papua New Guinea carvings — near the student Union.