ROBERT FELDMAN

FELDMAN--Robert Alan. Robert "Bob" Feldman died peacefully at home in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, May 22. He was 85, and a lifelong non-conformist. Bob was born on May 13, 1937, and grew up in Forest Hills, NY. At age 15, when his parents (Betty and Sidney) agreed his horizons needed broadening, Bob ventured to Andover, MA, and attended Phillips Academy for his final two years of high school. Bob forever cherished his time at Andover, and especially his time playing in the student jazz band, the Aces (led by Bob's dear friend, Dutch Wolff). Following Andover, Bob attended Brown University, at which he began to hone his non-conformist skills by never declaring a major, yet somehow graduating magna cum laude and Phi Betta Kappa. While at Brown, Bob met his first wife (Linda Blackman Feldman). Bob went on to Yale Law School, and after graduation, he took a job as an enforcement attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission. In hindsight, that employer/employee pairing is beyond comical: it never had a chance (but, in fairness, no job that included a "boss" had any real chance). After his brief stint on the government payroll, Bob joined his father in the book publishing business and, when one thing led to another, Bob - fittingly - set out on his own and, in 1970, founded Parasol Press, a publisher of fine-art limited edition prints and photographs. Through the years, Parasol Press published the works of numerous artists - virtually all of whom Bob counted as close friends. The Parasol roster included world-renowned artists, such as Mel Bochner, Richard Estes, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, and Wayne Theibaud, among many others. Parasol Press is often credited with introducing a generation of Minimalist and Conceptual artists to printmaking. Parasol also published the works of world-renowned photographers, such as Ansel Adams and Bernice Abbott. One of the things Bob loved most about his publishing gig was that it provided him the freedom to pursue his many other passions, one of which was volunteering as a youth soccer coach. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Bob could be found organizing and encouraging young soccer players on fields scattered across Scarsdale, NY, where he lived from 1968 until the late 1990s. During this time, Bob was also a fixture on the sidelines cheering, with great pride and enthusiasm, for his children (Andrea, Stephen and Karen) while they competed in various sports. Bob eventually migrated west and relocated to Portland, OR, where he lived happily for the past two decades with his second wife (Julia Mangold) and their daughter (Hannah). While in Portland, an idea that had been percolating in Bob's head for nearly 40 years became a reality in 2014: in collaboration with Dartmouth College mathematics professor Dan Rockmore, Bob published the unique and highly regarded Concinnitas portfolio, in which ten really smart - as in Fields medal and Nobel prize smart - mathematicians and physicists were asked to transcribe their "most beautiful mathematical expression." The results are stunning (and, we assume, accurate). There is so much more to say about Bob, like how he was an incredibly loyal and supportive friend, like how he was an amazing father to all his children (and grandfather to Zachary, Sophie, Rocco, Lucy and Chloe), like how his cleverness and wit were off the charts, like how he had an endless supply of ideas (some of which were even decent), like how he played the saxophone, piano, flute and ukulele (not all at once, as far as we know), like how he had an irrepressible, upbeat spirit, and like how he lived life to the fullest (and managed to complete more than 33,000 crossword puzzles along the way).